look, children, look up quickly; it is beginning!--Typhon, in the form of
a boar, is swallowing the eye of Horns: so the heathen of old in this
country used to believe when the moon suffered an eclipse. See how the
shadow is covering the bright disk. When the ancients saw this happening
they used to make a noise, shaking the sistrum with its metal rings,
drumming and trumpeting, shouting and yelling, to scare off the evil one
and drive him away. It may be about four hundred years since that last
took place, but to this day--draw your kerchiefs more closely round your
heads and come with me to the river--to this day Christians degrade
themselves by similar rites. Wherever I have been in Christian lands, I
have always witnessed the same scenes: our holy faith has, to be sure,
demolished the religions of the heathen; but their superstitions have
survived, and have forced their way through rifts and chinks into our
ceremonial. They are marching round now, with the bishop at their head,
and you can hear the loud wailing of the women, and the cries of the men,
drowning the chant of the priests. Only listen! They are as passionate
and agonized in their entreaty as though old Typhon were even now about
to swallow the moon, and the greatest catastrophe was hanging over the
world. Aye, as surely as man is the standard of all things, those
terrified beings are diseased in mind; and how are we to forgive those
who dare to scare Christians; yes, Christian souls, with the traditions
of heathen folly, and to blind their inward vision?"

ETEXT EDITOR'S BOOKMARKS:

Gratitude is a tribute on which no wise man ever reckons
Healthy soul is only to be found in a healthy body
Man is the standard of all things
Persians never prayed for any particular blessing
The immortal gods have set sweat before virtue
Things you mean are only what they seem to us
Would want some one else to wear herself out for
Any woman can forgive any man for his audacity in loving her

THE BRIDE OF THE NILE

By Georg Ebers

Volume 6.

CHAPTER XXII.

Up to within a few days Katharina had still been a dependent and docile
child, who had made it a point of honor to obey instantly, not only her
mother's lightest word, but Dame Neforis, too; and, since her own Greek
instructress had been dismissed, even the acid Eudoxia. She had never
concealed from her mother, or the worthy teacher whom she had truly
lo