"And after we have read about him in the comic weeklies, have seen him delineated in popular works of fiction, have observed him caricatured in various publications, have beheld him portrayed on the vaudeville stage and have heard from the slum student of the Ghetto; after we have visited a few money lenders--on important business--have heard our minister talk patronizingly of him, telling pityingly of how he hath a great past and possessed more than a few commendable qualities, and of how he was, alas! doomed to damnation because he would not accept the religion that he hath given to the world; after we have bought clothing in one of his stores, taken a personal peep at the Ghetto, met a reformed rabbi, conversed with a distant descendant of his people, read the polite charges of his friend, the anti-Semite, and gone down and made beautiful speeches before him prior to the election; I say even after we have done these things, or some of these things have happened to us, we must still ask the question: What constitutes the Jew? "For, of a verity, he is so complex in his character, so heterogeneous in his general composition, so diverse in his activities, so many sided in his worldly and heavenly pursuits, so widely varying in his appearance, so wonderfully ubiquitous, and withal such a living contradiction, that even after we have made the above painful efforts to understand him, we are still at a loss to know--what we know about him. "He represents one of the ancient races and yet is as up to date as any; he reaches deepest into the past and looks furthest into the future; he is the narrowest conservative and the most advanced radical; in religion he is the most dogmatic, sectarian, stationary, orthodox, and also the most liberal and universal reformer; he is a member of the feeblest and strongest people on earth; he has no land of his own and he owns many lands; his wealth is the talk and the envy of the world, and none is so poor as he; his riches have ever been magnified and exaggerated, his dire poverty ever overlooked. 'As poor as a Jew' would be a truer simile than the one now in use. He is the infamous Shylock, the money-lender, yet he borrows as much and more money than he lends to others, only he pays his debts and so there is no talk about it; Christians and others who borrow from him go to court, denounce him, call him Shylock, and give him several pounds of 'tongue,' though he asks not for flesh, because it is not 'kosher,' and because whatever he is he is never cruel. Come to think of it, what a fine thing the Shylock story has ever been for those who did not want to pay their debts!