of a maiden's eyes;
Besides, the lottery of my destiny
Bars me the right of voluntary choosing."_

Launcelot, the foolish serving man for Shylock, says to old Gobbo, his
blind father:

_"Do you not know me, father?"_

Gobbo replies:

_"Alack, sir. I am sand-blind. I know you not."_

Launcelot makes this wise statement:

_"Nay, indeed, if you had your eyes,
You might fail of the knowing of me:
It is a wise father that knows his own child!"_

Shylock discharges Launcelot, and Jessica, the beautiful daughter of the
money lender, parts with him regretfully--she gives him a secret letter to
deliver to her Christian lover, Lorenzo, and then says:

_"Farewell, good Launcelot--
Alack, what heinous sin it is in me
To be ashamed to be my father's child!
But though I am a daughter to his blood,
I am not to his manners; O Lorenzo,
If thou keep promise, I shall end this strife;
Become a Christian, and thy loving wife!"_

This beautiful Jewess forswears her birth and religion for infatuated love,
and throws to the winds all duty and honor as a daughter; a renegade of
matchless quality, stealing her father's money and jewels to elope with the
fascinating Christian Lorenzo.

The Hebrew race has not produced many Jessicas; and the morality taught by
Shakspere of a daughter "fooling her father" is base and rotten in
principle.

Shylock says to his daughter:

_"Well, Jessica, go in to the house,
Perhaps I will return immediately;
Do as I bid you;
Shut doors after you; fast bind, fast find,
A proverb never stale in thrifty mind."_

Then at the turn of his back the beautiful fraud Jessica says:

_"Farewell, and if my fortune be not crost,
I have a father, you a daughter, lost!"_

Lorenzo with his friends appear under the window of Shylock's house to
steal away Jessica, and she appears above in boy's clothes, and asks:

_"Who are you? Tell me for more certainty,
Albeit, I'll swear that I do know your tongue."_

He responds:

_"Lorenzo and thy love."_

Jessica before leaving her home spouts the following stuff to her lover:

_"Here, catch this casket, it is worth the pains;
I am glad 'tis night, you do not look on me;
For I am much ashamed of my exchange;
But love is blind, and lovers cannot see
The pretty follies that themselves commit;
For if they could, Cupid himself would blush
To s