"When I was here before, I remember a physician, who acquired great celebrity by affecting to cure diseases by examining a lock of the patient's hair; and, not content with merely pronouncing on the nature of the disease, and suggesting the remedy, he would enter into an elaborate, and often plausible course of reasoning, in defence of his system. That system was briefly this: that the hair derived its length, strength, hue, and other properties, from the brain; which opinion he supported by a reference to acknowledged facts--as, that it changes its hue with the difference of the mental character in the different stages of life; that violent affections of the mind, such as grief or fear, have been known to change it in a single night. Science on this, as on other occasions, is merely augmenting and methodizing facts that the mass of mankind had long observed--as, that red hair had always been considered indicative of warm temperament; that affliction, and even love, were believed to create baldness; and that in great terror, the hair stands on end. The different ages too, are distinguished as much by their hair as their complexion, their facial angle, or in any other way. He was led to this theory first, by observing at school that a boy of a stiff, bristly head of hair, was remarkably cruel. He professed to have been able, from a long course of observation, to assign to every different colour and variety of hair, its peculiar temperament and character. One mental quality was indicated by its length, another by its fineness, and others again as it chanced to be greasy, or lank, or curled. He would also blow on it with a bellows, to see how the parts arranged themselves: hold it near the fire, and watch the operation of its crisping by the heat: and although he had often been mistaken in his estimates of character, by the rules of his new science, he did not lose the confidence of his disciples on that account--some of them refusing to believe the truth, rather than to admit themselves mistaken; and others insisting that, if his science was not infallible, it very rarely deceived." It was now our turn to submit our hands to Avarabet for examination. He discovered signs of the loftiest virtues and most heroic enterprise in the Brahmin; and, near the bottom of one of his nails, a deep-rooted sorrow, which would leave him only with his life. A transient shade of gloom on the Brahmin's countenance was soon succeeded by a piercing, inquisitive glance cast on the diviner. He saw the other's eyes directed on the miniature which he always wore, and which discovered itself to Avarabet as he stooped forward. A smile of contempt now took the place of his first surprise, and he seemed in a state of abstraction, during the continued rhapsodies of the oracle.