paltry, petty dealers, who envy our cleverness in business, and covet our profits—it is just they themselves who set the populace against us."
"Then let us remove to Altona," cried some. "Those Danish block-heads will at least have sense enough to be willing to receive us with all our riches; and they will be glad to have an opportunity of causing a loss to the impudent Hamburgers, in return for their 'Schukelmeier' cry."[1]
"But when the wont part of the storm is over, we will repent having gone," aligned others; for there is not so much business done, or so much money to be made there, as here. It is better for us to put up with rudeness and with temporary annoyances, than to run the risk of seriously injuring our business, and lessening our gains."
"If the worst happens, we can but let ourselves be baptised," said Samuel, "and then we can no more be called Jews than the Hamburgers themselves."
"What good would that do?" exclaimed a shabby-looking Jew, with a long beard. "It is not on account of our religion that they persecute us; it is only our wealth, and the luxuries we can afford, that excite their envious dislike. Our handsome houses are our misfortune, and our splendid equipages; our beautiful villas on the Elbe and the Alster, and all the braggadocio of our young fops. Go about like me, with a matted beard and tattered garments! Live well in the privacy of your own houses, but let not your abundance be seen by any one! You will then find that no one will envy you, or persecute you. Let the children in the street point at us, and abuse us! Is it not for being what it should be our pride to be called? If they even treated us as if we were lepers, they could not prevent us from being God's chosen people. We are blessed in our affairs, and in our wedlock; we multiply, and fill all lands, and devour the marrow thereof; we are really the lords of the people, though we do not blush to seem their slaves."
This advice was rejected by the richer and more modern Israelites, who had no inclination to array themselves in sackcloth and ashes, and to relinquish the ostentatious display of that wealth which, in the midst of so many humiliations, and with so many equivocal acts, and little tricks in trade, they had amassed.
"No, no! I know a much better plan," said one of the richest men present, who had originally been a sort of pedlar, and sold tapes and ribbons. "We will take it by turns to give turtle-feasts; we will invite all the young men, the sons of the merchants, to our tables; our wives and our daughters must show all manner of kindness and complaisance to them, and not keep them at such a cold distance as they do now; let them lay aside their reserve, and try to please them. It is better, far better, even to marry among the Christians, than to have them as enemies, now-a-days."
On hearing these words, old Philip Moses arose; he could no longer endure to listen to his people humbling themselves, as he thought, so basely. He tore his clothes, and anathematised the tongue that spoke
- ↑ "Schukelmeier," a play upon the name Mr. Meier, was a nickname signifying Smuggler, which the lower classes in Hamburg bestowed on the Danes, whom they accused of having smuggled the French into Hamburg.
