text:  For what did it matter whether a magician dunned one with old ropes for his engines of torture or Stationers' Hall with 15 000 volumes (in the rear of which there might also be ropes?) Should _I_ have ventriloquized would my sister have laughed had either of us but guessed the possibility that I myself and within one twelve months and alas! standing alone in the world as regarded _confidential_ counsel should repeat within my own inner experience the shadowy panic of the young Bagdat intruder upon the privacy of magicians? It appeared then that I had been reading a legend concerning myself in the _Arabian Nights_