If there are ghosts to raise, Out of hell's murky haze, Raise my loved long-lost boy There are no ghosts to raise; Know'st thou not ghosts to sue? Else lie, as I will do, And breathe thy last; A PLAINT. BY EBENEZER ELLIOTT. [EBENEZER ELLIOTT, "people's poet," was born in 1781 in Yorkshire, England, and worked in his father's iron foundry till 1804; later was in business at Sheffield. He published a volume of poems in 1823, "The Village Patriarch " in 1829, and "The Corn Law Rhymer" in 1831. He died in 1849.] DARK, deep, and cold the current flows Why shrieks for help yon wretch, who goes Though myriads go with him who goes, For all must go where no wind blows, Yet why should he who shrieking goes Alone with God, where no wind blows, O shoreless Deep, where no wind blows! THE POWER OF THE WILD ASS' SKIN. (From "La Peau de Chagrin.") "And now for death!" cried the young man awakened from his musings. His last thought had recalled his fate to him, as it led him imperceptibly back from the forlorn hopes to which he had clung. "Ah, ha! then my suspicions were well founded!" said the other, and his hands held the young man's wrists in a grip like that of a vise. The young man smiled wearily at his mistake, and said gently: "You, sir, have nothing to fear; it is not your life, but my own that is in question. But why should I hide a harmless fraud?" he went on, after a look at the anxious old man. "I came to see your treasures, to while away the time till night should come and I could drown myself decently. Who would grudge this last pleasure to a poet and a man of science?" While he spoke, the jealous merchant watched the haggard face of his pretended customer with keen eyes. Perhaps the mournful tones of his voice reassured him, or he also read the dark signs of fate in the faded features that had made the gamblers shudder; he released his hands, but, with a touch of caution, due to the experience of some hundred years at least, he stretched his arm out to a sideboard as if to steady himself, took up a little dagger, and said: "Have you been a supernumerary clerk of the Treasury for three years without receiving any perquisites?" The stranger could scarcely suppress a smile as he shook his head. "Perhaps your father has expressed his regret for your birth a little too sharply? Or have you disgraced yourself?" “If I meant to be disgraced I should live.” 'You have been hissed perhaps at the Funambules? Or you have had to compose couplets to pay for your mistress' funeral? Do you want to be cured of the gold fever? Or to be quit of the spleen? For what blunder is your life a forfeit ? " "You must not look among the common motives that impel suicides for the reason of my death. To spare myself the task of disclosing my unheard-of sufferings, for which language has no name, I will tell you this - that I am in the deepest, most humiliating, and most cruel trouble, and," he went on in proud tones that harmonized ill with the words just uttered, "I have no wish to beg for either help or sympathy." "Eh! eh!" The two syllables which the old man pronounced resembled the sound of a rattle. Then he went on thus: "Without compelling you to entreat me, without making you blush for it, and without giving you so much as a French centime, a para from the Levant, a German heller, a Russian kopeck, a Scottish farthing, a single obolus or sestercius from the ancient world, or one piaster from the new, without offering you anything whatever in gold, silver or copper, notes or drafts, I will make you richer, more powerful, and of more consequence than a constitutional king." The younger man thought that the older was in his dotage, and waited in bewilderment without venturing to reply. "Turn round," said the merchant, suddenly catching up the lamp in order to light up the opposite wall; "look at that leathern skin," he went on. The young man rose abruptly, and showed some surprise at the sight of a piece of shagreen which hung on the wall behind his chair. It was only about the size of a fox's skin, but it seemed to fill the deep shadows of the place with such brilliant rays that it looked like a small comet, an appearance at first sight inexplicable. The young skeptic went up to this socalled talisman, which was to rescue him from his woes, with a scoffing phrase in his thoughts. Still a harmless curiosity led him to bend over it and look at it from all points of view, and he soon found out the cause of its singular brilliancy. The dark grain of the leather had been so carefully burnished and polished, the striped markings of the graining were so sharp and clear, that every particle of the surface of the bit of Oriental leather was in itself a focus which concentrated the light, and reflected it vividly. He accounted for this phenomenon categorically to the old man, who only smiled meaningly by way of answer. His superior smile led the young scientific man to fancy that he himself had been deceived by some imposture. He had no wish to carry one more puzzle to his grave, and hastily turned the skin over, like some child eager to find out the mysteries of a new toy. "Ah," he cried, "here is the mark of the seal which they call in the East the Signet of Solomon." His "So you know that, then?" asked the merchant. peculiar method of laughter, two or three quick breathings through the nostrils, said more than any words, however eloquent. "Is there anybody in the world simple enough to believe in that idle fancy?" said the young man, nettled by the spitefulness of the silent chuckle. "Don't you know," he continued, "that the superstitions of the East have perpetuated the mystical form and the counterfeit characters of the symbol, which represents a mythical dominion? I have no more laid myself open to a charge of credulity in this case than if I had mentioned sphinxes or griffins, whose existence mythology in a manner admits." "As you are an Orientalist," replied the other, "perhaps you can read that sentence." He held the lamp close to the talisman, which the young man held toward him, and pointed out some characters inlaid in the surface of the wonderful skin, as if they had grown on the animal to which it once belonged. "I must admit," said the stranger, "that I have no idea how the letters could be engraved so deeply on the skin of a wild ass.' And he turned quickly to the tables strewn with curiosities, and seemed to look for something. "What is it that you want?" asked the old man. 66 Something that will cut the leather, so that I can see whether the letters are printed or inlaid." The old man held out his stiletto. The stranger took it and tried to cut the skin above the lettering; but when he had removed a thin shaving of leather from them, the characters still appeared below, so clear and so exactly like the surface impression, that for a moment he was not sure that he had cut anything away after all. "The craftsmen of the Levant have secrets known only to themselves," he said, half in vexation, as he eyed the characters of this Oriental sentence. "Yes," said the old man, "it is better to attribute it to man's agency than to God's." The mysterious words were thus arranged, as it runs in English: POSSESSING ME THOU SHALT POSSESS ALL THINGS. BUT THY LIFE IS MINE, FOR GOD HAS SO WILLED IT. WISH, AND THY WISHES SHALL BE FULFILLED ; BUT MEASURE THY DESIRES, ACCORDING TO THE LIFE THAT IS IN THEE. THIS IS THY LIFE, WITH EACH WISH I MUST SHRINK "So you read Sanskrit fluently," said the old man. have been in Persia, perhaps, or in Bengal?" "You "No, sir," said the stranger, as he felt the emblematical skin. curiously. It was almost as rigid as a sheet of metal. The old merchant set the lamp back again upon the column, giving the other a look as he did so. "He has given up the notion of dying already," the glance said with phlegmatic irony. "Is it a jest, or is it an enigma?" asked the young man. The other shook his head and said soberly: "I don't know how to answer you. I have offered this talisman with its terrible powers to men with more energy in them than you seem to me to have; but though they laughed at the questionable power it might exert over their futures, not one of them was ready to venture to conclude the fateful contract proposed by an unknown force. I am of their opinion, I have doubted and refrained, and-" "Have you never even tried its power?" interrupted the young stranger. "Tried it!" exclaimed the old man. 66 Suppose that you |