Listen, children, and I will tell you a story about a little knife--not an invented story, but a true one, that happened to myself. I never wished for anything in the world so much as for a pocket-knife. It should be my own, and should lie in my pocket, and I should be able to take it out whenever I wished, to cut whatever I liked. Let my friends know. I had just begun to go to school, under Yossel Dardaki, and I already had a knife, that is, what was almost a knife. I made it myself. I tore a goose-quill out of a feather brush, cut off one end, and flattened out the other. I pretended it was a knife and would cut. "What sort of a feather is that? What the devil does it mean? Why do you carry a feather about with you?" asked my father--a sickly Jew, with a yellow, wrinkled face. He had a fit of coughing. "Here are feathers for you--playtoys! Tkeh-heh-heh-heh!" "What do you care if the child plays?" asked my mother of him. She was a short-built woman and wore a silk scarf on her head. "Let my enemies eat out their hearts!" Later, when I was learning the Bible and the commentaries, I very nearly had a real knife, also of my own making. I found a bit of steel belonging to my mother's crinoline, and I set it very cleverly into a piece of wood. I sharpened the steel beautifully on a stone, and naturally cut all my fingers to pieces. "See, just see, how he has bled himself, that son of yours," said my father. He took hold of my hands in such a way that the very bones cracked. "He's a fine fellow! Heh-heh-heh!" "Oh, may the thunder strike me!" cried my mother. She took the little knife from me, and threw it into the fire. She took no notice of my crying. "Now it will come to an end. Woe is me!" I soon got another knife, but in reality, a little knife. It had a thick, round, wooden handle, like a barrel, and a curved blade which opened as well as closed. You want to know how I came by it? I saved up the money from what I got for my breakfasts, and I bought the knife for seven "_groschens_" from Solomon, and I owed him three more "_groschens_." Oh, how I loved it, how I loved it. I came home from school black and blue, hungry and sleepy, and with my ears well boxed. (You see, I had just started learning the "_Gemarra_" with Mottel, the "Angel of Death." "If an ox gore a cow" I learnt. And if an ox gores a cow, then I must get beaten.) And the first thing I did was to take out my pocket-knife from under the black cupboard. (It lay there the whole day, because I dared not take it to school with me; and at home no one must know that I have a knife.) I stroked it, I cut a piece of paper with it, split a straw in halves, and then cut up my bread into little cubes which I stuck on the tip of the blade, and afterwards put into my mouth.