A Beautiful Article of Virtue.

Our esteemed fellow-townsman, Mr. Charles F. Gunther, the well-known candy-manufacturer, is indefatigable in collecting rare old curiosities. Not very long ago he discovered a genuine autograph of William Shakespeare, and he paid five thousand dollars for it; subsequently he found and bought a volume of Ella Wheeler Wilcox’s poems containing the autograph of Dante Alighieri written in a clean, round hand on one of the fly-pages; but still more recently he has come into possession of a relic more valuable than all the rest combined—in fact, so highly does Mr. Gunther prize this latest acquisition, that he freely confesses that he would not exchange it for an Ossa of caramels piled upon a Pelion of gum-drops. This relic is an Egyptian mummy, and Mr. Gunther exhibited it to us the other day. It seems that when Mr. Gunther was in Egypt some years ago, he fell in with Professor Schliemann, the famous excavator, archæologist, explorer, etc. At that time the professor was tunnelling into the pyramids, excavating the sphinx, and pursuing divers other humorous fads, whims, and crochets. Mr. Gunther took quite a fancy to the professor, showed him his autograph of Shakespeare, gave him a recipe for making lemon-taffy, and presented him with a photograph of McVicker’s theatre before the fire. For these 40manifestations of sympathy, Professor Schliemann was deeply grateful, and he promised to reciprocate in due course of time.

About a month ago Mr. Gunther was charmed to receive from the professor an express-package containing a mummy of the first water. Considering the wear and tear to which it must have been subjected for the last twenty or thirty centuries, this mummy is in excellent condition. We shall refer to the mummy as “it,” although Mr. Gunther chooses to call it “he.” It is not more than three feet in length, and its weight is perhaps equal to that of a two-dollar box of jujube paste. Its girth does not exceed twenty-eight inches. Such of its complexion as is exposed, is of the pronounced hue of chocolate-drops; and the few strands of hair remaining on the shrivelled scalp are as black and straight as a stick of licorice. Beginning at the upper part of the neck, and extending down beyond the toes, are tightly wrapped swathings of linen which have become begrimed with the dust of many hundreds of years. Outside the swathings which envelop the breast of this singularly unappetizing object of virtu, appears a broad strip of thin cloth, upon which is printed a large number of figures, which we supposed might have been used in ancient times as the advertisement of a zoölogical garden, but which, Mr. Gunther told us, was in fact a group of Egyptian hieroglyphics stating in brief 41the biography of the enclosed deceased. Mr. Gunther said he could not read the hieroglyphics, but he had asked a committee of members of the Chicago Literary Club—that quintessence of local learning and culture—to sit in inquest, as it were, upon this prehistoric corpse, and to decipher the rude characters emblazoned upon its pectoral envelopment. Mr. Gunther said that the committee had not yet made a report, but that, until it did, he would continue to indulge the belief that the remains were those either of Rameses II. or of Cambyses I. These persons, he went on to say, were Babylonian kings, who flourished in that pagan age when every man had several hundred wives,—a barbaric custom which most men openly denounce, but secretly covet. He knew that this specimen was a king, because of the evident care that had been taken to preserve him against the ravages of time; and he was confident that he was either Rameses II. or Cambyses I., because he had read recently in a number of the “Candy-Manufacturer’s Journal” that both these monarchs had been sepultured in one of the pyramids. It was with a good deal of anxiety, he added, that he awaited either the report of the Chicago Literary Club committee, or advices from Professor Schliemann, clearing away the clouds of doubt and mystery now surrounding the identity of this antique bric-à-brac.

42