Children of the Ghetto | Page 4

young man. "Then I'll pull yours."
"Oho!" said the hostler, his scowl growing fiercer. "Yer means bizness,
does yer?" With that he sent Sleepy Sol staggering along the road and
rolled up his shirt-sleeves. His coat was already off.
The young man did not remove his; he quietly assumed the defensive.
The hostler sparred up to him with grim earnestness, and launched a

terrible blow at his most characteristic feature. The young man blandly
put it on one side, and planted a return blow on the hostler's ear.
Enraged, his opponent sprang upon him. The young Jew paralyzed him
by putting his left hand negligently into his pocket. With his remaining
hand he closed the hostler's right eye, and sent the flesh about it into
mourning. Then he carelessly tapped a little blood from the hostler's
nose, gave him a few thumps on the chest as if to test the strength of his
lungs, and laid him sprawling in the courtyard. A brother hostler ran
out from the stables and gave a cry of astonishment.
"You'd better wipe his face," said the young man curtly.
The newcomer hurried back towards the stables.
"Vait a moment," said Sleepy Sol "I can sell you a sponge sheap; I've
got a beauty in my bag."
There were plenty of sponges about, but the newcomer bought the
second-hand sponge.
"Do you want any more?" the young man affably inquired of his
prostrate adversary.
The hostler gave a groan. He was shamed before a friend whom he had
early convinced of his fistic superiority.
"No, I reckon he don't," said his friend, with a knowing grin at the
conqueror.
"Then I will wish you a good day," said the young man. "Come along,
father."
"Yes, ma son-in-law," said Sleepy Sol.
"Do you know who that was, Joe?" said his friend, as he sponged away
the blood.
Joe shook his head.

"That was Dutch Sam," said his friend in an awe-struck whisper.
All Joe's body vibrated with surprise and respect. Dutch Sam was the
champion bruiser of his time; in private life an eminent dandy and a
prime favorite of His Majesty George IV., and Sleepy Sol had a
beautiful daughter and was perhaps prepossessing himself when
washed for the Sabbath.
"Dutch Sam!" Joe repeated.
"Dutch Sam! Why, we've got his picter hanging up inside, only he's
naked to the waist."
"Well, strike me lucky! What a fool I was not to rekkernize 'im!" His
battered face brightened up. "No wonder he licked me!"
Except for the comparative infrequency of the more bestial types of
men and women, Judaea has always been a cosmos in little, and its
prize-fighters and scientists, its philosophers and "fences," its gymnasts
and money-lenders, its scholars and stockbrokers, its musicians,
chess-players, poets, comic singers, lunatics, saints, publicans,
politicians, warriors, poltroons, mathematicians, actors, foreign
correspondents, have always been in the first rank. _Nihil alienum a se
Judaeus putat_.
Joe and his friend fell to recalling Dutch Sam's great feats. Each
out-vied the other in admiration for the supreme pugilist.
Next day Sleepy Sol came rampaging down the courtyard. He walked
at the rate of five miles to the hour, and despite the weight of his bag
his head pointed to the zenith.
"Clo'!" he shrieked. "Clo'!"
Joe the hostler came out. His head was bandaged, and in his hand was
gold lace. It was something even to do business with a hero's
father-in-law.

But it is given to few men to marry their daughters to champion boxers:
and as Dutch Sam was not a Don Quixote, the average peddler or
huckster never enjoyed the luxury of prancing gait and cock-a-hoop
business cry. The primitive fathers of the Ghetto might have borne
themselves more jauntily had they foreseen that they were to be the
ancestors of mayors and aldermen descended from Castilian hidalgos
and Polish kings, and that an unborn historian would conclude that the
Ghetto of their day was peopled by princes in disguise. They would
have been as surprised to learn who they were as to be informed that
they were orthodox. The great Reform split did not occur till well on
towards the middle of the century, and the Jews of those days were
unable to conceive that a man could be a Jew without eating kosher
meat, and they would have looked upon the modern distinctions
between racial and religious Jews as the sophistries of the convert or
the missionary. If their religious life converged to the Great Shool, their
social life focussed on Petticoat Lane, a long, narrow thoroughfare
which, as late as Strype's day, was lined with beautiful trees: vastly
more pleasant they must have been than the faded barrows and beggars
of after days. The Lane--such was its affectionate sobriquet--was the
stronghold of hard-shell Judaism, the Alsatia of "infidelity"