let. While I am shaving the head of your sublime highness, I can
receive your commands to take off the heads of others; and you can have
your person and your state both put in order at the same moment."

"Very true, Mustapha; then, on condition that you continue your office
of barber, I have no objection to throw that of vizier into the
bargain."

Mustapha again prostrated himself, with his tweezers in his hand. He
then rose, and continued his office.

"You can write, Mustapha," observed the pacha, after a short silence.

"Min Allah! God forbid that I should acknowledge it, or I should
consider myself as unfit to assume the office in which your sublime
highness has invested me."

"Although unnecessary for me, I thought it might be requisite for a
vizier," observed the pacha.

"Reading may be necessary, I will allow," replied Mustapha; "but I trust
I can soon prove to your highness that writing is as dangerous as it is
useless. More men have been ruined by that unfortunate acquirement, than
by any other; and dangerous as it is to all, it is still more dangerous
to men in high power. For instance, your sublime highness sends a
message in writing, which is ill-received, and it is produced against
you; but had it been a verbal message, you could deny it, and bastinado
to death the Tartar who carried it, as a proof of your sincerity.

"Very true, Mustapha."

"The grandfather of your slave," continued the barber-vizier, "held the
situation of receiver-general at the custom-house; and he was always in
a fury when he was obliged to take up the pen. It was his creed, that no
government could prosper when writing was in general use. 'Observe,
Mustapha,' said he to me one day, 'here is the curse of writing,--for
all the money which is paid in, I am obliged to give a receipt. What is
the consequence? that government loses many thousand sequins every year;
for when I apply to them for a second payment, they produce their
receipt. Now if it had not been for this cursed invention of writing,
Inshallah! they should have paid twice, if not thrice over. Remember,
Mustapha,' continued he, 'that reading and writing only clog the wheels
of government.'"

"Very true, Mustapha," observed the pacha, "then we will have no
writing."

"Yes, your sublime highness, every thing in writing from others, but
nothing in writing from ourselves. I have a young Greek slave, who can
be employed in these matters. He reads well. I have lately empl