In October, 1893, after an oral examination which, thanks to my mother’s instruction, I passed with ease, I was admitted to the High School of Queenshaven. The school building is plain and dignified, somewhat after the fashion of an English mansion of the eighteenth century. What the school has become in recent years I do not know. I have heard rumours of courses in bookkeeping and shorthand and other dexterities that have nothing to do with the education of youth. In my time it was a good school. The pupils were all boys and they were taught by men. They were young enough to be grounded in the necessities of a liberal education without having their callow judgment consulted, and to be caned when they were lazy or rowdy. The school had one grave fault: Greek was an elective study. Through this fault my life sustained an irreparable loss. Yet when I consider what might have happened to my mind if the school had been like the High Schools of 1921, I am filled with a sense of gratitude. For I was enabled to lay the foundations of a sound and permanent knowledge of Latin and French; I was taught to study with thoroughness and accuracy under pain of tangible and very wholesome penalties, and it was not the fault of the school that my mind was and is all but impervious to any form of mathematical reasoning. I passed into the rough and tumble of school life with a distinct shudder. There was no direct hazing but there was a good deal of rather cruel horse-play. You were apt to be tripped up and thrown on your back, to have pins and needles stuck viciously into you, to be held under the pump until you nearly choked. Also, during the first year, I was taunted with being a foreigner and a Jew. One boy especially tormented me--a tallish fellow with a huge mouth always distorted by idiotic laughter, hateful, offstanding ears and small, greenish eyes. I was no match for him in strength and he persisted in cuffing and thumping and taunting me. I tried to avoid him, for I shrank from the thought of touching him as shudderingly as I did from his touch. Then, one day he clapped me brutally on the back and yelled with laughter. Two scarlet lights danced before my eyes and I leapt at his throat. Boys hurried from all sides of the playground and formed a ring around us. Cries arose: “Fight fair!” I remembered how the contemptuous thoughts raced through my brain. Fight fair! Oh yes, give the over-grown lout a chance to trounce me as a reward for months of bruises and insults. I didn’t want to fight him and suffer more undeserved pain and humiliation. I wanted to hurt him, to hurt him so effectively that he would never again dare lay his red, bony claws on me. I did. A teacher had to come into the yard and order me to be torn from my gasping and bloody victim. I had no trouble after that....