a little while, said that she saw a broom sweeping the ground without anybody holding it, and was so much frightened that she would look no longer. I have stated these facts partly from my own experience, and partly as they came to my knowledge on the authority of respectable persons. The reader may be tempted to think, that, in each instance, the boy saw images produced by some reflection in the ink; but this was evidently not the case; or that he was a confederate, or guided by leading questions. That there was no collusion, I satisfactorily ascertained, by selecting the boy who performed the part above described in my presence from a number of others passing by in the street, and by his rejecting a present which I afterwards offered him with the view of inducing him to confess that he did not really see what he had professed to have seen. I tried the veracity of another boy on a subsequent occasion in the same manner; and the result was the same. The experiment often entirely fails; but when the boy employed is right in one case, he generally is so in all: when he gives, at first, an account altogether wrong, the magician usually dismisses him at once, saying that he is too old. The perfumes, or excited imagination, or fear, may be supposed to affect the vision of the boy who describes objects as appearing to him in the ink; but, if so, why does he see exactly what is required, and objects of which he can have had no previous particular notion? Neither I nor others have been able to discover any clue by which to penetrate the mystery; and if the reader be alike unable to give the solution, I hope that he will not allow the above account to induce in his mind any degree of scepticism with respect to other portions of this work.[403] ----- Footnote 393: I was informed that he had died during my second visit to Egypt. Footnote 394: I must be excused for deviating from our old and erroneous mode of writing the name of the master of the “wonderful lamp.” It is vulgarly pronounced ’Aláy-ed-Deen. Footnote 395: Of a more famous magician, the sheykh Ahmad Sádoomeh, who flourished in Egypt in the latter half of the last century, an account is given in my translation of “The Thousand and One Nights,” chap. i., note 15. Footnote 396: Or, “Tarsh” and “Taryoosh;” the final “un” being the inflexion which denotes the nominative case. Footnote 397: He generally requires some benzoin to be added to these. Footnote 398: The numbers in this magic square, in our own ordinary characters, are as follows:— ┌───┬───┬───┐ │ 4 │ 9 │ 2 │ ├───┼───┼───┤ │ 3 │ 5 │ 7 │ ├───┼───┼───┤ │ 8 │ 1 │ 6 │ └───┴───┴───┘ It will be seen that the horizontal, vertical, and diagonal rows give, each, the same sum, namely, 15.