“Who? the President?” Noah laughed. “I will let you in with a secret. There is only one to be more the sentimentalist than your 'matter-of-fact General,' and that, my friend, is yourself. However, keeping from the personal, I would still stand firm to it that selfishness is the beginning of the virtues. Those better expressions, charity and love, come by its cultivation just as the generous apple has for its forebear that bitter, thorny, sour creature, the wild crab. Now, your Jew has been vastly cultivated”--here came Noah's look of satire--“he has been ploughed by adversity and harrowed of oppression. Thus farmed, your Jew will produce those Judah Touros you tell of. There were mates for Touro throughout our years of revolution. There dwelt but seven hundred families of Jews in this land when Concord and Lexington and Bunker Hill fell forth. From Lexington until Cornwallis, those Jews were busy with their ducats and their blood for freedom. They gave millions. Old Haym Salomon alone gave six hundred thousand dollars He was the richest of his day; he died copper poor to the obolary point of groats and farthings. At his end he said: 'I die broken and in the talons of want; but I die happy since I have lived to see civil and religious liberty established on this soil.'” Rivera, broad of shoulder, mild of eye, here drew near and made a slight motion, as one who points with his thumb, towards the tap-room of the tavern. Noah would seem instantly to understand his wordless satellite. “Come,” said Noah, eagerly, “I can show you those Catron thugs I warned you against. It may serve you to know their faces.” “I had forgotten to ask,” I returned. “Has any of them gone about to molest you? I see you still safe.” “It is because I am looked on,” returned Noah, lightly, “as a Jew most perilous. Those Catron five minutes at Gadsby's did me good service. Also, since I love quiet, I would have gossip give wings to it how I carry a knife. The truth is, these caitiff folk mistrust me as a trap of death.” There was a rude group gathered about a table in the bar. The members were drinking rum from tin measures, and their vivid noses and features much aflame would not have said the habit was one lately taken up. “Those be our friends,” whispered Noah. “That animal with the shoulders of a buffalo, the iron jaw, and no forehead to speak of, is a prize-fighter of renown. He was brought over to be a counter-weight for Rivera. I would wager, should they come together, that my man beats him to a pumice.” The light in Noah's eyes showed no sloth of appetite for such a battle.