him presently. This is indeed miraculous. I am most
grateful--deeply grateful to you--for having brought me this
manuscript."

Mr. Cowper was busy for the next quarter of an hour. His expression,
as he turned up dictionaries and made notes, was still full of the
liveliest and most intense interest. Presently he leaned back in his
chair. He kept one hand upon the loose sheets of manuscript, while with
the other he removed his spectacles. Then he closed his eyes for a
moment.

"My young friend," he said, "did you ever hear a quaint Asiatic
legend--scarcely a legend, perhaps, but a superstition--that many and
many a wise man, four thousand years ago, spent his nights and his days,
not as our more modern scientists of a few hundred years ago have done,
in the attempt to turn baser metals into gold, but in the attempt to
constitute from simple elements the perfect food for man?"

Burton shook his head. He was somewhat mystified.

"I have never heard anything of the sort," he acknowledged.

"The whole literature of ancient Egypt and the neighboring countries,"
Mr. Cowper proceeded, "abounds with mystical stories of this perfect
food. It was to come to man in the nature of a fruit. It was to give
him, not eternal life--for that was valueless--but eternal and absolute
understanding, so that nothing in life could be harmful, nothing save
objects and thoughts of beauty could present themselves to the
understanding of the fortunate person who partook of it. These pages
which you have brought to me to translate are concerned with this
superstition. The writer claims here that after centuries of research
and blending and grafting, carried on without a break by the priests of
his family, each one handing down, together with an inheritance of his
sacerdotal office, many wonderful truths respecting the growth of this
fruit,--the writer of these lines claims here, that he, the last of his
line, has succeeded in producing the one perfect food, from which
everything gross is eliminated, and whose spiritual result upon a normal
man is such as to turn him from a thing of clay into something
approaching a god."

"Does he mention anything about beans?" Burton asked anxiously.

Mr. Cowper nodded benignantly.

"The perfect food referred to," he said, "appears to have been produced
in the shape of small beans. They are to be eaten with great care, and
to ensure permanency in the results, a green leaf of the little tree is
to follow the