I am quite sure I must have shown enthusiasm along here. At that period Samson was, with me, a favourite character in history. By reason of his recorded performances he held rank in my estimation with Israel Putnam and General N. B. Forrest.
“Aha!” continued the Judge. “Old Man Samson was right smart of a fighter, takin' one thing with another, wasn't he? Remember hearin' about that time when he taken the jawbone of an ass and killed up I don't know how many of them old Philistines?”
“Oh, yes, sir. And then that other time when they cut off his hair short and put him in jail, and after it grew out again he pulled the temple right smack down and killed everybody!”
“It strikes me I did hear somebody speakin' of that circumstance too. I expect it must have created a right smart talk round the neighbourhood.”
I can hear the old Judge saying this, and I can see—across the years—the quizzical little wrinkles bunching at the corners of his eyes.
He sat a minute looking down at me and smiling.
“Samson was much of a man—and he was a Jew.”
“Was he?” I was shocked in a new place.
“That's jest exactly what he was. And there was a man oncet named Judas—not the Judas you've heared about, but a feller with the full name of Judas Maccabæus; and he was such a pert hand at fightin' they called him the Hammer of the Jews. Judgin' by whut I've been able to glean about him, his enemies felt jest as well satisfied ef they could hear, before the hostilities started, that Judas was laid up sick in bed somewheres. It taken considerable of a load off their minds, ez you might say.
“But—jest as you was sayin', son, about David—it's been a good while since them parties flourished. When we look back on it, it stretches all the way frum here to B. C.; and that's a good long stretch, and a lot of things have been happenin' meantime. But I sometimes git to thinkin' that mebbe little Herman Felsburg has got some of that old-time Jew fightin' blood in his veins. Anyhow, he belongs to the same breed. No, sirree, sonny; it don't always pay to judge a man by his laigs. You kin do that with reguards to a frog or a grasshopper, or even sometimes with a chicken; but not with a man. It ain't the shape of 'em that counts—it's where they'll take you in time of trouble.”