ked in the furthest corner of the room with the
spectators, leaving the figure to make its gestures and give its
replies as a wholly independent thing, having no need of any connection
with him. Indeed he could not wholly restrain a slightly ironical smile
when the table and the figure and tripod were being overhauled and
peered at in every direction, taken as close to the light as possible,
and inspected by powerful magnifying glasses. The upshot of it all was,
that the mechanical geniuses said the devil himself could make neither
head nor tail of the confounded mechanism. And a hypothesis that the
Exhibitor was a clever ventriloquist, and gave the answers himself (the
breath being conveyed to the figure's mouth through hidden valves) fell
to the ground, for the Exhibitor was to be heard talking loudly and
distinctly to people among the audience at the very time when the Turk
was making his replies.

"'Notwithstanding the enigmatical, and apparently mysterious, character
of this exhibition, perhaps the interest of the public might soon have
grown fainter, had it not been kept alive by the nature of the answers
which the Turk gave. These were sometimes cold and severe, while
occasionally they were sparkling and jocular--even broadly so at times;
at others they evinced strong sense and deep astuteness, and in some
instances they were in a high degree painful and tragical. But they
were always strikingly apposite to the character and affairs of the
questioner, who would frequently be startled by a mystical reference to
futurity in the answer given, only possible, as it would seem, in one
cognizant of the hidden thoughts and feelings which dictated the
question. And it happened not seldom that the Turk, questioned in
German, would reply in some other language known to the questioner, in
which case it would be found that the answer could not have been
expressed with equal point, force, and conciseness in any other
language than that selected. In short, no day passed without some fresh
instance of a striking and ingenious answer of the wise Turk becoming
the subject of general remark.

"'It chanced, one evening, that Lewis and Ferdinand, two college
friends, were in a company where the talking Turk was the subject of
conversation. People were discussing whether the strangest feature of
the matter was the mysterious and unexplained human influence which
seemed to endow the figure with life, or the wonderful insight into the