These pages
which you have brought to me to translate are concerned with this
superstition. The writer claims here that after centuries of research
and blending and grafting, carried on without a break by the priests of
his family, each one handing down, together with an inheritance of his
sacerdotal office, many wonderful truths respecting the growth of this
fruit,--the writer of these lines claims here, that he, the last of his
line, has succeeded in producing the one perfect food, from which
everything gross is eliminated, and whose spiritual result upon a normal
man is such as to turn him from a thing of clay into something
approaching a god."
"Does he mention anything about beans?" Burton asked anxiously.
Mr. Cowper nodded benignantly.
"The perfect food referred to," he said, "appears to have been produced
in the shape of small beans. They are to be eaten with great care, and
to ensure permanency in the results, a green leaf of the little tree is
to follow the consumption of the bean."
Burton sprang to his feet.
"A thousand thanks, professor!" he cried. "That is the one thing we
were seeking to discover. The leaves, of course!"
Mr. Cowper looked at his visitor in amazement.
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