When I came to my father again, he caught me in his arms, kissed me, patted
my head, clapped me on the back, poured out a bumper of wine, bid me drink
his toast, "No Naturalization Bill!--No Jews!" and while I blundered out
the toast, and tossed off the bumper, my father pronounced me a clever
fellow, "a spirited little devil, who, if I did but live to be a man, would
be, he'd engage, an honour to my country, my family, and my _party_."

Exalted, not to say intoxicated, by my father's praise, when I went to the
drawing-room to the ladies, I became rather more eloquent and noisy than my
mother thought quite becoming; she could not, indeed, forbear smiling
furtively at my wit, when, in answer to some simple country lady's question
of "After all, why should not the Jews be naturalized?" I, with all the
pertness of ignorance, replied, "Why, ma'am, because the Jews are naturally
an unnatural pack of people, and you can't naturalize what's naturally
unnatural."

Kisses and cake in abundance followed--but when the company was gone, my
mamma thought it her duty to say a few words to me upon politeness, and a
few words to my father upon the _too much_ wine he had given me. The
reproach to my father, being just, he could not endure; but instead of
admitting the truth, he vowed, by Jupiter Ammon, that his boy should never
be made a Miss Molly, and to school I should go, by Jupiter Ammon, next
morning, plump.

Now it was well known in our house, that a sentence of my father's
beginning and ending "_by Jupiter Ammon_" admitted of no reply from any
mortal--it was the stamp of fate; no hope of any reversion of the decree:
it seemed to bind even him who uttered the oath beyond his own power of
revocation. My mother was convinced that even her intercession was vain; so