THE INDICATOR. There he arriving round about doth flie, No. XXXVIII.-WEDNESDAY, JUNE 28th, 1820. THE EGYPTIAN THIEF. RHAMPSINITUS was the richest prince that ever sat on the Egyptian throne. In order to secure his treasures, to have them at the same time near him, and to produce their effect upon the public mind even when invisible, he had a great stone tower built, which was connected with the palace by a wall. In this tower, which seemed as blind as it was strong, (for the light was admitted only on the side looking into one of the palace gardens)-in this tower were the cups, and the goblets, and the golden bars, and the costly stuffs, and the colours, and the spices, and the precious stones, and the pillars of emerald, and the curious carved images, and thousands upon thousands of talents of gold. The people looked up to the great tower, and thought of it's many rooms, and considered the shining treasure which illuminated the other side of those stone walls like the light of a divine presence; and they walked about, awe-stricken as the stranger at the sight of the Pyramids, and said humbly to themselves, "Great is the glory of Rhampsinitus." But a wonder was to fall upon Rhampsinitus himself; and he became perplexed beyond the poorest of his subjects. He found his golden money diminishing, and it was impossible to conjecture how it could be. The architect who built the tower had contrived it with such skill that not an entrance could be thought of or forced, besides the one by which the king entered; and it was clear that nobody entered there. The key was solitary of it's kind; the door always sealed with the royal signet; and the passage lay through the royal chamber. Yet day after day, more money disappeared. The diminution even took place in the very strongest room of the whole building. The king's mind was greatly astonished; nor could the priests and soothsayers relieve him. They feared that the circumstance was ominous to Egypt; and that the overflow of the Nile, the season for which was now approaching, would not take place. But the river performed it's mighty part as usual, and every Egyptian heart was gladdened but the king's. Application was made to the God Apis to know if it was the deity himself that diminished the pride of Rhampsinitus; but upon some of the gold and jewels being offered to the sacred breast, he blew the breath out of his nostrils at them indifferently, and turning to his ivory manger, took a pull of the sacred hay. It was the opinion of the priests that the offering to the god had not been large enough; gods, they said, having very great ideas, and size being necessary to move them to any acknowledgment of a sensation. Rhampsinitus however contented himself with setting traps round the plundered vessels; and it was the talk all night in the palaces both of the king and of Apis, whether the plunderer would turn out to be a common mortal. It is remarkable that more priests than civil officers thought he would; and they told the king's people so, when their opinion was asked; but added, that it would only shew itself so much the more remarkably, to be a judgment of heaven. "It This opinion was greatly corroborated by the singularity of the event; for in truth, a common mortal was found caught in one of the traps, but when they came to look who he was, he had no head. is very extraordinary!" said Rhampsinitus." It would be so," said the priests, 66. were it not supernatural." A search was made all over the room and tower, and the king began to incline to their opinion. Not a crevice or flaw was to be found. The king ordered the body to be hung up in the most public part of Memphis, and gave directions to the guards who watched it to seize any one who should exhibit symptoms of distress at the spectacle. The next morning a report was made to him that the body. was gone. None of the guards knew whither. All that could be gathered was, that towards nightfall a man came driving some asses by the spot, laden with skins of wine; that the pegs, by some means or other, became loosened from the skins, and set the wine floating over the ground; . that the man, seeing this, tore his hair and made vehement outcries for assistance; that assistance however being given him, and among others by the guards, he abused those who helped him and refused for a long time to be pacified; that having at last got over his confusion of mind, and finding not so much wine lost as he supposed, he made a present of a flask to the guards; and lastly, that after they had all made merry, and he had driven his asses away, they were astonished to find the dead body gone also. The king saw plainly that the last part of the account wanted a good deal of the truth. He saw that some in genious person had succeeded in making the guards dead drunk; and with all his anger, he could hardly repress a feeling of admiration for the unknown, when on having the soldiers brought before him, he discovered that the men had found time and courage enough to shave all their right cheeks in derision. "Who can this extraordinary person be?" thought Rhampsinitus. "It is he that must have been the accomplice of the first thief and cut off his head to prevent detection. He were a man to do wonderful things against the enemies of a king, if he were his friend. He shall 66 There see what a terrible thing it is to mock the king and be his enemy." The Egyptian monarch, in the rage and plenitude of his will, commanded his daughter to admit the addresses of men indiscriminately,a thing however not so scandalous in those times as in others. was only this condition annexed,—that every one, who enjoyed the company of the princess, should tell her the most cunning and the most wicked thing he had ever done in his life. A day had only passed, when she brought him news of the robber. A man had told her that the most wicked thing he had ever done in his life, was the cutting off his own brother's head in order to prevent his being known as a robber of the king's treasury. "And the most cunning thing?" asked the monarch. "The most cunning thing, Sir," added the princess, was his having made your guards drunk with wine in order to carry off his brother's body, his mother having threatened to come and disclose the whole affair, in case the body remained exposed."—" And where is this impudent-souled traitor?" exclaimed the king. Alas, Sir," answered the princess, "I know not." "Did I not bid you catch his arm," said the king, "the instant you discovered him ?”, "I did, Sir," replied the lady, but what was my astonishment on fiuding it detach itself from his body, while he glided away in the darkness of the night?" "How!" cried the prince:-" why this is a sorcerer, or what sort of man is he?" "A young man,' "said the princess, "with sparkling eyes and a world of wit." "The artful impostor,' said the king," has beguiled you of your heart, and taught you this tale to deceive me." 66 Pray look in this box, Sir," said the daughter, lifting up the lid of a lyre-case. It contained a human arm; and the king, by certain marks, plainly knew it to be one of the arms of the dead body. This audacious man therefore, whoever he was, must have come prepared with it, and presented it to his fair detainer in the dark instead of his own. 66 The king, having satisfied himself of the robber's personal qualities from his daughter, and finding that he would as much grace a court as a cabinet, fairly lost his rage in delight. He made public proclamation, that upon the offender's appearing in the royal presence, he would not only pardon but reward him; and the proclamation had not been made for more than the sinking of an inch of Nile-water, when the prodigious thief appeared. He was, as the princess had described him, a young man with a lively countenance, and he was not slow in showing his wit, for on the king's asking him why he had plundered his property, he said he had not done so; because by the laws of justice every man can make use of his own; but the king's property was too large for any one man to make use of; therefore, by the same laws, it was not his own. On being further asked who he was, he said "he was the son of the man who had built the Tower of Treasure; that his father had contrived one of the stones of it in such a way, that they who were in the secret could remove it at will; that the old man on his death-bed communicated the information to his sons, who used always to plunder in company; that it was by his brother's own request he cut his head off, and carried it away, in order to prevent the ruin of them both and their aged mother; and finally, that if the king would be pleased to bestow the intended reward on the old woman, he, for his part, would be happy to serve him in any capacity which the royal wisdom might be pleased to point out." Rhampsinitus gladly took him at his word. He enriched the old mother; united the young man to his daughter; and increased from that time forward, in a power of a less oppressive kind to his subjects then the amassing of wealth. This is the story from Herodotus, which we spoke of in the article entitled Thieves Ancient and Modern, No. XI. p. 83. A NOW, DESCRIPTIVE OF A HOT DAY. Now the rosy- (and lazy-) fingered Aurora, issuing from her saffron house, calls up the moist vapours to surround her, and goes veiled with them as long as she can; till Phœbus, coming forth in his power, looks every thing out of the sky, and holds sharp uninterrupted empire from his throne of beams. Now the mower begins to make his sweeping cuts more slowly, and resorts oftener to the beer. Now the carter sleeps a-top of his load of hay, or plods with double slouch of shoulder, looking out with eyes winking under his shading hat, and with a hitch upward of one side of his mouth. Now the little girl at her grandmother's cottage-door watches the coaches that go by, with her hand held up over her sunny forehead. Now labourers look well resting in their white shirts at the doors of rural alehouses. Now an elm is fine there, with a seat under it; and horses drink out of the trough, stretching their yearning necks with loosened collars; and the traveller calls for his glass of ale, having been without one for more than ten minutes; and his horse stands wincing at the flies, giving sharp shivers of his skin, and moving to and fro his ineffectual docked tail; and now Miss Betty Wilson, the host's daughter, comes streaming forth in a flowered gown and ear-rings, carrying with four of her beautiful fingers the foaming glass, for which, after the traveller has drank it, she receives with an indifferent eye, looking another way, the lawful two-pence: that is to say, unless the traveller, nodding his ruddy face, pays some gallant compliment to her before he drinks, such as 66 I'd rather kiss you, my dear, than the tumbler,"—or “ I'll wait for you, my love, if you'll marry me;" upon which, if the man is good-looking and the lady in good-humour, she smiles and bites her lips, and says "Ah-men can talk fast enough;" upon which the old stage-coachman, who is buckling something near her, before he sets off, says in a hoarse voice, “So can women too for that matter," and John Boots grins through his ragged red locks, and doats on the repartée all the day after. Now grasshoppers "fry," as Dryden says. Now cattle stand in water, and ducks are envied. Now boots and shoes, and trees by the road side, are thick with dust; and dogs, rolling in it, after issuing out of the water, into which they have been thrown to fetch sticks, come scattering horror among the legs of the spectators. Now a fellow who finds he has three miles further to go in a pair of tight shoes, is in a pretty situation. Now rooms with the sun upon them become intolerable; and the apothecary's apprentice, with a bitterness beyond aloes, thinks of the pond he used to bathe in at school. Now men with powdered heads (especially if thick) envy those that are unpowdered, and stop to wipe them up hill, with countenances that seem to expostulate with destiny. Now boys assemble round the village pump with a ladle to it, and delight to make a forbidden splash and get wet through the shoes. Now also they make suckers of leather, and bathe all day long in rivers and ponds, and follow the fish into their cool corners, and say millions of "My eyes!" at "tittle-bats." Now the bee, as he hums along, seems to be talking heavily of the heat. Now doors and brick-walls are burning to the hand; and a walled lane, with dust and broken bottles in it, near a brick-field, is a thing not to be thought of. Now a green lane, on the contrary, thick-set with hedge-row elms, and having the noise of a brook "rumbling in pebble-stone," is one of the pleasantest things in the world. Now youths and damsels walk through hay-fields, by chance; and the latter say, "Ha' done then, William;" and the overseer in the next field calls out to "let thic thear hay thear bide ;" and the girls persist, merely to plague "such a frumpish old fellow." Now, in town, gossips talk more than ever to one another, in rooms, in door-ways, and out of window, always beginning the conversation with saying that the heat is overpowering. Now blinds are let down, and doors thrown open, and flannel waistcoats left off, and cold meat preferred to hot, and wonder expressed why tea continues so refreshing, and people delight to sliver lettuces into bowls, and apprentices. water door-ways with tin-canisters that lay several atoms of dust. Now the water-cart, jumbling along the middle of the street, and jolting the showers out of it's box of water, really does something. Now boys delight to have a water-pipe let out, and see it bubbling away in a tall and frothy volume. Now fruiterers' shops and dairies look pleasant, and ices are the only things to those who can get them. Now ladies loiter in baths; and people make presents of flowers; and wine is put into ice; and the after-dinner lounger recreates his head with applications of perfumed water out of long-necked bottles. Now the lounger, who cannot resist riding his new horse, feels his boots burn him. Now buck-skins are not the lawn of Cos. Now jockies, walking in great coats to lose flesh, curse inwardly. Now five fat people in a stage coach, hate the sixth fat one who is coming in, and think he has no right to be so large. Now clerks in offices do nothing,. but drink soda-water and spruce-beer, and read the newspaper. Now the old clothes-man drops his solitary cry more deeply into the areas on the hot and forsaken side of the street; and bakers look vicious; and cooks are aggravated: and the steam of a tavern kitchen catches |