The Jews by Samuel Taylor Coleridge

The other day I was what you would call _floored_ by a Jew. He passed me / several times crying out for old clothes in the most nasal and / extraordinary tone I ever heard. At last I was so provoked, that I said to / him, "Pray, why can't you say 'old clothes' in a plain way as I do now? " / The Jew stopped, and looking very gravely at me, said in a clear and even / fine accent, "Sir, I can say 'old clothes' as well as you can; but if you / had to say so ten times a minute, for an hour together, you would say _Ogh / Clo_ as I do now; " and so he marched off. I was so confounded with the / justice of his retort, that I followed and gave him a shilling, the only / one I had.

I have had a good deal to do with Jews in the course of my life, although I / never borrowed any money of them. Once I sat in a coach opposite a Jew -- a / symbol of old clothes' bags -- an Isaiah of Hollywell Street. He would close / the window; I opened it. He closed it again; upon which, in a very solemn / tone, I said to him, "Son of Abraham! thou smellest; son of Isaac! thou art / offensive; son of Jacob! thou stinkest foully. See the man in the moon! he / is holding his nose at thee at that distance; dost thou think that I, / sitting here, can endure it any longer? " My Jew was astounded, opened the / window forthwith himself, and said, "he was sorry he did not know before I / was so great a gentleman. "