of fifty dollars. I sold some of
my wife's trinkets to purchase paper and ink, and worked diligently, you
can guess how many weeks, until they were in English as readable as the
French of their author. The task accomplished, I went to my patron,
expecting of course to have the pittance counted down in current notes
or gold; but----the market for such literature was by this time over
stocked; he had supplied it too liberally; and with some insulting
excuse he refused the manuscripts.

You have an invitation to his funeral?

Yes--he was rich--always speculating in the sweat of brains--and we had
business relations afterward.

The other history?

I chanced one day to meet a gentleman, with whom I had no personal
acquaintance, though our names were known to each other, and conversing
of a subject with which I was familiar he inquired if I would write
something upon it for his journal. I replied that I would be very happy
to do so, and as we shook hands, at parting, he left in my palm two
twenty-dollar notes. He would gladly have avoided a word of explanation,
but seeing my surprise he said, "It is merely a retainer, as the lawyers
have it; consider it upon account of the articles you will write me." I
wrote the articles; it was but an evening's work; and wrote frequently
afterward for the same person, always receiving a liberal reward--always
more than I asked--though my employer was himself by no means rich. You
will think that in the first place he expected a profit for the money he
gave me, but I knew better: he cared not a fig for the papers I was to
prepare; he simply suspected that I was in need of money, and took that
delicate way to relieve me, as, in his time, he relieved hundreds of
men.

A noble characteristic of a man perhaps in all respects deserving of
admiration: But what of the prejudice you were meditating?

It is this--that even in this land, where many an old world superstition
has found life impossible--the community regard a _Jew_ as an
incarnation of all selfishness, meanness and dishonor. A hundred to one,
being told that the hero of one of these two histories was an Israelite,
would swear instantly that the name of him who swindled me was Moses.
But it was not: that person will to-morrow have Christian burial, and
the other--one of the most sincere and generous men of the age, was an
officer of the synagogue. You know--we both know--that the Hebrew race
are not only before the other races in