hispered the words which the child repeated aloud. First of all, he
inquired what I wished to know? As one of his follower's boasts was
the extraordinary power he possessed of speaking various languages, I
addressed him in Spanish, but as his reply displayed an evident
ignorance of what I said, I took the liberty to reprimand him sharply
in his native tongue. He waved me off with an imperious flourish of
his hand, and ordered me to wait, as he perfectly comprehended my
Spanish, but the magic power would not suffer him to answer save in
regular rotation, word by word.

I saw his trick at once, which was only one of prompt and adroit
_repetition_. Accordingly, I addressed him in his native dialect, and
requested a translation of my sentence into Spanish. But this was a
puzzler; though it required but a moment for him to assure me that a
foreign language could only be spoken by wizards of his degree _at the
full of the moon_!

I thought it time to shift the scene to fortune-telling, and begged my
demon to begin the task by relating the past, in order to confirm my
belief in his mastery over the future. But the nonsense he uttered was
so insufferable, that I dropped the curtain with a run, and commanded
"the hereafter" to appear. This, at least, was more romantic. As
usual, I was to be immensely rich. I was to become a great prince. I
was to have a hundred wives; but alas! before six months elapsed, my
factory would be burnt and I should lose a vessel!

Presently, the interpreter proposed an exhibition of legerdemain, and
in this I found considerable amusement to make up for the preceding
buffoonery. He knotted a rope, and untied it with a jerk. He sank a
knife deep in his throat, and poured in a vessel of water. Other
deceptions followed this skilful trick, but the cleverest of all was
the handling of red hot iron, which, after covering his hands with a
glutinous paste, was touched in the most fearless manner. I have seen
this trick performed by other natives, and whenever ignited coals or
ardent metal was used, the hands of the operator were copiously
anointed with the pasty unguent.

A valedictory growl, and a resumption of the leopard, gave token of
the wizard's departure, and closed the evening's entertainments.

If the ease with which a man is amused, surprised, or deluded, is a
fair measure of intellectual grade, I fear that African minds will
take a very moderate rank in the scale of humanity. The task of
self