initials on
the rail? (You see I can ask questions, my young friend.) _Leverage_ is
everything,--was what I used to say;--don't begin to pry till you have
got the long arm on your side.

To please you, and satisfy your doubts as far as possible, I have looked
into the old books,--into Schenckius and Turner and Kenelm Digby and the
rest, where I have found plenty of curious stories which you must take
for what they are worth.

Your first question I can answer in the affirmative upon pretty good
authority. Mizaldus tells, in his "Memorabilia," the well-known story
of the girl fed on poisons, who was sent by the king of the Indies
to Alexander the Great. "When Aristotle saw her eyes _sparkling and
snapping like those of serpents_, he said, 'Look out for yourself,
Alexander! this is a dangerous companion for you!'"--and sure enough,
the young lady proved to be a very unsafe person to her friends.
Cardanus gets a story from Avicenna, of a certain man bit by a serpent,
who recovered of his bite, the snake dying therefrom. This man
afterwards had a daughter whom no venomous serpent could harm, though
_she had a fatal power over them_.

I suppose you may remember the statements of old authors about
_lycanthropy_, the disease in which men took on the nature and aspect of
wolves. Aetius and Paulus, both men of authority, describe it. Altomaris
gives a horrid case; and Fincelius mentions one occurring as late as
1541, the subject of which was captured, still _insisting that he was a
wolf_, only that the hair of his hide was turned in! _Versipelles_, it
may be remembered, was the Latin name for these "were-wolves."

As for the cases where rabid persons have barked and bit like dogs,
there are plenty of such on record.

More singular, or at least more rare, is the account given by Andreas
Baccius, of a man who was struck in the hand by a cock, with his beak,
and who died on the third day thereafter, looking for all the world
_like a fighting-cock_, to the great horror of the spectators.

As to impressions transmitted _at a very early period of existence_,
every one knows the story of King James's fear of a naked sword and the
way it is accounted for. Sir Kenelm Digby says,--"I remember when he
dubbed me Knight, in the ceremony of putting the point of a naked sword
upon my shoulder, he could not endure to look upon it, but turned his
face another way, insomuch, that, in lieu of touching my shoulder, he
had almost thrust the po