To secure means for a university course, he agreed to accept a position as tutor in Ostrowo, and entered upon his work at the end of 1840. Ostrowo is a little town in the south-eastern part of the Province, the seat of a large Jewish community, which at the time was still completely under the sway of the graceless habits of Ghetto life. Graetz felt thoroughly uncomfortable. His position in the house at which he was engaged to teach did not please him, and in the town he found no one with whom he cared to cultivate friendly intercourse. He had submitted to tutoring, by no means an arduous occupation, in order to lay by money, but he lacked financial talent and the ability to economize. In fact, his devotion to his family connections, his good nature, and his improvidence involved him in pecuniary embarrassments so serious that the monologues in his diary overflow with pessimistic, melancholy reflections. He sought indemnification in frequent excursions to neighboring towns, in composing a Hebrew biography of Mishna teachers under the title תולדות אבות {Hebrew: Toldot Avot},[10] and, it appears, in reading the works of the Fathers of the Church. On one of his little trips, the occasion being the betrothal of a friend of his, he met the sister of the _fiancée_, a very young girl, who attracted and pleased him, and who was destined to exert decisive and salutary influence upon his life. The meeting acted like a soothing charm upon his ill-humor, though he was far from anticipating the consequences it bore. He remained in his position at Ostrowo for one year and a half, until July, 1842, when a trivial occurrence ruptured the irksome relation in a manner not altogether pleasant. Now he went straightway to Breslau to the University. As he had not been graduated from a _Gymnasium_, Graetz had to obtain ministerial permission to attend the University. His petition was granted, and, in October, 1842, he was matriculated. With reverential awe and expectation the self-taught student entered the mysterious lecture halls consecrated to pure science, only to leave them shrugging his shoulders at the wisdom proclaimed, disappointed, his longings unsatisfied. The knowledge of which he was master when he began his University course was richer and more varied than ordinary students are likely to start with, and though it was not systematically ordered nor well-balanced, it formed a unit, and had already begun to crystallize about a center. His apprenticeship years, in short, were over; the maturity of his views and his judgment is unmistakable.