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Updated: May 10, 2025
So much is certain, that all snakes cannot be played upon in this way: there are some species which are utterly callous to the influences to which the cobra yields itself so readily. No missionary will find any difficulty in getting a snake-charmer to appreciate that Scripture text about the deaf adder which will not listen to the voice of the charmer, charm he never so wisely.
"I should think you'd feel rather handicapped you can't very well toddle, even if you want to." The camel hang his head lugubriously. "I wish you'd say something," continued Betty sweetly. "Say you like me, camel. Say you think I'm beautiful. Say you'd like to belong to a pretty snake-charmer." The camel would. "Will you dance with me, camel?" The camel would try.
"Will the mem-sahib deign to drink?" a deferential voice asked behind her. She looked round sharply to see the old snake-charmer, bent nearly double with age and humility, meekly offering her a small brass drinking-vessel. His offer surprised her, knowing the Hindu's horror of a stranger's polluting touch, but she accepted it without question.
"Yes, Baas, and so no doubt he would have done had you not been protected by the Great Medicine, and me too had not my grandfather been a snake-charmer, to say nothing of the smell of the Medicine being on me as well. The snakes know those that they should bite, Baas." "So do the mosquitoes," I answered, grabbing a handful of them. "The Great Medicine has no effect upon them."
And besides that, I didn't want Pearl to be like the spangled circus ladies, even if some of them were lovely and the Fat Woman perfectly grand; so was one of the clowns. You can't imagine, Aunt Hetty, what a noble, charitable fellow Jerry was. I disliked to leave them. But how I hated the snake-charmer; you can't imagine, Auntie." Aunt Hetty shivered at the mere mention of a snake-charmer.
On leaving the interpreter's house to walk back to the ship's boat, we were lighted by a misty moon which gave the effect of twilight, and in our half lethargic state could hardly be sure that what we had seen that evening was not, after all, a dream or a strange hypnotic memory the dancing Maharajah, the Pandita performing the marriage ceremony, the terrible sword-dance, and the little snake-charmer fascinating her own plump hands!
"The child is ill," said my mother. "He is hysterical," said my father. I never told them, and they never knew. Already had I developed reticence concerning this quality of mine, this semi-disassociation of personality as I think I am justified in calling it. I saw the snake-charmer, and no more of the circus did I see that night.
Ah! you must think of the circumstances in which I was placed you must think, too, of the hours I spent with the snake-charmer of the tales he told me in that dark tree-cave the stories of runaways, of sleuth-dogs, of man-hunters, and "nigger-hunts," practices long thought to be confined to Cuba, but which I found as rife upon the soil of Louisiana, you must think of all these, and then you will understand why I trembled at the distant baying of a hound.
So much for the art of the snake-charmer and the craft of an evil man. No. Thunder-maker did not move while the strangers were watching him. To all outward appearance he was asleep. Holden stepped forward and shook the Medicine Man roughly by the shoulder. "Come along! Open your eyes, you old scoundrel. You are no more sleeping than we are," he said.
So it is altogether fit that a performer of wonders should be on intimate terms with the serpent tribe. The snake-charmer keeps all sorts of them, but chiefly cobras. These he professes to charm from their holes by playing upon an instrument which may have some hereditary connection with the bagpipe, for it has an air-reservoir consisting of a large gourd, and it makes a most abominable noise.
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