The other day I was what you would call _floored_ by a Jew. He passed me
several times crying out for old clothes in the most nasal and
extraordinary tone I ever heard. At last I was so provoked, that I said to
him, "Pray, why can't you say 'old clothes' in a plain way as I do now?"
The Jew stopped, and looking very gravely at me, said in a clear and even
fine accent, "Sir, I can say 'old clothes' as well as you can; but if you
had to say so ten times a minute, for an hour together, you would say _Ogh
Clo_ as I do now;" and so he marched off. I was so confounded with the
justice of his retort, that I followed and gave him a shilling, the only
one I had.
* * * * *
I have had a good deal to do with Jews in the course of my life, although I
never borrowed any money of them. Once I sat in a coach opposite a Jew--a
symbol of old clothes' bags--an Isaiah of Hollywell Street. He would close
the window; I opened it. He closed it again; upon which, in a very solemn
tone, I said to him, "Son of Abraham! thou smellest; son of Isaac! thou art
offensive; son of Jacob! thou stinkest foully. See the man in the moon! he
is holding his nose at thee at that distance; dost thou think that I,
sitting here, can endure it any longer?" My Jew was astounded, opened the
window forthwith himself, and said, "he was sorry he did not know before I
was so great a gentleman."
_July_ 24. 1830.