at they had succeeded tolerably well.

The pupil, who had grown corpulent under his late course of treatment,
did not at first raise his lazy, half-shut eyes high enough from the
ground to see the desk and open book, which were clever imitations, if
not quite facsimiles of forms deeply impressed on his memory, and
calculated to produce very stimulating recollections. As soon as they
caught his eye, he seemed to be seized with sudden passion, dashed at
the book, and overthrew the whole concern. Fiercely did he thrust his
nose and paws between the leaves, and turn them, and tear them, and
trample them. At length, exhausted by his exertions--to say nothing of
his having previously had more exercise than usual--he waddled away to
his well-known rug, absolutely declined all invitations either to work
or play, and lay there watching the company through his half-shut
eyes, in a state of stupid repose, which those who had just watched
his effervescence did not care to interrupt.

'Well,' said the sultan to the rabbi and his friends, 'you are a
strange set of people. When I put my bear into your hands, he read
fluently, and _con amore_; and all you had to do, was to perfect his
articulation. Instead of that, you bring him back fat, stupid, and
savage, and so far from reading better, unable to read at all. It
would serve you right, if I were to hang the whole set of you, and
confiscate all your goods; but I am a merciful man, and will be
content with banishment.'

So an order was immediately issued for banishing the Jews from the
dominions of the sultan; and they all made off as fast as they could,
not knowing that their own countryman had been at the bottom of all,
or having any idea of the explanation which is here laid before the
reader.

FOOTNOTES:

[1] This is in substance a tradition still current among those Eastern
Christians who are 'dwellers in Mesopotamia.'

THE ZODIACAL LIGHT.

There is a certain degree of satisfaction to the inquiring mind in
knowing that, even in these days of aptness for discovering and
explaining everything, there yet remains something to be found out;
something to excite speculation and recompense research. Such a
subject is the zodiacal light, which, for nearly two centuries past,
has at different times occupied the attention of astronomers and other
observers of celestial phenomena, though it is only of late years that
the theories concerning it have acquired anything like a