"Have your 'astronomers' found out by calculation on which days we may learn geography?" asked Reb Shloimeh, with malicious irony. "No, that's a discovery of mine!" and the teacher smiled. "And when have 'your' astronomers decreed the study of geography?" persisted Reb Shloimeh. "To-morrow." "To-morrow!" he repeated crossly, and left the room, missing a lesson for the first time. Next day the teacher explained the eclipses of the sun and moon to his pupils. Reb Shloimeh sat with his chair drawn up to the table, and listened without a movement. "It is all so exact," the teacher wound up his explanation, "that the astronomers are able to calculate to a minute _when_ there will be an eclipse, and have never yet made a mistake." At these last words Reb Shloimeh nodded in a knowing way, and looked at the pupils as much as to say, "You ask _me_ about that!" The teacher went on to tell of comets, planets, and other suns. Reb Shloimeh snorted, and was continually interrupting the teacher with exclamations. "If you don't believe me, go and measure for yourself!"--"If it is not so, call me a liar!"--"Just so!"--"Within one yard of it!" Reb Shloimeh repaid his Jewish education with interest. There were not many learned men in the town like Reb Shloimeh. The Rabbis without flattery called him "a full basket," and Reb Shloimeh could not picture to himself the existence of sciences other than "Jewish," and when at last he did picture it, he would not allow that they were right, unfalsified and right. He was so far intelligent, he had received a so far enlightened education, that he could understand how among non-Jews also there are great men. He would even have laughed at anyone who had maintained the contrary. But that among non-Jews there should be men as great as any Jewish ones, that he did _not_ believe!--let alone, of course, still greater ones. And now, little by little, Reb Shloimeh began to believe that "their" learning was not altogether insignificant, for he, "the full basket," was not finding it any too easy to master. And what he had to deal with were not empty speculations, unfounded opinions. No, here were mathematical computations, demonstrations which almost anyone can test for himself, which impress themselves on the mind! And Reb Shloimeh is vexed in his soul. He endeavored to cling to his old thoughts, his old conceptions. He so wished to cry out upon the clear reasoning, the simple explanations, with the phrases that are on the lips of every ignorant obstructionist. And yet he felt that he was unjust, and he gave up disputing with the teacher, as he paid close attention to the latter's demonstrations. And the teacher would say quite simply: "One _can_ measure," he would say, "why not? Only it takes a lot of learning." When the teacher was at the door, Reb Shloimeh stayed him with a question. "Then," he asked angrily, "the whole of 'your' learning is nothing but astronomy and geography?"