Through them the old Rabbi held communion with his God whom he loved with all his heart and soul and thought of as a genial Father, watching tenderly over His froward children and chastising them because He loved them.

Generations of saints and scholars linked Reb Shemuel with the marvels of Sinai.

The infinite network of ceremonial never hampered his soul; it was his joyous privilege to obey his Father in all things and like the king who offered to reward the man who invented a new pleasure, he was ready to embrace the sage who could deduce a new commandment.

He rose at four every morning to study, and snatched every odd moment he could during the day.

Rabbi Meir, that ancient ethical teacher, wrote: "Whosoever labors in the Torah for its own sake, the whole world is indebted to him; he is called friend, beloved, a lover of the All-present, a lover of mankind; it clothes him in meekness and reverence; it fits him to become just, pious, upright and faithful; he becomes modest, long-suffering and forgiving of insult." Reb Shemuel would have been scandalized if any one had applied these words to him.
At about eleven o'clock Hannah came into the room, an open letter in her hand.
"Father," she said, "I have just had a letter from Samuel Levine." "Your husband ?" he said, looking up with a smile.
"My husband," she replied, with a fainter smile.
"And what does he say ?" "It isn't a very serious letter; he only wants to reassure me that he is coming back by Sunday week to be divorced." "All right; tell him it shall be done at cost price," he said, with the foreign accent that made him somehow seem more lovable to his daughter when he spoke English.