CHAPTER IV. Conflicts and Conquests

CONFLICTS AND CONQUESTS

1840-1855

(pp. 162-221)

On tax collectors, cf. the English ballad quoted by Macaulay (History of England, ch. iii.):

Like plundering soldiers they'd enter the door, And made a distress on the goods of the poor, While frightened poor children distractedly cried; This nothing abated their insolent pride.

And the Yiddish folk song (GMC, no. 55):

The excise young fellows, They are tremendously wild: They shave their beards, And ride on horses, Wear overshoes, And eat with unwashed hands.

Their lack of confidence in the permanence of the schools is expressed in the following song (GMC, no. 53):

May we soon be released from the Jewish Goless, When we shall be expelled from the Gentile Scholess (schools).

On the struggle to retain the so-called Jewish mode of dress, see I.M. D(ick), Die Yiddishe Kleider Umwechslung, Vilna, 1844.]