"I can understand that very well," replied the Jewish teacher. "I also came here for no other reason than that I was sent by the consistory, and did not know a soul. I often longed for a charm to make myself incognito for a while, so as to study closely the character of the parents; for, without the parents to help you, nothing is to be done with the children. What made matters particularly difficult for me was that it became my duty, twenty-five years ago, to organize a regular school,--a matter till then entirely unknown among the Jews. At first it seemed to me that I had been spirited into a strange world by enchantment."
"Yes, you came into an enchantment soon enough, and married the prettiest girl in the village: ha, ha! And so you ought," fell in the old man. Turning to our friend, he continued,--"You must marry a girl from our village, too."
The new teacher recoiled in such haste as to set his foot ruinously into one of the immaculate flower-beds. After stammering out an apology, he said, "I only refer to my relations with the parents and the children."
"Be strict with them: that's the main point," said the old gentleman, repairing the damage with the hoe. "As to the new ways of teaching, I don't understand them. They ask the children, 'Who made the table?'--just as if they didn't know that without teaching. And then they give only the sounds of h, k, l, m, like the dumb, and the alphabet's gone out of fashion entirely."
"Strict, you say?" interposed the new teacher, to avoid the shoals and quicksands of a discussion.
"Yes. Of all the men running about the village now, there's not one who hasn't had his good salting down from me many and many a time; and I leave it to you whether they don't respect me to this day."
"Most certainly," responded the Jewish teacher, smiling. The old gentleman went on:--"And when there's a festivity in the village it won't do to play the gentleman of refinement and look on a while to see how the ignorant vulgar amuse themselves; but you must go in and help them. I've been the wildest among 'em all. The barber's dance they learned from me, and the seven-league jump I always led them in, with my Madge: my legs itch when I think of it."
"You were born and bred here, and had no need of establishing a reputation."
"I was not born and bred here. All this country fell to Wurtemberg in the year five: before that time it had belonged to Austria. I was born at Freiburg."
"You have seen much of life?"