Page:The New Monthly Magazine - Volume 098.djvu/236

224 Now-a-days, that is the best creed which gives security and advantages in trade and commerce."

"Miserable being!" cried old Philip Moses, drawing himself up to his full length, "accursed be the spirit that speaks by your mouth! It is that pestilential spirit which has wrought evil among God's people, and caused them to become a byword to the nations of the earth, and an abomination to the Lord of Heaven! Accursed be those goods and that life for which you would barter the faith of your forefathers, and mock even the altar of the strangers, to which you would fly in your abject cowardice! Accursed be the security and the advantages for which you would betray Jehovah! Accursed be the trade and the commerce that have enticed God's people to become the slaves of Mammon, and frantic worshippers of the Golden Calf!"

"You talk wildly, old man!" replied Samuel. "You do not know how to accommodate yourself to the times. You are aged, and cling to old notions; but the days of your prophets are gone by."

"Their words shall stand to the last of days," said the old man, raising his head proudly; " and be it my care to proclaim them among ye, even if the earth should burn around me, and sink beneath my feet! Is it not enough that we are a stricken and dispersed race, cast forth into the wide world, and condemned to live despised in the land of the stranger? Shall we add humiliation to humiliation, and despicably constrain ourselves to laud and call those just who scorn us, and trample us in the dust?"

The jeweller's handsome saloon was full of fugitive Israelites, who sought refuge and protection at the abode of the wealthy Samuel; whilst the police and the watchmen pretended to be endeavouring to quiet and disperse the mob outside.

The assembled Jews loudly deplored their misfortunes, and some of them gazed with astonishment on the aged Philip Moses, who stood there, firmly and fearlessly, like a prophet among them, and poured forth words of wisdom and instruction to his trembling fellow-believers.

Two or three of the old rabbis, with long beards and black silk talars, or robes, alone listened attentively, and with calm seriousness to him, the most ancient of their community. But the young beardless Israelites uttered cries of lamentation, bewailing the conduct of the people of Hamburg, bewailing their broken windows, and all the damage that would accrue to their trades or business in consequence of this new persecution.

"Ah! if my mother had not been so over-faithful to my father," said a conceited young Jew, "I might have gone with comfort to the theatre, and seen that pretty Ma'amselle Wrede, without being recognised as a Jew, and abused accordingly; and running the risk of getting my head broken to boot."

"Oh! that we had never been circumcised!" cried another; "our lives are actually not safe in the streets."

"Would that we were all baptised!" groaned a third. "Ay, with some philter that would turn our dark hair to red, and remove the too apparent marks with which Jehovah has signalised us, and cast us out among our foes."

"Oh!—woe—woe!" shrieked the women and children — "whither