The Kennewick courier-reporter. [volume] (Kennewick, Wash.) 1914-1938, 1926-07-15

stand things for themselves by vir-
tue of their own natural endow-
ments; to the second those who
have at least the wit to discern
what others understand; and to
the third those who neither under
stand things for themselves nor
yet through the demonstrations
which others afford them. The first
are rare and excellent, since they
are the inventive and generative
class; the second are of merit,
since if not actually productive,
they are at least reproductive; the
third, being neither the one nor
the other, but mere parasites who
prey for their existence and often
profitable upon the other two, are
entirely worthless.
There is yet a fourth class which
the learned and subtle Florentine
appears to have overlooked, a
class which combines in itself the
attributes of those other three. In
this class I would place the famous
Corvinus Trismegistus, who was
the very oldest compound of in
ventiveness and stupidity, or du-
plicity and simplicity, Of deceit
and credulity, of guile and inno-
cence. of ingenuity and ingenious
ness, as you shall Judge.
To begin with, Messer Corvinus
Trismegistus had mastered-as his
very names implies-all the Sc
crets of nature, of medicine and Of
magic; so that the fame Of him
had gone out over face of Italy
like a ripple over water.
He knew, for instance, that the
oil of scorpions captured in sun
shine during the period Of Sol in
Scorpio-a most essential condi-
ton this was an infallible cure
for the plague. He knew that to
correct an enlargement of the
spleen, the certain way was to
take the spleen of a goat, apply
it for four-and-twenty hours to the
affected part, and thereafter ex-
pose it to the sun; in a measure
as the. goats spleen should desi-
cate and wither, in such measure
should the patients spleen be re-
duced and restored to health. He
knew. that the ashes of a VOLTS
skin never failed as remedy for
badness, and that to arrest bleed
ing of the nose nothing could rival
an infusion from the bark of an
olive tree, provided the bark were
taken from young tree in the
case of young patient, and from
an old tree in the case of an old
patient. He knew that serpents
stewed in wine, and afterward eat.
en- would make sound and whole q
leper, by comforting upon him the
serpent's faculty of changing it's
skin.
Deeply, too, was he versed in
poisons and entertainments, and he
made no secret-so frank and op-
en- was his nature of his power
to conjure spirits and, at need, to
restore the dead to life. He had
discovered an elixir vitae that pre-
served him still young and vigor-
Gus at the prodigious age of two
thousand years, which he claimed
to have attained; and another elk
ir, called Aqua Celeste-a very
complex and subtle distillation this
that would reduce an old mans
age by fifty years, and restore to
him his lost youth.
All this and much more was
known to Corvinus the Thrice
Mage, altho certain folk of Sad
ducaic mind have sought to show
that the sum of his knowledge con-
cerned the extent to which he
could abuse the credulity of his
contemporaries and render them
his dupes. Similarly it was alleged
-altho his adherents set it down
to the spite and envy that the
great must forever be provoking
in the mean-that his real name
was just Pietro Corvo, name he
got from his mother, who kept a
wineshop in Forli, and who could
not herself with any degree OF
precision have named his father.
And these deriders added that his
having lived two thousand years
was an idle vaunt, since there
were still many alive who remem-
bered to have seen him as an ILL
kempt, ditry urchin wallowing in
the kennels of his native town.
4 Be all that as it may, there is
no denying that he had achieved
a great and well-deserved renown,
and that he waxed rich in his
mean dwelling in Urbino-that
italia Atene, the cradle Of Italian
art and learning. And to wax rich
is, after all, considered by many