“Learn from this, young man, how easy it is to set a stone rolling down hill, how hard to stop it half-way down. Law must always be above the mob, or it cannot be law. If it fall into their hands it goes down to their own level and becomes revenge, passion, cruelty, anything but—law. The madmen! they have lost two thousand ounces of gold—to themselves and to the world, while they have been wasting their time and risking their souls over a pound of brass, and aspiring to play the judge and the executioner, and playing nothing but the brute and the fool—as in the days of old.”
Mr. Levi concluded by intimating that there was very little common sense left upon earth, and that little it would be lost time to search for among the Gentiles. Finally his discourse galled Judge Lynch, who thereupon resolved to turn the laugh against him.
“Mr. Levi,” said he, “I see you know a thing or two. Will you be so good as to answer me a question?”
“If it come within my knowledge,” replied the senior, with grave politeness.
“Which weighs the heaviest, sir, a pound of gold or a pound of feathers?” and he winked at Nathan, but looked in Isaac's face as demure as a Quakeress.
“A pound of feathers,” replied Isaac.
Robinson looked half puzzled, half satirical.
“A childish question,” said Isaac sternly. “What boy knows not that feathers are weighed by Avoirdupois, and gold by Troy weight, and consequently that a pound of feathers weighs sixteen ounces, and a pound of gold but twelve?”
“Well, that is a new answer,” cried Robinson. “Good-by, sir, you are too hard for me;” and he made off to his own tent. It was a day of defeats.
The moment he was out of hearing, Isaac laughed. The only time he had done it during six years. And what a laugh! How, sublimely devoid of merriment! a sudden loud cackle of three distinct cachinni not declining into a chuckle, as we do, but ending sharp in abrupt and severe gravity.