eer doings about me which puzzle me and might scare some
people. If anything should happen, you will be one of the first to hear
of it, no doubt. But I trust not to help out the editors of the
"Rockland Weekly Universe" with an obituary of the late lamented, who
signed himself in life--

Your friend and pupil,
BERNARD C. LANGDON.

The Professor to Mr. Langdon.

MY DEAR MR. LANGDON, I do not wonder that you find no answer from your
country friends to the curious questions you put. They belong to that
middle region between science and poetry which sensible men, as they are
called, are very shy of meddling with. Some people think that truth and
gold are always to be washed for; but the wiser sort are of opinion,
that, unless there are so many grains to the peck of sand or nonsense
respectively, it does not pay to wash for either, so long as one can find
anything else to do. I don't doubt there is some truth in the phenomena
of animal magnetism, for instance; but when you ask me to cradle for it,
I tell you that the hysteric girls cheat so, and the professionals are
such a set of pickpockets, that I can do something better than hunt for
the grains of truth among their tricks and lies. Do you remember what I
used to say in my lectures?--or were you asleep just then, or cutting
your initials on the rail? (You see I can ask questions, my young
friend.) Leverage is everything,--was what I used to say;--don't begin to
pry till you have got the long arm on your side.

To please you, and satisfy your doubts as far as possible, I have looked
into the old books,--into Schenckius and Turner and Kenelm. Digby and the
rest, where I have found plenty of curious stories which you must take
for what they are worth.

Your first question I can answer in the affirmative upon pretty good
authority. Mizaldus tells, in his "Memorabilia," the well-known story of
the girl fed on poisons, who was sent by the king of the Indies to
Alexander the Great. "When Aristotle saw her eyes sparkling and snapping
like those of serpents, he said, 'Look out for yourself, Alexander! this
is a dangerous companion for you!'"--and sure enough, the young lady
proved to be a very unsafe person to her friends. Cardanus gets a story
from Avicenna, of a certain man bit by a serpent, who recovered of his
bite, the snake dying therefrom. This man afterwards had a daughter whom
venomous serpents could not harm, though she had a fatal power over them.

I