The young people in those strange colleges, for the most part precocious urchins, fall into classes, which, however, are not sharply divided off from one another. Day and night they sit bent over the huge folios of the Rabbis, occupied constantly with the study of the Law. Their meals are furnished them by the humble people of the town, often under deplorable conditions, and, on the whole, the life they lead is misery not untinged with humiliation. Such are the student years of the future Rabbis. And yet this bohemian existence is not destitute of picturesque elements and attractive features. Frequently it is at the Yeshibah that the young man for the first time finds sincere friends for whom he forms a lasting attachment, and they become his trusted advisers. It is a mob of young people, enthusiastic and impetuous, yet among them is found the aristocracy of the ghetto, those endowed with extraordinary intellectual gifts, and the devotion displayed by some of them to Talmudic knowledge is absolutely sublime. Smolenskin paints a characteristic Yeshibah scene enacted by these embryonic Talmudists: "It is a strange spectacle that meets the eye of the observer on his first visit to the women's gallery in the Yeshibah [at nightfall]. He finds it suddenly transformed into a gathering- place for merchants. The boys who have bread or money, try their hands at trafficking, and those who have neither bread nor money, try theirs at theft, and a large group of those who loathe the one pursuit as well as the other, sit apart and entertain each other with the wonderful exploits of brigands, and giants, and witches, and devils, and evil spirits, who are abroad at night to affright human beings, and the dead who leave their graves to terrify the wicked or cure the sick with grass of the field, and many more such tales that delight the heart and soul of the listeners. Such things have I myself seen even while the afternoon and the evening prayers were going on below. I heard confused sounds. One would cry out, 'Who wants bread?' And another would sing out in reply, 'Who has bread to sell? Who has bread to sell?'--'Here is bread!'--'Will you take a penny for it?'--'Two pennies, and no less!'--'Some one has stolen my bread! Who stole my bread?'--' My bread is first-class! Come and buy!'-- 'But I haven't a red copper!'--'All right, give me a pledge!'-- 'You may have my troubles as a pledge, you old curmudgeon!'-- 'Here are two pennies, give me the bread!'--'Get out, I was ahead of you!'--'I insist upon my rights, I was the first.'--'Why, I handed my money over long ago, it is my bread.'--'You stole my bread.'--'You lie, it's my bread!'--'You're a liar, a thief, a robber!'--'The devil take you, you hound!'--'Wait a moment, and I'll show you my teeth, if I'm a hound!'