cabalistic art, he would recover in seven days. But the officers of the barracks, close to which the deceased had lived, interfered in the matter. They put a guard of one or two men on the house, declaring that they would allow the body to remain unburied for seven days, but would not permit any trickery. Of course the poor serpent-charmer never came to life again. His death, and the manner of it, gave a severe blow, as has been already hinted, to the art and practice of snake-charming in Madras.”
Roberts also mentions the instance of a man who came to a gentleman's house to exhibit tame Snakes; and on being told that a Cobra, or Hooded Snake was in a cage in the house, was asked if he could charm it; on his replying in the affirmative, the Serpent was released from the cage, and, no doubt, in a state of high irritation. The man began his incantations, and repeated his charms, but the Snake darted at him, fastened upon his arm, and before night he was a corpse.
These and similar occurrences, however, so far from proving the falsehood of the snake-charmers' pretensions, seem to our judgment to be additional evidences of their truth; inasmuch as they make it manifest that these men believe their own powers, though they may sometimes fail. There is, in the present day, a far greater tendency to explain away, or to disbelieve, or boldly to deny, whatever cannot be readily accounted for, than to confess ignorance, or to weigh the evidence by which any assertion is supported; and we have often wondered at the disingenuous manner in which writers will pretend to explain away some straightforward, but
