Pushing open the dirty door, we enter a dingy apartment. The air is close and stuffy, and the room smells strongly of garlic or onions. A man with an unmistakably Jewish face and a villainous expression of countenance stands behind the narrow counter. We take our stand inside, invisibly of course, and watch the proceedings. A young man enters, well-dressed, and rather dissipated in appearance. The child of Abraham watches him narrowly, and begins to shake his head and groan, as if in pain. The visitor approaches the counter, and lays a gold watch upon it. The broker clutches it eagerly, examines it, and groans louder than ever. “Vat you want on dis vatch?” he asks mournfully. “Fifty dollars. It cost me one hundred and fifty,” is the reply. “Fifty tollar! fifty tollar! Holy Moshish, vat you take me for?” Then turning, calls wildly, “Abraham! Abraham! you shust koom heir, quick.” A second Jew, dirtier and more disreputable looking than the first, makes his appearance, and the proprietor, passing up his hands, shrieks out, as if in despair: “Abraham! he vants fifty tollars on dat vatch. De man is crazy.” “Ve shall be ruined,” echoes Abraham, hoarsely. “Ve couldn’t do it. Tish too much.” The proprietor waves his arms wildly, takes the watch from Abraham, and eyeing the owner sharply for a moment, says: “I tell you vat I do. I gif you fifteen tollars. How long you vant de monish?” “Only for a month,” replies the young man, evidently struggling between disgust and despair. “I let you haf fifteen tollars for de month,” says the pawnbroker, seizing a ticket and commencing to make it out. “You pay me one tollar for de loan, and pay me fifty cents to put de vatch in de safe, you know it might get stole if I leaf it out hier. Dat shuit you, mine young frient?” The young man has “been there” before, and knows that remonstrance is useless. He nods a silent affirmation, and the pawnbroker makes out a ticket for fifteen dollars, and hands him thirteen dollars and fifty cents, having deducted the interest and the charge for storage. The young man receives the money and ticket, and goes out in silence. “Dat ish peesness,” says Abraham, admiringly, as the proprietor puts the watch away. “Yesh,” mutters the pawnbroker, with a satisfied air, “de vatch ish vort a hundred tollar. If he don’t take it up, it will bring us dat.” The next customer is a poor woman, who comes to pledge some article of household use. She is ground down to the lowest cent, and charged the highest interest; and so the proceedings go on until we become heartsick, and leave the place as invisibly as we can.