believed was because we were Christians.  He said, however, if an Arab boy was substituted the spirit would come.  A servant therefore was sent out to bring a boy by the offer of a piastre, and one was soon produced.  Whether there was any confederacy or not, I had no precise means to ascertain; but I was inclined to think not.  The Arab boy was trusted with the ink in place of the European, and on the magician’s asking him the leading question “Do you see a little man?” he took but one look and answered “Yes.”  The orders then followed “Tell him to bring a flag.” &c. to all of which, whether operated on by some dread of refusing, or by the natural inclination of one rogue to help another, he duly answered that the thing was done.  I do not remember any further denoument that there was; and so ended the magic of the magician of Grand Cairo.

Being disappointed in this experiment, we began to seek for the opportunity of making others, and offered a reward for any person who would show us a specimen of imp or spirit.  One man was produced, who was stated to be of considerable fame.  He said he would show me a spirit; but I must go out with him three nights running to a cross road at midnight, and perform divers ceremonies and lustrations which he proceeded to describe.  I believe he he had got an inkling, that I intended to leave Cairo the next day.  I told him, however, that I would cheerfully go through any ceremonies he might propose.  He next said, it would be necessary that I should repeat the name of the spirit I called for, eleven thousand times; and this I assured him I would painfully perform.  He then said, he was afraid at my age the operation would be dangerous.  I wonder whether the rogue meant that I was too young, or too old, or too middle-aged; for I was exactly thirty-eight.  Seeing that I only pressed him the more, he took his fee and walked off, intimating that there was no use in doing these things with Frangis.

I saw another instance in Cairo, of the way in which a story accumulates by telling, and the degree in which even sensible Europeans by long residence are induced to give into the beliefs they find around them.  The conversation turned one day on the power of charming serpents, supposed to be inherent in certain descendants of the Psylli.  One of the Consular Staff immediately declared, that a most remarkable instance of the fact had happened in the Consul-General’s own courtyard the day before.  That one of those gifted men had come into the yard, and declared he knew by his art that there were serpents in the stable; and that he had immediately gone and summoned forth two snakes of the most poisonous kind, which he seized in his hands and brought, in the presence of the relator, to the Consular threshold.  Now it happened to me to see the whole of this scene.  I was wandering about the Consul’s court, gazing at the curiosities scattered around, enough to have set up any European museum with an Egyptian branch, and particularly, I