A man who had emigrated to England as a poor boy returned to Copenhagen
in the sixties at the age of fifty, after having acquired a considerable
fortune. He was uneducated, kind, impeccably honourable, and was anxious
to secure acquaintances and associates for his adopted daughter, a
delicate young girl, who was strange to Copenhagen. With this object in
view, he invited a large number of young people to a ball in the rooms
of the King's Club, provided good music and luxurious refreshments. This
man was a cousin of Goldschmidt's, and as he himself was unable to make
more of a speech than a short welcome to table, he begged "his cousin,
the poet," to be his spokesman on this occasion.
One would have thought that so polished a writer, such a master of
language, as Goldschmidt, would be able, with the greatest ease, to make
an after-dinner speech, especially when he had had plenty of time to
prepare himself; but the gift of speaking is, as everyone knows, a gift
in itself. And a more unfortunate speaker than Goldschmidt could not be.
He had not even the art of compelling silence while he spoke.
That evening he began rather tactlessly by telling the company that
their host, who was a rich man, had earned his money in a strictly
honourable manner; it was always a good thing to know "that one had
clear ground to dance upon"; then he dwelt on the Jewish origin of the
giver of the feast, and, starting from the assumption that the greater
number of the invited guests were young Jews and Jewesses, he formulated
his toast in praise of "the Jewish woman, who lights the Sabbath
candles.
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