y marked with that cruelty and vulgarity which naturally attend
the morbidly vain and semi-civilized man, who is so unfortunate as to
have inferiors by fortune entirely in his power. I would ask the reader
in confirmation of this to simply turn over the large collection of
'Georgia Major' and 'Simon Suggs' tales, which, emanating from the
South, have contributed so much to brutalize and vulgarize the humorous
tendencies of that portion of the more Northern public which reads them.

But to return to the story of the half shaven beard. It also is a very
old one, being told in its original form as _Barba deceptus
Judaeus_--'The Jew deceived by a beard,' and is as follows:

'A nobleman of Frankfort, while being shaved in a barber's shop,
was summoned by a Jew to whom he owed money. But at the request of
his debtor the Jew consented to forego the arrest until the
nobleman's beard should be shaved. Upon which the latter departed
unshorn, and ever remained so.'

The old story--Jews, Cogots, serfs, negroes--the outwitting,
persecuting, and swindling some outlawed class of poor helpless victims,
who have been made worse than they should be by oppression. This
anecdote--like that of the free lance Conrad--is a sad epitome of the
middle ages, and to us of the present day, it rings like a curse on the
olden time, in the form of a diabolical jest. It is, however, bitterest
of all, to find the oppressed--as in the stories illustrating mere
_feudal_ fidelity,--so utterly degraded as to actually take part with
their oppressors and with the foes of humanity, against their own
rights. So, in this present struggle with that incarnation of evil, and
of the old devilish feudal oppression, the Confederate South, we are
still pained to find among its adherents men, who, having been socially
trampled on in Europe, seek, by sheer force of slavish habit, masters to
lord it over them here. There is but one type of man who is more
pitiable--it is he who is recreant to the great cause of freedom for the
sake of--money!

A brutal and disgraceful jest-story, which stands in close relation to
this last, is that of _Detrimentum barbae propter Sanctos_;' or, 'losing
a beard for the saints,' which runs as follows:

'A Hebrew contending with a Catholic, affirmed there were more
Jewish saints in Heaven than Christian. It was thereupon agreed
that each should name his saints in turn, and as he named, pluck a