he famous conjuring stone of the Voodoos, which I possess, is
only an ordinary black flint pebble of the same shape. Negroes have
travelled a thousand miles to hold it in their hands and make a wish,
which, if uttered with _faith_, is always granted. Its possession alone
entitles any one to the first rank as master in the mysteries of Voodoo
sorcery. Truly I began early in the business! I may here say that since
I owned the Voodoo stone it has been held in several very famous and a
few very beautiful hands.

While I was at Mr. Greene's I wrote my first poem. I certainly exhibited
no great precocity of lyrical genius in it, but the reader must remember
that I was only a foolish little boy of ten or eleven at the time, and
that I showed it to no one. It was as follows:

"As a long-bearded Sultan, an infidel Turk,
Who ne'er in his life had done any work,
Rode along to the bath, he saw Hassan the black,
With two monstrous water-skins high on his back.

"'Ho, Hassan, thou afreet! thou infidel dog!
Thou son of a Jewess and eater of hog!
This instant, this second, put down thy skin jugs,
And for my sovereign pleasure remove both the plugs!'

"The negro obeyed him, put both on the ground,
And opened the skins and the water flew round;
The Sultan looked on till he laughed his fill;
Then went on to the bath, feeling heated and ill.

"When arrived at the bath, 'Is all ready?' he cries.
'Indeed it is not, sire,' the bath-man replies;
'For to fetch the bath-water black Hassan has gone,
And your highness can't have it till he shall return.'"

In after years my friend, Professor E. H. Palmer, translated this into
Arabic, and promised me that it should be sung in the East. It is not
much of a poem, even for a boy, but there is one touch true to life in
it--which is the _cursing_. This must have come to me by revelation; and
in after years in Cairo I never heard a native address another as
"_Afrit_! _Ya-hinzeer_--_wa Yahud_--_yin uldeen ak_?"--"curse your
religion!"--but I thought how marvellous it was that I, even in my
infancy, had divined so well how they did it! However, now I come to
think of it, I had the year before read Morier's "Haji-Baba" with great
admiration, and I doubt not that it was the influence of that remarkable
book which produced this beautiful result. In after years I met with a
lady who was a daughter of Morier. Apropos of the _book_, it reminds m