against
the wires, and hissed and sissed as if it would have stung us all to
death in an instant. It was however, a very beautiful creature of the
kind, and as the sun then shone very bright, the golden and silver
streaks upon its azure skin made a very splendid appearance. My
youngest son wanting to go and stroke it;--"No, my pretty boy, said the
good Bramin; if you have any value for yourself, you will always keep
out of the reach of such creatures as these, and of all such who
resemble the young lady by whose soul this serpent is animated. I say
_young lady_, because the serpent before you is indeed animated by the
soul of the late Miss _Abigail Eviltongue_. The family of the
_Eviltongue_, (I dare say you have heard of them) is extremely
numerous; for there are some, and indeed too many of them, in every
town, and, I believe in every village in the country. Miss _Abigail_,
the young lady I am speaking of, had as just a title to the name, and
supported the character of her family with as much exactness as any one
amongst them; for her tongue was remarkably active, and spared the
reputation neither of friend nor foe. She was, it is true, a very
handsome girl, and the charms of her person would have procured her
many admirers if they had not been disgraced by her natural propensity
to slander and defamation. In her very infancy, as soon as she could
speak to be understood, she began with telling fibs of the servants,
and very frequently of her brothers and sisters; for which, you may be
certain, they all despised her very heartily. But as she was too much
encouraged in this hateful practice by her parents, instead of being
severely flogged for it, as she ought to have been, she set the frowns
and sneers of the others at open defiance; and the more they resented
her little malice the more eager she was to gratify it by loading them
with all the falsehoods she was capable of inventing. In proportion as
she grew older, this mischievous habit increased upon her; and when she
was big enough to go a visiting, she indulged it abroad with as much
freedom as she had been used to do at home; so that, in a short time,
there was scarcely a young miss or master in the neighbourhood whose
character she had not attempted to injure. What made her slanders the
more odious was, that she generally vented them under a pretence of the
greatest friendship and respect for the persons to whom she related
them, and with great seeming pity for t