r eloquent.

"Is there anybody in the world simple enough to believe in that idle
fancy?" said the young man, nettled by the spitefulness of the silent
chuckle. "Don't you know," he continued, "that the superstitions of the
East have perpetuated the mystical form and the counterfeit characters
of the symbol, which represents a mythical dominion? I have no more
laid myself open to a charge of credulity in this case, than if I had
mentioned sphinxes or griffins, whose existence mythology in a manner
admits."

"As you are an Orientalist," replied the other, "perhaps you can read
that sentence."

He held the lamp close to the talisman, which the young man held towards
him, and pointed out some characters inlaid in the surface of the
wonderful skin, as if they had grown on the animal to which it once
belonged.

"I must admit," said the stranger, "that I have no idea how the letters
could be engraved so deeply on the skin of a wild ass." And he turned
quickly to the tables strewn with curiosities and seemed to look for
something.

"What is it that you want?" asked the old man.

"Something that will cut the leather, so that I can see whether the
letters are printed or inlaid."

The old man held out his stiletto. The stranger took it and tried to cut
the skin above the lettering; but when he had removed a thin shaving of
leather from them, the characters still appeared below, so clear and so
exactly like the surface impression, that for a moment he was not sure
that he had cut anything away after all.

"The craftsmen of the Levant have secrets known only to themselves,"
he said, half in vexation, as he eyed the characters of this Oriental
sentence.

"Yes," said the old man, "it is better to attribute it to man's agency
than to God's."

The mysterious words were thus arranged:

[Drawing of apparently Sanskrit characters omitted]

Or, as it runs in English:

POSSESSING ME THOU SHALT POSSESS ALL THINGS.
BUT THY LIFE IS MINE, FOR GOD HAS SO WILLED IT.
WISH, AND THY WISHES SHALL BE FULFILLED;
BUT MEASURE THY DESIRES, ACCORDING
TO THE LIFE THAT IS IN THEE.
THIS IS THY LIFE,
WITH EACH WISH I MUST SHRINK
EVEN AS THY OWN DAYS.
WILT THOU HAVE ME? TAKE ME.
GOD WILL HEARKEN UNTO THEE.
SO BE IT!

"So you read Sanskrit fluently," said the old man. "You have been in
Persia perhaps, or in Bengal?"

"No, sir," said the stranger, as he felt the emblematical sk