incensed schoolboy zealots could devise, we persecuted and tortured him
body and mind. We twanged at once a hundred Jew's-harps in his ear, and
before his eyes we paraded the effigy of a Jew, dressed in a gabardine of
rags and paper. In the passages through which he was to pass, we set
stumbling-blocks in his way, we threw orange-peel in his path, and when he
slipped or fell, we laughed him to scorn, and we triumphed over him the
more, the more he was hurt, or the more his goods were injured. "We laughed
at his losses, mocked at his gains, scorned his nation, thwarted his
bargains, cooled his friends, heated his enemies--and what was our reason?
he was a Jew."

But he was as unlike to Shylock as it is possible to conceive. Without one
thought or look of malice or revenge, he stood before us Thursday after
Thursday, enduring all that our barbarity was pleased to inflict; he stood
patient and long-suffering, and even of this patience and resignation we
made a jest, and a subject of fresh reproach and taunt.

How I, who was not in other cases a cruel or an ill-natured boy, could be
so inhuman to this poor, unprotected, unoffending creature I cannot
conceive; but such in man or boy is the nature of persecution. At the time
it all appeared to me quite natural and proper; a just and necessary war.
The blame, if blame there were, was divided among so many, that the share
of each, my share at least, appeared to me so small, as not to be worth a
moment's consideration. The shame, if we had any, was carried away in the
tide of popular enthusiasm, and drowned and lost in the fury and noise of
the torrent. In looking back upon this disgraceful scene of our boyish
days--boyish indeed I can scarcely call them, for I was almost, and Mowbray
in his own opinion was quite, a man--I say, in looking hack upon this time,
I have but one comfort. But I have _one_, and I will make the most of it: I
think I should never have done so _much_ wrong, had it not been for