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Ibnthlh.
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Note: This text has been automatically extracted via Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software. The text has not been manually corrected and should not be relied on to be an accurate representation of the item.
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' 11 make their beards grow as long as that of the Prophet . This will be a better nieans of making a fortune than selling fowls and diving into wells / « Hak Hak thanked his benefactor , and departing with the case returned to his 'llage where he announced what he had for sale before the whole assembled TDOPula tion . To his surprise they all burst out laughing , and made fun of him . He returned desponding to his adopted mother ' s house , and the world was black before his face ; but presently the Sheikh sent privately to buy a small packet ; and then the barber ; and then the tobacco-seller ; and then the coffee-house keeper ;—all in private . In fact , before the evening , the whole of his merchandise was sold , and every man in Kafr Hemmir went to bed with his chin steeped in the cosmetic , each believing that both his beard and his wisdom would have doubled in length next morning .
« 1 wish I could reproduce the pantomime by which the morning-scene was described j the snorings , the grunts , the yawns , the impatience for the dawn : for it appears all the patients had been ordered to keep their jaws carefully wrapped up until day-light . At length , the wished-for moment arrived . " Then they all up-rose , and hastily taking off the cloths , which had nearly stifled them , found that their beards came off likewise ' . They clapped their hands to their chins , and felt them to be as smooth as their knees ; they jogged their ¦ wives , and were greeted by screams of laughter ; they ran out into the streets , and learned the truth , that the whole population had been rendered beardless by the ointment which the Caireen wag had given to Hak Hak . As all were equally unfortunate all laughed ; but they resolved to punish the unlucky hunchback . He was called before the Sheikh , where the elders of the village were assembled ; and when he saw the circle of smooth faces , could not help giggling .
" * He laugheth because he hath denied our beards / exclaimed the conclave . ' It is necessary to put him to death . We are all friends here ; let us thrust him into a hag , carry him to the river , and throw him in , so that no more may be heard of him / " This idea was unanimously accepted , and Hak Hak , in spite of his struggles , was carried away in a sack , across an ass ' s back , towards the river . About noon his guards stopped to rest , and lying down , fell asleep , leaving the hunchback still in his sack . Now it happened that an old man , bent nearly two-double , came driving by an immense flock of sheep ; and seeing these people asleep , and a sack standing up in the middle , was moved by curiosity to draw near it . " Hak Hak had managed to open it a little , and to look out with one eye ; which observing , the old shepherd marvelled , saying— ' A bag with an eye did I never see before /
" He demanded , in a low voice , what was the meaning of this . The eye became a mouth , and replied"' lam the unfortunate Hak Hak , whom these people are taking by force to marry the Sultau ' s daughter / "' What , ' said the old man , who had married thirty-three wives in the course of hjs life , ' and dost thou repine at such good fortune ?' "' So much , that I would give all I possess to find a substitute /" " ' Would not I do perfectly well ? ' quoth the shepherd . ' I am not very old ; I have two teeth left , and one of my eyes is good enough : but they would not take ine in exchange / "' Oh yes , wallah , they would ; if you call yourself Hak Hak : it appeareth that the name is fortunate , and I have been chosen only on this account . Untie the bag , and let me out . '
" The shepherd , whose hands trembled from age and excitement , liberated Hak Hak , made him a present of his flock , and bade him tie the bag very tightly , lest the change should be discovered . The hunchback did as he was desired , and hastened to retire with his sheep . Meanwhile , the villagers waking up , threw their prisoner again upon the ass , and proceeding on their journey , plunged the poor old man into the river , just as he was dreaming with delight of his iirst interview with the Sultan ' s daughter , how he would smile and look pleasant , and how she would bid him be of good cheer . " This was thought a particularly amusing incident . There is little respect for lmmnn life in the East ; and the hunchback was considered to have done a very clever thing . The great point of the joke was , that just as the poor old shepherd opened his mouth to address his imaginary bride it was filled with cold water ; and the Taniawi represented with horrible contortions , deemed highly comic , the somewhat tardy disenchantment of the drowning man . "
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We should do our utmost to eneo \ irup ; o the Bouuliful , for the Useful encourages ildclf . — GoKTHli .
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iwams © if & wMiik [ y © ii [ Lu X . January U 8 , 1 SG 2 . SlO ^ NA niia , —I have passed so strange a day and night , that my Qwfy 'U ft (* s <'" feels dizzy with its unaccustomed haunts . Verily com-Mfaf nu ! m ! nas ltH romance us well us the ersigfjiest vale of Switzerland . i >*> : > .: > . "' < $ 1 write to you because it is necessary for me to turn my thought as lm' < : h as possible to objects which are real , and not distorted , which sue Onerous and beautiful , and not mortally depraved .
I was about to set out yesterday morning for Werneth , to fulfil my promise to ])<) Or Fanny Chcthum ; Margaret had come down stairs to breakfast »> r the fu-st time— "to fill her eyes with me , " she said , " before my < h soutin ^ r absence of five « lays ; " Yseult was making breakfast , the children lu'lping her (() tend ( m the fair cripple ; Edwardes was in admirable humour , t > xplniiiing to us the latest views as to the renarative process in fractures , IlUl
( dualling through his exposition in his own clear , concise , masterly way ; w | th an ( « ye to my time , when in came Sarah Sclby , as if by accident , but With a restless eye , that soon led me after her out of the room . With an llrtfcn ( . y of entreaty that admitted of no refusal , she desired me to put oil lny journey , and to follow her to Johnson's , where she would explain to 1 Ue all . Johnson was ruined—openly bankrupt ; and she feared " the Worst . " The English tradesman who has come to the end of his ledger ,
often agrees with Brutus in thinking that there is only one dignified retreat from discomfiture . What I could do I did not see ; but the more I protested against any capacity for help in the particular kind of trouble , the more she insisted ; as if I were to be the natural saviour of men in a condition of insolvency . At last I yielded , merely because she asked ; since it is the man's place , if a woman asks that which is not impossible , to grant it . While I went , she returned to the breakfast-room , " to prevent their noticing my absence , " she said . I afterwards discovered , however , that the anxiety to be secret terminated in its natural result , the full discovery of the whole thing to be concealed .
Arriving at Johnson ' s , I found a chaotic state of affairs , which revealed the downfall of the ruling power . The shop , indeed , was open as usual , and business was going forward ; but there was I know not what air of indiscipline in the men , which indicated the absence of the master mind . Proceeding to the private part of the house , I met one of the servants , who wore a distracted air , regardless of the quiet decorum hitherto domesticated behind the scene of business . Every door almost seemed to stand
open , as if already despair had thrown aside the attempt to keep up appearances . In the drawing-room was Mrs . Johnson , still at her duty , and still busy in some domestic employment , ever resigned to what might happen ; too much crushed already , many times over , to be more crushed , and upheld by the unextinguishable pride of utter humility . She received me with her own quiet manner , and almost an ostentation of equanimity ; and led me at once , as if she knew for what I had come , through the back drawing-room into a third room behind all .
Johnson was sitting before the fire , his whole attitude denoting that he had come to the end of his ideas . No balance standing in his ledger , he had forfeited his right to be in the world ; he had no status , as the Scotch say , in the Universe , and was not prepared to give an account of himself to any one who should challenge him . Unlike his wife , he received me quietly indeed , but with a manner that amounted to a confession of all that could be said against him . His burly form had collapsed into a slack heap of incompetency ; his ruddy cheeks hung in dead-coloured festoons upon his face . I have often seen uglier men , very often men whose crimes
stood apparent on their countenance , but never saw a man so fallen beneath the level of every sympathy except that of pity . I attempted to converse with him , and to cheer him up ; but he scarcely answered , and what little he did say made me feel that the attempt to console only rendered him the more conscious that no consolation availed him . Hoping to profit in some degree from the stimulus of my presence , his wife urged him to fall back upon his Bible ; but he looked at her with the heavy abstracted eye of suffering that remonstrates against disturbance . Casting up a glance at Heaven outraged by his want of resignation , she left him to his fate , and to me .
I never had such a mass of helplessness on my hands , and never knew so little what to do with it . As I looked at his heavy countenance , from , which all ideas had been abstracted by the commercial defalcation , I could not divine to myself any means by which I could approach the lurking spark of mind to revive it . I walked up and down the room ; but he seemed almost unconscious of my presence , while I remained as it were watching the dead body of my unhappy friend against the intrusion of evil spirits , or any greater extremity . One of his clerks looked in , and told him , with a manner of ostentatious insolence , that Rogers wanted to speak to him . The impertinence of the man seemed for a moment to rouse the courage of the downfallen potentate , and with a voice of much dignity he sent word that Rogers should come in the evening " with the rest . " He
waved his hand ; and the clerk looked at him for a moment ; the vulgar sense of the man was striving to conceive the idea of misfortune in its full meaning ; and after gazing with a countenance in which impertinence gradually subsided to a sort of contemptuous indifrerentism , as though it were " all up with the governor , " lit ; closed the door . He evidently thought that Rogers and " the rest" might be too late , and wished himself out of that disagreeable day . Your Englishmen of every class detest a coroner ' s inquest above all things . It is uu uncomfortable ceremony—disagreeable ; violating the distinctions of society , and dragging the respectable person before a public-hou . se tribunal .
Not long afterwards another of the clerks looked in . It was Sophy ' s friend ; something perhaps of an indirect thought of consanguinity had touched the sympathies of the young man . He looked at his master with an air of concern , and came on tip-toe towards me to tell me that another person was there whose name 1 did not know , as if I were already the authority to settle the commercial affairs of Mr . Johnson . As quietly as . 1 could , I asked him if it would not be better to recommend the intruder to come " with the rest "; to which he assented . I remained then ; all that morning , people occasionally coining in . The
very respectable matron occasionally entering to administer comfort to her helpmate , who received it with an air of , resigned despondency siiflieient to suggest the most desperate courses . Kven the proposal of " something to eat" fell flat upon his ear . After long endurance of tedious despondency , suddenly the door of the room opened and , unexpected us a ghost , in rushed Margaret—her arm out of its sling her checks flushed—her countenance- excited rather than desponding- Sin ; ( . brew herself into her father ' s arms , and covered bis face all over with kisses . The storm of comfort aeized the man : bursting out in a cry like that of a child , he
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October 30 , 1862 . ] ^ THE LEADER . 1047
Ibnthlh.
Ibnthlh .
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Leader (1850-1860), Oct. 30, 1852, page 1047, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse2.kdl.kcl.ac.uk/periodicals/l/issues/vm2-ncseproduct1958/page/19/
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