been pricing and marking the book this very morning)--that is
true, for the ancients spoke of it. But then, he says, the other things
are fables, such as that the odor goes away all at once when they're
baptized, and that every one of the ten tribes, mind you, all the ten
being concerned in the crucifixion, has got a particular punishment
over and above the smell:--Asher, I remember, has the right arm a
handbreadth shorter than the left, and Naphthali has pig's ears and a
smell of live pork. What do you think of that? There's been a good deal
of fun made of rabbinical fables, but in point of fables my opinion is,
that all over the world it's six of one and half-a-dozen of the other.
However, as I said before, I hold with the philosophers of the last
century that the Jews have played no great part as a people, though
Pash will have it they're clever enough to beat all the rest of the
world. But if so, I ask, why haven't they done it?"

"For the same reason that the cleverest men in the country don't get
themselves or their ideas into Parliament," said the ready Pash;
"because the blockheads are too many for 'em."

"That is a vain question," said Mordecai, "whether our people would
beat the rest of the world. Each nation has its own work, and is a
member of the world, enriched by the work of each. But it is true, as
Jehuda-ha-Levi first said, that Israel is the heart of mankind, if we
mean by heart the core of affection which binds a race and its families
in dutiful love, and the reverence for the human body which lifts the
needs of our animal life into religion, and the tenderness which is
merciful to the poor and weak and to the dumb creature that wears the
yoke for us."

"They're not behind any nation in arrogance," said Lily; "and if they
have got in the rear, it has not been because they were over-modest."

"Oh, every nation brags in its turn," said Miller.

"Yes," said Pash, "and some of them in the Hebrew text."

"Well, whatever the Jews contributed at one time, they are a
stand-still people," said Lily. "They are the type of obstinate
adherence to the superannuated. They may show good abilities when they
take up liberal ideas, but as a race they have no development in them."

"That is false!" said Mordecai, leaning forward again with his former
eagerness. "Let their history be known and examined; let the seed be
sifted, let its beginning be traced to the weed of the wilderness--the
more glorious will be the