HOW THE ARAB SECURED HIS MUMMY.

Lake Wakatip Mail, Issue 2660, 19 May 1908, Page 7

HOW THE ARAB SECURED HIS MUMMY.

—,—+ An Egyptian Arab wished to sell a set of tomb furniture to a European client, but he had neither tomb, furniture, nor body to his hand. However, he heard of a Copt who lived in a 'lonely part, and who was possessed of, and prepared for a deal in, those articles. A visit was paid, and the Copt had pots in plenty, but not a body worthy of the British Museum. Sinister thoughts laid hold of the Arab. To slay a Chrisr tian is a dangerous thing to do ; but need he, as one of the faithful, let that prey on his mind, should there be little chance of his being found out ? The (.'opt stooped to examine his

i pots once more, and the Arab dealt him a blow on the back of his neck. Seeing that his victim did not need a second, the Moslem stripped the body of its clothes and dragged it to a hollow in the desert. Here he trussed the poor Copt up in the position in which the predynastic folk were wont to lay out their dead, ; and trusted to the summer sun to dry the body up sufficiently to pass muster. . . Returning to the spot six months later, the Arab dealer found the defunct Copt done to a turn, got the body back to his shop and sold it, with the pots, to the British Musseum, where the reader -can no« r in- ' sped it whenever he likes. —From ' Tyndale's ' Below the Cataracts."

Barnum used to tell the story of an unscrupulous showman who passed off a precocious youngster as a pigmy wild man of the woods by sewing him in a hairy skin. The youth seemed to imagine, says Sir Fortune Free in the " Penny Magazine," he had found a comfortaide billet for life- But he giew fat, and one day burst all t'.e sl.ittlie's so shockingly that he gave the imposture away. That was his downfall, and the showman dismissed him with ignominy and went hunting for another youngster as his attraction. "The moral of that is," said Barman, "that you should not forget you wi'll grow up. A good many "lo»lk appear to manage to forget it very comfortably till they realise it in a very disagreeable fashion." The situation that may be good enough for to-day may prove a broken reed to-morrow.