district chanced one morning to get hold of a Cobra of considerable size, which he got conveyed to his home. He was occupied abroad all day, and had not time to get the dangerous fang extracted from the Serpent's mouth. This at least is the probable solution of the matter. In the evening he returned to his dwelling, considerably excited with liquor, and began to exhibit tricks with his Snakes to various persons who were around him at the time. The newly-caught Cobra was brought out with the others, and the man, spirit-valiant, commenced to handle the stranger like the rest. But the Cobra darted at his chin, and bit it, making two marks like pin points. The poor juggler was sobered in an instant. ‘I am a dead man,’ he exclaimed. The prospect of immediate death made the maintenance of his professional mysticism a thing of no moment. ‘Let the creature alone,’ said he to those about him, who would have killed the Cobra; ‘it may be of service to others of my trade. To me it can be of no more use. Nothing can save me.’ His professional knowledge was but too accurate. In two hours he was a corpse! I saw him a short time after he died. His friends and brother jugglers had gathered around him, and had him placed on a chair in a sitting position. Seeing the detriment likely to result to their trade and interests from such a notion, they vehemently asserted that it was not the envenomed bite which had killed him. ‘No, no; he only forgot one little word—one small portion of the charm.’ In fact, they declared that he was not dead at all, but only in a sort of swoon, from which, according to the rules of the
