u. No particular
part of the country acknowledges him as its native. He is to the great
races, castes, and creeds of India what the waif is to the billows of
the sea. His language, in public at least, is Hindustanee, but this is a
sort of _lingua franca_, the common property of all the inhabitants of
the country. His religion is probably one of the many forms of demon
worship which grow rank on the fringes of Hinduism. He must be classed,
no doubt, with the other wandering tribes which roam the country,
camping under umbrellas, or something little better, each consecrated to
some particular form of common crime, and each professing some not in
itself dishonest occupation, like the tinkering of gipsies.

But the snake-charmer is the best known and most widely spread of them
all. By occupation he is a professor of three occult sciences. First, he
is a juggler, and in this art he has some skill. His masterpiece is the
famous mango trick, which consists in making a miniature mango tree
grow up in a few minutes, and even blossom and bear fruit, out of some
bare spot which he has covered with his mysterious basket. It has been
written about by travellers in extravagant terms of astonishment and
admiration, but, as generally performed, is an extremely clumsy-looking
trick, though it is undoubtedly difficult to guess how it is done. A
more blood-curdling feat is to put the unclothed and precocious imp
aforementioned under a large basket, and then run a sword savagely
through and through every corner of it, and draw it out covered with
gore. When the sickened spectators are about to lynch the murderer, the
imp runs in smiling from the garden gate.

The connection between these performances and the man's second trade,
namely, snake-charming, is not obvious to a Western mind; but it must be
remembered that the snake-charmer is not a mere, vulgar juggler, amusing
people with sleight-of-hand. His feats are miracles, performed with the
assistance of superior powers. In short, he is a theosophist, only his
converse is not with excorporated Mahatmas from Thibet, but with spirits
of another grade, whose Superior has been known from very remote
antiquity as an Old Serpent. In deference to this respectable connection
the cobra holds a distinguished place even in orthodox Hinduism. So it
is altogether fit that a performer of wonders should be on intimate
terms with the serpent tribe. The snake-charmer keeps all sorts of
them, but chiefly