“Eh—what?” he queried. “With the wine? Any thing wrong? Oh—I perceive. Oh, no—the wine s all right. It’s this beastly pedantic author. He is describing the Jewish ritual, and now just observe his idiocy. He goes on at a great rate about the beauty of a certain prayer—gets the reader’s curiosity all screwed up—and then—fancy his airs!—and then quotes the stuff in the original Hebrew! It’s ridiculous. He doesn’t even condescend to affix a translation in a foot-note. Look.” He opened the book and pointed, with a finger dyed brown by tobacco-smoke, to the troublesome passage. Now I, having been brought up as an orthodox Jew, had a smattering of Hebrew, and at a glance I saw that I could easily translate the few sentences in question. So, impulsively and without stopping to reflect that my conduct might seem officious, I said, “If you would like, I think perhaps I may be able to aid you.” “What!” he exclaimed, fixing a pair of wide open eyes upon my face. “Yes, I think I can translate it.” “The deuce!” he cried. “I didn’t suspect you were a scholar. How in the name of goodness did you learn Hebrew?” “A scholar I am not, surely enough: but I am a Jew, and like the rest of my faith I studied Hebrew as a boy.” “Ah, I understand. Well, fire away.” I took the book and read the Hebrew aloud. It was a prayer, which, when a child, I had known by heart. Afterward I explained its sense while my friend jotted it down with a pencil upon the margin. “Thanks,” he was good enough to say. “I don’t know what I should have done without your help.—And so you are a Jew? You don’t look it. You look like a full-blown Teuton. But I congratulate you all the same.” “Congratulate me for looking like a Teuton?” The shop being empty, there was no harm in my joining in conversation with a client. Besides, I did not stop to think whether there was harm in it or not. I yielded to the attraction which this young man exerted over me. “No—for belonging to the ancient and honorable race of Jews,” he answered. “Your ancestors were civilized and dwelt in cities and wrote poems, thousands of years ago: whereas mine at that epoch inhabited caves and dressed in bearskins and occasionally dined on a roasted neighbor. I should be proud of my lineage, were I a Jew.” “But it is the fashion for the Gentiles to despise us.” “Oh, bosh! It is the fashion for a certain ignorant, stupid set of Philistines to do so—but those who pretend to the least enlightenment, on the contrary, regard the Jews as a most enviable people. They envy your history, they envy the success that waits upon your enterprises. For my part, I believe the whole future of America depends upon the Jews.” “Indeed, how is that?”