I hope he will forgive me, I mean my father, from the other world, but I could not understand what sort of a man he had been. From what my mother told of him, he was always either praying or studying. Had he never been drawn, like me, out into the open, on summer mornings, when the sun was not burning yet, but was just beginning to show in the sky, marching rapidly onwards, a fiery angel, in a fiery chariot, drawn by fiery horses, into whose brilliant, burning, guinea-gold faces it was impossible to look? I ask you what taste have the week-day prayers on such a morning? What sort of a pleasure is it to sit and read in a stuffy room, when the golden sun is burning, and the air is hot as an iron frying-pan? At such a time, you are tempted to run down the hill, to the river--the beautiful river that is covered with a green slime. A peculiar odour, as of a warm bath, comes from the distance. You want to undress and jump into the warm water. Under the trees it is cool and the mud is soft and slippery. And the curious insects that live at the bottom of the river whirl around and about before your eyes. And curious, long-legged flies slip and slide on the surface of the water. At such a time one desires to swim over to the other side--over to where the green flags grow, their yellow and white stalks shimmering in the sun. A green, fresh fern looks up at you, and you go after it, plash-plash into the water, hands down, and feet up, so that people might think you were swimming. I ask you again, what pleasure is it to sit in a little room on a summer's evening, when the great dome of the sky is dropping over the other side of the town, lighting up the spire of the church, the shingle roofs of the baths, and the big windows of the synagogue. And on the other side of the town, on the common, the goats are bleating, and the lambs are frisking, the dust rising to the heavens, the frogs croaking. There is a tearing and a shrieking and a tumult as at a regular fair. Who thinks of praying at such a time? But if you talk to my mother, she will tell you that her husband--peace be unto him!--did not succumb to temptations. He was a different sort of a man. What sort of a man he was I do not know--asking his pardon. I only know that my mother annoys me very much. She reminds me every minute that I had a father; and throws it into my teeth that she has to pay my school-fees for me. For this she asks only two things of me--that I should learn diligently, and say my prayers willingly. * * *