JEWS

What is the difference between a banana and a Jew? You can skin the

banana.





He was quite evidently from the country and he was also quite evidently

a Yankee, and from behind his bowed spectacles he peered inquisitively

at the little oily Jew who occupied the other half of the car seat with

him.



The little Jew looked at him deprecatingly. "Nice day," he began

polite y.



"You're a Jew, ain't you?" queried the Yankee.



"Yes, sir, I'm a clothing salesman," handing him a card.



"But you're a Jew?"



"Yes, yes, I'm a Jew," came the answer.



"Well," continued the Yankee, "I'm a Yankee, and in the little village

in Maine where I come from I'm proud to say there ain't a Jew."



"Dot's why it's a village," replied the little Jew quietly.





The men were arguing as to who was the greatest inventor. One said

Stephenson, who invented the locomotive. Another declared it was the man

who invented the compass. Another contended for Edison. Still another

for the Wrights,



Finally one of them turned to a little man who had remained silent:



"Who do you think?"



"Vell," he said, with a hopeful smile, "the man who invented interest

was no slouch."





Levinsky, despairing of his life, made an appointment with a famous

specialist. He was surprised to find fifteen or twenty people in the

waiting-room.



After a few minutes he leaned over to a gentleman near him and

whispered, "Say, mine frient, this must be a pretty goot doctor, ain't

he?"



"One of the best," the gentleman told him.



Levinsky seemed to be worrying over something.



"Vell, say," he whispered again, "he must be pretty exbensive, then,

ain't he? Vat does he charge?"



The stranger was annoyed by Levinsky's questions and answered rather

shortly: "Fifty dollars for the first consultation and twenty-five

dollars for each visit thereafter."



"Mine Gott!" gasped Levinsky--"Fifty tollars the first time und

twenty-five tollars each time afterwards!"



For several minutes he seemed undecided whether to go or to wait. "Und

twenty-five tollars each time afterwards," he kept muttering. Finally,

just as he was called into the office, he was seized with a brilliant

inspiration. He rushed toward the doctor with outstretched hands.



"Hello, doctor," he said effusively. "Vell, here I am _again_."





The Jews are among the aristocracy of every land; if a literature is

called rich in the possession of a few classic tragedies what shall we

say to a national tragedy lasting for fifteen hundred years, in which

the poets and the actors were also the heroes.--_George Eliot_.





_See also_ Failures; Fires.