of the chief
factors in reaching that final solution of the problems which convulse
this age."

He was one of the speakers at the great Mortara indignation-meeting in
San Francisco. The speech of the occasion was that of Colonel Baker, the
orator who went to Oregon, and in a single campaign magnetized the
Oregonians so completely by his splendid eloquence that, passing by all
their old party leaders, they sent him to the United States Senate. No
one who heard Baker's peroration that night will ever forget it. His
dark eyes blazed, his form dilated, and his voice was like a bugle in
battle.

"They tell us that the Jew is accursed of God. This has been the plea of
the bloody tyrants and robbers that oppressed and plundered them during
the long ages of their exile and agony. But the Almighty God executes
his own judgments. Woe to him who presumes to wield his thunderbolts!
They fall in blasting, consuming vengeance upon his own head. God deals
with his chosen people in judgment; but he says to men, Touch them at
your peril! They that spoil them shall be for a spoil; they that carried
them away captive shall themselves go into captivity. The Assyrian smote
the Jew, and where is the proud Assyrian Empire? Rome ground them under
her iron heel, and where is the empire of the Caesars? Spain smote the
Jew, and where is her glory? The desert sands cover the site of Babylon
the Great. The power that hurled the hosts of Titus against the holy
city Jerusalem was shivered to pieces. The banners of Spain, that
floated in triumph over half the world, and fluttered in the breezes of
every sea, is now the emblem of a glory that is gone, and the ensign of
a power that has waned. The Jews are in the hands of God. He has dealt
with them in judgment, but they are still the children of promise. The
day of their long exile shall end, and they will return to Zion with
songs and everlasting joy upon their heads!"

The words were something like these, but who could picture Baker's
oratory? As well try to paint a storm in the tropics. Real thunder and
lightning cannot be put on canvas.

The Rabbi made a speech, and it was the speech of a man who had come
from his books and prayers. He made a tender appeal for the mother and
father of the abducted Jewish boy, and argued the question as calmly,
and in as sweet a spirit, as if he had been talking over an abstract
question in his study. The vast crowd looked upon that strange figure
with a sort