A MOHAMMEDAN FAKIR

tiest of his kind, that led me to discover that there was poetry of a sort in cutting one's throat. He was a laboriously dirty man, for where others of the brigade had only a layer of dust upon their heads, he had a little mound the unkempt locks of his comrades were on him replaced by ropes, matted with horrid cosmetics into the hair and hanging down to his knees. His body was gray as a squirrel's tail with a pigment of dust laid on with some viscous matter; the ribs on either side stood out staring from the daubing of ochre laid in the hollows between each. Small in size, and of unparalleled leanness, this incarnation of dirt had attracted my attention. It was the day of a great fair held at the junction of two holy rivers, and I was purchasing some curiosities at a stall, haggling over cornelian marbles, agate beads, and absurd alabaster monkeygods and goddesses with very rounded limbs and silly faces, when the Fakir came sauntering up. While I was watching him he lifted a little Mahadeo off the stall, and from his own head reverentially transferred a wafer of Ganges mud to the occiput of the idol. Then leisurely turning round, he picked his way through the holy-water bottles exposed for sale upon the sand, as carefully as the superstitious Chinaman picks his way across a floor that is strewn with papers, and approached the Sacred Rivers. Heedless of the worshipers, who, all up and down, a mile's length on either hand, fringed the

river; heedless of the thou

and with even steps advanced until his long rope matted hair was trailing in the mingling rivers. And

A FAKIR OF CALCUTTA.

then on a sudden a knife flashed from the waistcloth. A wild cry-that rose above all the clamor of the fair, startled myriads into a moment of silence, and turned all eyes toward him-went up to "GUNGAGEE. There was just one rapid, desperate motion of the arm, and the next moment under the rippling water lay the body of the Fakir. And his soul had gone to its gods. The cry was of course "the fanatical screech of a bigoted idolator about to sacrifice himself to some vile heathen deity," but nevertheless there rang through it a very human ery of ordinary pain. Perhaps the Fakir was doing what he thought his duty at the bitter price of life. Perhaps this earth of ours had attractions even for such as him, and that serving a less bloody god he might have preferred to live.

IN the capital of Burmah gold or gilded umbrellas, which in the provinces may be carried by any body, are. reserved for princes of the blood alone; consequently red umbrellas are affected by the gay sparks of Burmese society as being the next thing most gaudy in appearance. Etiquette has also fixed the exact number of umbrellas that Burmese nobles may display when they approach the "lord of the golden palace "; and no one but the Bin She-Men, or heir-apparent, is entitled to have borne over his litter the full complement of eight. golden umbrellas.

A REMARKABLE PLANT.

ANISE grows wild in Egypt, in Syria, Palestine and all parts of the Levant, but the Romans considered the Egyptian and Cretan anise to be the best, especially for medicinal purposes. The product of Southern Europe is now looked upon with favor. Among the ancients anise seems to have been a common potherb in every garden. Although it is less used in medicine by the moderns than by the ancients, it still retains its former reputation as an excellent stomachic, particularly for delicate women and young children.

The Romans chewed it in order to keep up an agreeable moisture in the mouth, and to sweeten the breath, while some Orientals still do the same. Some of the Persian poets have sung the agreeable qualities of the anise, and a modern street-ballad of Rome compares the slender grace of a young girl to the anise.

Anise is an annual plant, growing to the height of one foot, carries a white flower, and blooms from June till August. The seeds are imported, and used in large quantities on account of their aromatic and carminative properties. The distilled plant, when used in blossom, yields a sweeter and more grateful tincture than can be obtained

from the seeds.

Anise is extensively employed by the confectioner for the purpose of flavoring comfits and cordials. The aniseseed cordial of the shops is a compound of alcohol, anise seed and angelica. The oil is obtained by distillation from the seeds, and though habitually mixed with a great many cattle-medicines, and regarded by the farmers of former generations as one of the most potent drugs, it performs scarcely any other office than the communicating of an agreeable fragrance. The Chinese cultivate it for the seasoning of dishes; and the Japanese employ bundles and garlands of it in the ceremonies of their heathenish superstition. Its appearance, when out of flower, as well as when in bloom, is decidedly ornamental.

ANTIQUE GEMS.

In the search for antique gems, though there are many blanks there are pretty sure to be a few prizes now and again, possibly in the shape of Greek work of the finest period, the age of Phidias and Praxiteles. It will be well, however, to explain to the reader what we mean by "antique gems." These are not to be found, perhaps, in my lady's treasure-casket of glittering brilliants or gleaming sapphires, which she takes out, together with her Venetian point lace, to grace ball-room or drawing-room. Some of them, perhaps, may be of equal intrinsic value, and, as works of art, incomparably more priceless than machinecut stones, whose glitter, after all, is excelled by the dewdrop on the grass. Engraved gems, then, are the signet rings of antiquity-the seals wherewith the men of old time, whether of Egypt, Assyria, Greece or Rome, sealed their documents and protected their goods.

The portable goods of a man were, no doubt, at first secured by a seal of clay from the banks of the Nile or Tigris, stamped with a bit of worm-eaten reed rolled over it, which reed the owner retained in his possession. The marks on his little cylinder of reed, and the corresponding marks on the clay seal, would always assure him that his property had not been tampered with. What more natural than that a cylinder of stone, engraved with various devices, should take the place of the reed? This, in fact, was the first step in the art of gem-engraving. And the little cylinder of serpentine, agate or lapis-lazuli, engraved with those quaint archaic figures with which Mr.

Layard has made us familiar, hung suspended from the wrist of the curled Assyrian exquisite by a golden thread long before Jonah came to Nineveh. This was, in fact, the signet with which he sealed his possessions and documents. And in that great treasure-house of antiquities, the British Museum, may be at this day seen, by those who care to search for them, the cylinder signets of King Darius, and of Sennacherib, the Assyrian.

GENEVA FIFTY YEARS AGO."

GENEVA itself, in the Winter of 1830-31, just fifty years ago, was a microcosm of the most polished society in Europe. De Candolle, De la Rive, Necker de Saussure, taught science in her schools; the illustrious Rossi, afterward the victim of Roman atrocity, professed civil law and lectured on the immortal contest of the United Provinces against the tyranny of Spain; Sismondi, the historian of the Italian Republics and of France, and the brother-inlaw of Macintosh, kept an open house; Bonstetten, the friend of Gray and the rival of Alfieri, still survived. The Government of the little Republic was carried on, with gratuitous and enlightened zeal for the public interests, by men of hereditary reputation for talents and virtues. The recent revolution in Paris had cast on the shores of Lake Leman many of the most brilliant members of French society. M. de Chateaubriand appeared there. Cavour, still young and half Genevese (for his mother was a Mlle. de Sellon, sister of the Duchesse de Clermont Tonnerre), began to mix in society. Mrs. Marcet and the Romillys represented the most cultivated society of England, and a host of foreigners of all lands, Russians, Poles, Italians and Greeks, sought in Geneva a haven of safety or a seat of learning and of freedom. Colonel Huber-Saladin, who is himself a distinguished member of the Genevese aristocracy, has given us a vivid picture of his celebrated little Republic at the most brilliant period of its existence. In this remarkable assemblage it is not too much to say that M. and Mme. de Circourt shone with pre-eminent lustre, and they took their places in the society of Europe.

SARAH SIDDONS AND LADY MACBETH. LATE one night Mr. Siddons was sitting by the fire in the modest family parlor, which, in that most unassuming household, served as dining-room or drawing-room, as the case might be. He was smoking calmly his last pipe, and beginning to think about going to bed, whither, as this was not one of her evenings at the theatre, he believed his wife had gone already. The house was sunk in dreamy silence, so was the quiet street outside; silence only broken, now and then, by the roll of distant wheels. The actor had been drawing a vague picture of a little holiday trip which he and Sarah would take next Summer, and had fallen into a half doze, in which he was driving down a country lane all scented with honeysuckle; all draped with eglantine. Suddenly he was roused, with a start, by hurried footsteps, that were flying rather than running down the passage. Who could it be? he asked himself, all in a maze and a wonder, as he jumped up and rubbed his sleep-laden oyes. Ho had scarcely had time to let the question go darting through his brain, when the door of the room was flung open quickly, as by a hasty, trembling hand, and a female figure rushed in.

Mr. Siddons gazed in speechless astonishment, not unmixed with a touch of fear. There before him stood his wife, her fine hair disheveled, her dress all in disorder,

After his wife's death a deeper gloom seemed to settle upon Goff, and he became more unsociable and morose than ever. His only consolation now was his boy, who seemed precious to him as the apple of his eye. He used to make bows and arrows for him, and taught him how to use them; and whenever a tribe of roving Indians came along that way, Goff's boy would be very thick with the small redskins of his own age, from whom he learned much about the woods and waters.

THE LONE TREE OF GOFF'S HOLLOW. You are a stranger to our great American forests, I see, and it's no wonder you ask me so many questions about the trees and wild creatures, for they all have a sort of romance about them, though in a rough way.

As we passed along, I noticed you looked at some tall stumps of trees that were cut down at a height of twelve or fourteen feet from the ground. I guess your mind was puzzled about them.

I've known folks who were unused to the woods ask if there were giants around when these trees were cut down, because the arms of no common mortal could reach them so high up with an ax. Others have guessed that the lumbermen who cut them must have gone up ladders; and they were puzzled to know why.

Listen to what I have to tell, and you will know that if there be strange things that happen in your big cities, so it is with us here in those old woods of ours.

Many years ago there came to settle in these parts a family whose name was believed to be Goff, though there were other stories about that. They were three in number. The man Goff seemed to be about forty years of age, though he might have been less, for his face was haggard, and there was a strange, wild light in his deepset eyes. His hands were soft and delicate when he first came among us, showing that he had not then been used to rough work.

His wife was a small creature, of some seven or eightand-twenty; and of all the sad faces I ever saw, here was the saddest. One might say that there was a sorrowful story written upon her poor, wistful face, in the lines by which it was marked.

They had with them a bright boy of four, who, after a while, used to come around among the wood-choppers, and was the only one of the strange family with whom the neighbors had often a chance to talk.

Goff used to be much out in the woods with his rifle, and as these forests were then alive with game, he could keep a pretty good larder in the loghouse occupied by him, which he fitted up with all sorts of fixings, that we folks of the hard-fisted sort never should have troubled ourselves with.

He had lots of books with him, and as some of these were in strange languages, we, of course, knew him for a scholar, and this set queer stories afloat as to his having been a minister, or a lawyer, or a doctor, or something of the kind, who had got into trouble with the world, and had come here to bury himself in the woods, and escape having fingers pointed at him.

Anyhow, he had not been long here when his poor heart-broken wife sickened and died. It was a sad November day, with a sprinkling of snow on the ground when we carried her on a hand-sled through the solemn

The only man in our neighborhood with whom Goff cottoned was a wild, shiftless fellow named Morgan, who never did a steady day's work in his life, but went about a good deal with Indians, hunting and fishing, and drinking whisky, when he could get it, as they did.

Goff took a liking to this man, and used to let him loaf around the place, and go and come as he pleased. Often they would go out hunting deer together, and on these occasions, Morgan's mother, who lived in a shanty not far away, would take charge of young Goff, for they loved the boy, who was especially attached to Morgan, as boys often are to roving characters of the kind.

Sometimes Goff and Morgan used to have words with each other, but nothing serious ever came of these little spats, and they seemed in general to be on friendly terms.

There was a camp of strange Indians here one time, who came along through some far-off lakes and rivers in their canoes, and remained hereabouts for a few days only. From the day when these Indians left, Morgan was missing, and so was Goff's boy. Of course, the suspicion was that Morgan might have had a quarrel with Goff, and out of revenge have gone off with the Indians, taking the toy with them.

Goff was frantic at the loss of his boy, to the extent that at first he seemed incapable of action. Then, recovering his energies, he made up a party of hunters, and went in pursuit of the Indians; but with these they never came up, nor was it ever known from where these wily redskins came, and whither they went.

Then Goff became a prey to melancholy, of a kind that had danger in it; and none of us were sorry when he made arrangements for selling out his little property here; having done which, he went away as silently as he had come, giving no hint as to his movements, and bidding nobody farewell.

Years passed on, and many changes took place in these parts, which became settled by degrees, and took on more with civilization than they used to do. We used to get hold of newspapers now once in a while, and the part of these most eagerly read by us was that which brought us in contact, so to speak, with the great cities, which few of us ever had a chance of visiting, and, therefore, wanted all the more to hear about.

One day the clerk in the store was reading out to a lot of us, from a New York paper that had just come to hand. There was an account in it of a strange, lone man, who had died in a tavern in that city, leaving no trace of his name or belongings, but only a written paper, containing a confession that made some of us start, for it seemed to throw light upon the dark things of which I have just been telling you.

This confession, much of which was blotted out, as if the writer had repented of making all known, amounted to about this: The writer, who did not give his name, was living at one time, he said, in a certain backwoods settlement, of which he did not give the locality. While there, he had a quarrel with a man, who was sometimes employed by him, and they were going to fight it out with weapons,