The King of Schnorrers: Grotesques and Fantasies

When you all read this I shall be dead and laughing at you. I have been hung for my own murder. I am Everard G. Roxdal. I am also Tom Peters. We two were one. When I was a young...

The Synagogue of the Gates of Heaven was crowded--members, orphan boys, _Schnorrers_, all were met in celebration of the Sabbath. But the President of the Mahamad was missing. H...

I had drowned reason and conscience: day followed day in a golden languor and the longer I stopped, the harder it was to go. At last Robins's telegrams became too imperative to...

As Manasseh the Great, first beggar in Europe, sauntered across Goodman's Fields, attended by his Polish parasite, both serenely digesting the supper provided by the Treasurer o...

Manasseh Bueno Barzillai Azevedo da Costa was so impressed by his would-be son-in-law's last argument that he perpended it in silence for a full minute. When he replied, his ton...

In the days when Lord George Gordon became a Jew, and was suspected of insanity; when, out of respect for the prophecies, England denied her Jews every civic right except that o...

Manasseh da Costa (thus docked of his nominal plenitude in the solemn writ) had been summoned before the Mahamad, the intended union of his daughter with a Polish Jew having exc...

Da Costa looked thunders, and was about to speak, but Grobstock's eye sought his in frantic appeal. "Wait a minute; I will settle with you," he cried, congratulating himself on...

The proudest moment of Jones's life was probably when he assisted me to alight from the carriage I had ordered at the station. I wore a light duster, a straw hat, and goloshes (...

In the Ghetto, where "the evening and the morning are one day," New Year's Eve is at its height at noon. The muddy market-places roar, and the joyous medley of squeezing humanit...

Flutter-Duck could not resist rushing in to show the gorgeous goose she had bought from a man in the street--a most wonderful bargain. Although it was only a Wednesday, why shou...

I had to breakfast in my room, but by lunch the next day my friends had found an opportunity to explain me to Jones. They had on several occasions strongly exhorted Jones to sec...

Jones! I mention him here because he is the first and last word of the story. It is the story of what might be called a game of chess between me and him; for I never made a move...

Although everybody calls her "Flutter-Duck" now, there was a time when the inventor had exclusive rights in the nickname, and used it only in the privacy of his own apartment. T...

One day, when Rachel was nineteen, there came to the workshop a handsome young man. He had been brought by a placard in the window of the chandler's shop, and was found to answe...

It was on a Sunday afternoon in the middle of October, ten days after Roxdal had settled in his new rooms, that Clara Newell paid her first visit to him there. She enjoyed a goo...

They say that a union of opposites makes the happiest marriage, and perhaps it is on the same principle that men who chum together are always so oddly assorted. You shall find a...

"At last we meet!" cried Tom Peters, while his face lit up in joy. "How _are_ you, dear Miss Newell?" Clara greeted him coldly. Her face had an abiding pallor now. Her lover's f...

But Clara was not destined to happiness. From the moment she had promised herself to her first love's friend, old memories began to rise up and reproach her. Strange thoughts st...

If Clara Newell could have seen Tom Peters carrying on with Polly in the passage, she might have felt justified in her prejudice against him. It must be confessed, though, that...

"Apparently not," Tom answered anxiously. "He never remains out. We have been here three weeks now, and I can't recall a single night he hasn't been home before twelve. I can't...