He was one of the speakers at the great Mortara indignation-meeting in San Francisco.  The speech of the occasion was that of Colonel Baker, the orator who went to Oregon, and in a single campaign magnetized the Oregonians so completely by his splendid eloquence that, passing by all their old party leaders, they sent him to the United States Senate.  No one who heard Baker’s peroration that night will ever forget it.  His dark eyes blazed, his form dilated, and his voice was like a bugle in battle.

“They tell us that the Jew is accursed of God.  This has been the plea of the bloody tyrants and robbers that oppressed and plundered them during the long ages of their exile and agony.  But the Almighty God executes his own judgments.  Woe to him who presumes to wield his thunderbolts!  They fall in blasting, consuming vengeance upon his own head.  God deals with his chosen people in judgment; but he says to men, Touch them at your peril!  They that spoil them shall be for a spoil; they that carried them away captive shall themselves go into captivity.  The Assyrian smote the Jew, and where is the proud Assyrian Empire?  Rome ground them under her iron heel, and where is the empire of the Caesars?  Spain smote the Jew, and where is her glory?  The desert sands cover the site of Babylon the Great.  The power that hurled the hosts of Titus against the holy city Jerusalem was shivered to pieces.  The banners of Spain, that floated in triumph over half the world, and fluttered in the breezes of every sea, is now the emblem of a glory that is gone, and the ensign of a power that has waned.  The Jews are in the hands of God.  He has dealt with them in judgment, but they are still the children of promise.  The day of their long exile shall end, and they will return to Zion with songs and everlasting joy upon their heads!”

The words were something like these, but who could picture Baker’s oratory?  As well try to paint a storm in the tropics.  Real thunder and lightning cannot be put on canvas.

The Rabbi made a speech, and it was the speech of a man who had come from his books and prayers.  He made a tender appeal for the mother and father of the abducted Jewish boy, and argued the question as calmly, and in as sweet a spirit, as if he had been talking over an abstract question in his study.  The vast crowd looked upon that strange figure with a sort of pleased wonder, and the Rabbi seemed almost unconscious of their presence.  He was as free from self-consciousness as a little child, and many a Gentile heart warmed that night to the simple-hearted sage who stood before them pleading for the rights of human nature.

The old man was often very sad.  In such moods he would come round to our cottage on Post street, and sit with us until late at night, unburdening his aching heart, and relaxing by degrees into a playfulness that was charming from its very awkwardness.  He would bring little picture-books for the children, pat them on their heads, and praise them.  They were always glad to see him, and would nestle round him lovingly.  We all loved him, and felt glad in the thought that he left our little circle lighter at heart.  He lived alone.  Once, when I playfully spoke to him of matrimony, he laughed quietly, and said: