ly to comprehend the whole."

"Aferin! well said," replied the pacha; "I don't care how long a story
it is, provided that it is a good one:" and Selim, having obeyed a sign
from his highness, intimating that he might sit down, commenced as
follows.

HUCKABACK.

I am a native of Marseilles, your highness, where I was brought up to
the profession of my father; a profession (continued the wily renegade),
which, I have no hesitation to assert, has produced more men of general
information, and more men of talent, than any other--I mean that of a
barber.

* * * * *

"Wallah Thaib; well said, by Allah!" observed Mustapha.

The pacha nodded his approbation, and the renegade proceeded with his
story.

* * * * *

I was gifted by nature with a ready invention, and some trouble and
expense were bestowed upon my education. To the profession of a barber,
my father added that of bleeding and tooth-drawing. At ten years old I
could cut hair pretty well. People did say, that those upon whom I had
operated, looked as if their heads had been gnawed by the rats; but it
was the remark of envy, and as my father observed, "there must be a
beginning to every thing."

At fifteen, I entered upon the rudiments of shaving; and after having
nearly ruined my father's credit, from the pounds of flesh which I
removed with the hair of my customers (who were again consoled by his
observing that "there must be a beginning to every thing"), I became
quite expert. I was subsequently initiated into the higher branches of
tooth-drawing and bleeding. In the former, at first I gave great
dissatisfaction, either from breaking the decayed tooth short off, and
leaving the stump in the socket, or from mistaking the one pointed out,
and drawing a sound engine of mastication in its stead. In the latter, I
made more serious mistakes, having more than once cut so deep as to open
the artery, while I missed the vein; in consequence of which I was never
afterwards employed, except by a husband to relieve a scolding wife, or
by nephews who were anxious about the health of an everlasting uncle.
But, as my father wisely observed, "there must be a beginning to
everything;" and, as I could only practise upon living subjects,
"individuals must suffer for the good of the community at large." At the
age of twenty I was an accomplished barber.

But rapid as was my career, I was not fated to continue in