Page:The humbugs of the world - An account of humbugs, delusions, impositions, quackeries, deceits and deceivers generally, in all ages (IA humbugsworld00barnrich).djvu/249

 with a picture of the doctor and his six brothers—for he is the seventh son of a seventh son. The six elder brethren—nice enough boys—stand submissively around their gigantic and bearded junior, reaching only to his waist, and gazing up at him with reverence, as the sheaves of Joseph’s brethren worshipped his sheaf in his dream. At the end is a picture of Magnus Roback, the grandfather of C. W., a bull-headed, ugly old Dutchman, with a globe and compasses. This picture, by the way, is in fact a cheap likeness of the old discoverers or geographers. Within the book we find Gustavus Roback, the father of C. W., for whom is used a cut of Jupiter—or some other heathen god—half-naked, a-straddle of an eagle, with a hook in one hand and a quadrant in the other; which is very much like the picture by one of the “Old Masters" of Abraham about to offer up Isaac, and taking a long aim at the poor boy with a flint-lock horse-pistol. Doctor Roback is good enough to tell us where his brothers are: “One, a high officer in the Empire of China, another a Catholic Bishop in the city of Rome,” and so on. There is also a cut of his sister, whom he cured of consumption. She is represented “talking to her bird, after the fashion of her country, when a maiden is unexpectedly rescued from the jaws of death!”

Roback cures all sorts of diseases, discovers stolen property, insures children a marriage, and so on, all by means of “conjurations.” He also casts nativities and foretells future events; and he shows in full how Bernadotte, Louis Philippe, and Napoleon Bonaparte either did well or would have done well by following his advice.