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Updated: May 16, 2025
At the Egyptian boundary, the tax collectors asked him about the contents of the casket, and Abraham told them he had barley in it. "No," they said, "it contains wheat." "Very well," replied Abraham, "I am prepared to pay the tax on wheat." The officers then hazarded the guess, "It contains pepper!"
"This is revolt rebellion!" he said, after a pause. "What shall I do? The men of Praousta are remarkable for their strength, as well as for their free and independent opinions." He ordered the collectors to leave the room, and await his call without; then paced thoughtfully up and down. The two young men dared not disturb him. "I do not know what to do," he said, after a long silence.
Wiser, too, than the popes and bishops of a former age, he did not threaten them with eternal damnation, but made them pay in hard cash the penalty of their disobedience. For many years, a very considerable revenue was collected from this source. The collectors gave in receipt for its payment a small copper coin, struck expressly for the purpose, and called the "borodovaia," or "the bearded."
It was never compulsory, there was no power to exact it. The question of the collectors, 'Doth not your Master pay tribute? does not sound like the imperative demand which a 'publican' would have made for payment of an impost due to the Roman Government.
The person who rendered this good service to palaeontology was Nicolas Steno, professor of anatomy in Florence, though a Dane by birth. Collectors of fossils at that day were familiar with certain bodies termed "glossopetrae," and speculation was rife as to their nature.
Here it must be confessed that modern sympathy is apt to falter, for though we can understand the zeal of American tourists for chips of palaces and the communal moral code peculiar to archæologists, coin collectors, and umbrella snatchers, we cannot understand the enthusiasm which the manliest, holiest, and robustest minds then displayed for relics, for stray split straws and strained twigs from the fledged bird's nests whence holy souls had fled to other skies.
With their heads turned to the east, they knelt and prayed, their whole bearing expressing dignity and high resolve. At the command of Mohammed, one of the governor's collectors was sent to Praousta.
Now a single white lie, he knew would do the trick. He had only to say that Hamlet was mad. And "Hamlet was mad" is easily said. Dr. Wycherley was a collector of mad people, and collectors are always amateurs, and very seldom connoisseurs. His turn of mind co-operating with his interests, led him to put down any man a lunatic, whose intellect was manifestly superior to his own.
Indeed the central Power was quite pleased that it should do so, for when next the gathering of taxes and youths came round the collectors would find a creditable harvest awaiting them. Such a tribe received no encouragement or help from the Government; that would have been too much to expect, but as long as it kept quiet and obedient it might, without interference, prosper as well as it could.
When they are of a sanguine instead of a morbid temperament, they become quid-nuncs and virtuosos collectors of caterpillars and odd volumes, makers of fishing-rods and curious in watch-chains. Will Wimble dabbled in this way, to his immortal honour. But many others have been less successful.
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