the intellectual gymnastics of his Talmud studies were in these empty forms, which merely required impressing on the memory. A student like Baruch required special treatment. A mind that had already exercised itself on the highest intellectual questions was far beyond the degree of mere receptiveness; and only what he could work out for himself he truly understood. His teacher tried to satisfy Baruch's impatience with the assurance that—
"It is only when all the forms are in the head that a man can wander inoffenso pede in the paths of classic learning."
Baruch by degrees learned his teacher's strange ways, and learned to respect and to imitate them. Just this steady but often painfully measured progress, which admitted of no haste, still less allowed for digressions, even this hard discipline pleased him after the showy hair-splitting of the Talmud-school. He constrained himself to follow this regulated pace, and his master appreciated the devotion, and found his scholar win on his affections, as he rejoiced daily more and more to find a sympathetic mind near him. He promised his pupil to leave him his Cicero "On the Greatest Good and the Greatest Evil," which he had enriched with valuable marginal notes, as a legacy.
One day when Baruch came to his tutor's house he received him with unusual warmth, and told
