fingers over the strings--trum, twang!
Then he got to his feet and brushed the dirt and grass from his knees.
He tucked his fiddle under his arm, and off he stepped upon the way he
had been going at first.

"Just to think!" said he, "I would either have been the richest man
in the world, or else I would have been a king, if it had not been for
Ill-Luck."

And that is the way we all of us talk.

Dr. Faustus had sat all the while neither drinking ale nor smoking
tobacco, but with his hands folded, and in silence. "I know not why it
is," said he, "but that story of yours, my friend, brings to my mind
a story of a man whom I once knew--a great magician in his time, and
a necromancer and a chemist and an alchemist and mathematician and a
rhetorician, an astronomer, an astrologer, and a philosopher as well."

"Tis a long list of excellency," said old Bidpai.

"Tis not as long as was his head," said Dr. Faustus.

"It would be good for us all to hear a story of such a man," said old
Bidpai.

"Nay," said Dr. Faustus, "the story is not altogether of the man
himself, but rather of a pupil who came to learn wisdom of him."

"And the name of your story is what?" said Fortunatus.

"It hath no name," said Dr. Faustus.

"Nay," said St. George, "everything must have a name."

"It hath no name," said Dr. Faustus. "But I shall give it a name, and it
shall be--"

Empty Bottles

In the old, old days when men were wiser than they are in these times,
there lived a great philosopher and magician, by name Nicholas Flamel.
Not only did he know all the actual sciences, but the black arts as
well, and magic, and what not. He conjured demons so that when a body
passed the house of a moonlight night a body might see imps, great and
small, little and big, sitting on the chimney stacks and the ridge-pole,
clattering their heels on the tiles and chatting together.

He could change iron and lead into silver and gold; he discovered the
elixir of life, and might have been living even to this day had he
thought it worth while to do so.

There was a student at the university whose name was Gebhart, who was so
well acquainted with algebra and geometry that he could tell at a single
glance how many drops of water there were in a bottle of wine. As
for Latin and Greek--he could patter them off like his A B C's.
Nevertheless, he was not satisfied with the things he knew, but was for
learning the things that no schools could teach him.