the draughts of the Law I felt that I was a dried-up cistern, and no longer full.
At the last, on a certain morning, my mother, having (as I suppose) noted my silence before, spake aloud reproving me, albeit gently, and saying, "Why flow not the drops of refreshment from the plastered cistern as in former days?" But I replied in haste, "Call me no longer, O my mother, a cistern. For lo, I am become even as a strainer, which letteth out the wine and keepeth in itself nothing but the dregs." Then my mother wept bitterly, thinking that she had angered me, and that I had spoken falsely; and I also wept, partly for that I had made her weep, but still more because my words were true.
Then went I forth hastily into the street; and meeting Jonathan the son of Ezra, and Abuyah the son of Elishah, I accompanied them. And we came to the well that is on the road to Nazareth, about a thousand paces from the town, and there we sat down to rest. For a time we were silent. Then I turned to Rabbi Jonathan and said, "Simeon the Just was of the remnant of the Great Synagogue. He used to say, 'On three things the world is stayed: on the Law, and on the Worship, and on the Bestowal of Kindnesses.' Now there was a certain young man which observed the Law, and worshipped duly in the temple. Also he clothed the naked, and buried them that lay unburied, and fed the hungry: but there was no kindness in his heart. Is such an one, therefore, in the path of righteousness?" Then Abuyah replied at once, "He is righteous. For it is written concerning the statutes and judgments of the Law of the Lord that whosoever doeth them shall live in them; but whether he shall do them easily or with difficulty, or gladly or sorrowfully, concerning this, behold, nothing is written." But Jonathan the son of Ezra was silent for a while, and said at last, "Antigonus
