358 SUPERSTITIONS 



invite the attention of the world of spirits to a 

 condition which was rapidly growing untenable, 

 and to request permission to qualify for member- 

 ship of the celestial circle after a limited period 

 and by natural means. Summoning the lizard, 

 therefore, they despatched him on this important 

 errand with many injunctions to secrecy. It fell, 

 however, that some member of the conference, 

 unable to support a secret of so weighty a character, 

 deliberately gave it away to an amazed and in- 

 dignant populace, who promptly commissioned a 

 messenger of their own, praying that, at all hazards 

 of famine and hunger, they might be permitted to 

 live as they had always done, and keep death at 

 a distance. By some lamentable error of judgment, 

 their choice of a bearer for so all-important a re- 

 quest fell, of all creatures in the world, upon the 

 chameleon. With a calm deliberation, and that 

 absence of flurry which characterise this singular 

 creature's every movement, he inconsiderately ac- 

 cepted the commission, and departed on his vital 

 errand his eyes fixed upon futurity and his mind 

 centred upon flies. In such a mental condition, 

 it naturally took him some considerable time to 

 reach his journey's end, but finally he found him- 

 self in the land of shades, where he was received 

 with the consideration befitting the importance of 

 his mission. He was informed in response to his 

 leisurely representations that, unluckily for the hopes 

 of the races of men, the hzard had already been en- 

 trusted with full powers to introduce death into the 

 world by natural causes, and had already a long 

 start of him. Thus, as nothing could now be done 



