Hereto hangs a tale stranger than fiction, yet founded on fact. Rabbi Akiva was once a poor shepherd in the employ of Calba Shevua, one of the richest men in all Jerusalem. While engaged in that lowly occupation his master's only daughter fell in love with him, and the two carried on a clandestine courtship for some time together. Her father, hearing of it, threatened to disinherit her, to turn her out of doors and disown her altogether, if she did not break off her engagement.
How could she connect herself with one who was the baseborn son of a proselyte, a reputed descendant of Sisera and Jael, an ignorant fellow that could neither read nor write, and a man old enough to be her father? Rachel — for that was her name — determined to be true to her lover, and to brave the consequences by marrying ' him and exchanging the mansion of her father for the hovel of her husband.
After a short spell of married life she prevailed upon her husband to leave her for a while in order to join a certain college in a distant land, where she felt sure that his talents would be recognized and his genius fostered into development worthy of it. As he sauntered along by himself he began to harbor misgivings in his mind as to the wisdom of the step, and more than once thought of returning.
But when musing one day at a resting-place a waterfall arrested his attention, and he remarked how the water, by its continual dropping, was wearing away the solid rock. All at once, with the tact for which he was afterward so noted, he applied the lesson it yielded to himself. " So may the law,** he reasoned, "work its way into my hard and stony heart; and he felt encouraged and pursued his journey.
Under the tuition of Rabbi Eliezer, the son of Hyrcanus, and Rabbi Yehoshua, the son of Chanauiah, his native ability soon began to appear, his name became known to fame, and he rose step by step until he ranked as a professor in the very college which he had entered as a poor student. After some twelve years of hard study and diligent