or two which he needed to pay for his bath of a Friday afternoon.
Occasionally he would earn three or four copecks by participating
in some special prayer, for a sick person, for instance. These
pennies he invariably gave away. Once he gave his muffler to a
poor boy. His wife subsequently nagged him to death for it. The
next morning he complained of her to one of the other scholars

"Still," he concluded, "if you want to serve God you must be ready
to suffer for it. A good deed that comes easy to you is like a
donation which does not cost you anything." I made his
acquaintance by asking him to help me out with an obscure
passage. This he did with such simple alacrity and kindly modesty
as to make me feel a chum of his. I warmed to him and he
reciprocated my feelings. He took me to his bosom. He often
offered to go over my lesson with me, and I accepted his services
with gratitude. He spoke in a warm, mellow basso that had won
my heart from the first. His singsong lent peculiar charm to the
pages that we read in duet. As he read and interpreted the text he
would wave his snuff-box, by way of punctuating and
emphasizing his words, much as the conductor of an orchestra
does his baton, now gently, insinuatingly, now with a passionate
jerk, now with a sweeping majestic movement. One cannot read
Talmud without gesticulating, and Reb Sender would scarcely
have been able to gesticulate without his snuff-box.

It was of tortoise shell, with a lozenge-shaped bit of silver in the
center.

It gradually became dear to me as part of his charming personality.