Ledyard, in his _Travels_, speaks thus contemptuously of this celebrated
wonder:--"This is the mighty, the sovereign of rivers--the vast Nile
that has been metamorphosed into one of the wonders of the world! Let me
be careful how I read, and, above all, how I read ancient history. You
have heard, and read too, much of its inundations. If the thousands of
large and small canals from it, and the thousands of men and machines
employed to transfer, by artificial means, the water of the Nile to the
meadows on its banks--if this be the inundation that is meant, it is
true; any other is false; it is not an inundating river."
* * * * *
The Jewish children to this day celebrate the fall and death of Haman,
and on that anniversary represent the blows which they would fain deal
on his scull, by striking with envenomed fury on the floor with wooden
hammers. This observance was but very lately forbidden in the Grand
Duchy of Baden.
* * * * *