specialty--with ready made clothing,
pawnshops and banks as convenient adjuncts.

Their three golden balls, worn in front of their establishments, they say,
represent energy, economy and wealth; while their victims insist that they
represent passion, poverty and suicide.

And yet these wandering Jews of all lands and climes, having no home or
country anywhere, have the best of homes, churches, banks and temples
everywhere.

War and peace they often hold in their financial power, and therefore
become the arbitrators and umpires of national fate.

When my friend William was working on the rough sketch of the "Merchant of
Venice," in the years 1598 and 1599, there was a great hate manifested
against the London Jews, Dr. Lopez, the physician of Queen Elizabeth,
having been recently tried and hung for the design of poisoning Her
Majesty.

The Jews were accused of clipping the coins of the realm, demanding one
hundred per cent. usury, bewitching the people, sacrificing Christian boys
on the altar of religious fanaticism and setting fire to the warehouses and
shipping along the Thames.

These outrageous stories were believed by many people, and Shakspere, being
infected by the hate of the multitude (for the first time in his
intellectual career), fashioned the repulsive character of Shylock, who
walks the world as a synonym of greed, hate and vengeance.

Several Jew plays had been put on the London boards, like the "Venetian
Comedy" and the "Jew of Malta," but none had the lofty pitch of
Shakspere's, who derived his main idea of the play from the Italian story
of "Pecorone," by Florentina, and Silvayn's "Orator."

Yet, with William's imagination, a hint was sufficient, the rose and acorn
giving him scope enough to create flower gardens and forest ranges.

The Jew has always been a great subject for the world's contention and
condemnation, particularly since the crucifixion of Jesus of Nazareth. If
Christ, the Jew, suffered for others, his own race for nearly two thousand
years have been "scapegoats" for private and public villains.

From the days of Ferdinand and Isabella of Spain, Louis the Fourteenth of
France, Henry the Eighth and Elizabeth of England, Emperor William of
Germany and the Czars Nicholas and Alexander of Russia, the Jews have been
robbed, exiled and murdered by Christian rulers, presumptively for their
rebellion against the State, but really as an excuse to rob them of their
jewels and gold. The Cau