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His eyes were at once attracted by the bowl of restless fluid on the table. "What's that?" he asked. Roger Seaton smiled enigmatically. "Only a trifle" he answered "Just health! It's a sort of talisman; germ-proof, dust-proof, disease-proof! No microbe of mischief, however infinitesimal, can exist near it, and a few drops, taken into the system, revivify the whole."
For the last five months that I spent in Cleveland, I carried in my purse one solitary cent as a sort of talisman; firmly believing that some day it would turn into gold: but this did not happen; and on the day that I was expecting the receipt of the last eighteen dollars for my lessons, which were designed to bear my expenses to New York, I gave it to a poor woman in the street who begged me for a cent; and it doubtless, ere long, found its way into a gin-shop.
All the same, if you offered a lump sum for any fellow to go and camp out half-way up the side of Thunder Mountain for a week, I don't believe he could be found, not at Circle Ranch, anyhow." "I've seen the same kind of men myself; and the coons around our old Kentucky home always carried a foot of a graveyard rabbit, shot in the full of the moon, as a sure talisman against ghosts.
It was John's letter, come just an hour too late to gladden the eyes that had longed and looked for it so eagerly; yet he had it; for, after I had cut some brown locks for his mother, and taken off the ring to send her, telling how well the talisman had done its work, I kissed this good son for her sake, and laid the letter in his hand, still folded as when I drew my own away, feeling that its place was there, and making myself happy with the thought, even in his solitary place in the "Government Lot," he would not be without some token of the love which makes life beautiful and outlives death.
The snow chokes up the dreary street, and the whistling wind cuts the beggar's rags. But it is Italy, it is Ceylon, it is tropic gorgeousness within. And these are the abodes of the children of fortune, whose wishes require no talisman but expression, who, all their lives long, have been used to such indulgence, or who accept it now as the fruit of their own effort.
Let him come then, I will expect him, and how brave or redoubtable soever he be, I will make him feel the weight of my arm. I swear solemnly that I shall extirpate all the genies in the world, and him first. The princess, who knew the consequence, conjured me not to touch the talisman, for that would be a mean, said she, to ruin both you and me; I know what belongs to genies better than you.
'Vah! vah! said the slave, with great asperity; 'think of thine own danger ere thou thus pratest of my poor boy's death. 'My own danger! said the girl, frightened and looking hastily around 'Avert the omen! let thy words fall on thine own head! And the girl, as she spoke, touched a talisman suspended round her neck. "Thine own danger!" what danger threatens me?
The prince, to see what the talisman was, took it out to the light, the tent being dark; and, while he was holding it up in his hand, a bird darted down from the air, and snatched it away. The bird, having got her prize, pitched upon the ground, not far off, with the talisman in her mouth.
At last he said: "I remember, Signor Geronimo, to have read in Pliny curious details of the draconite and its extraordinary powers, but I also remember that the great naturalist forgets to tell us the inherent qualities of the stone. Alas! signor, would you trust in this talisman, and believe that it could protect you against the dagger of the assassin?
Then she drew up the chair in which she had been sitting; took the little brass bear in her left hand, as a talisman to help her through what lay before her; turned the second picture with its face to the easel; and sat down to the quiet contemplation of the first. The noble figure of a woman, nobly painted, was the first impression which leapt from eye to brain.
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