My fathers--may the recollection of them be green forever!--did not think it sinful to borrow the idea, and apply it to their dumb servants.

See these tablets!" Ben-Hur took the rings, and separating the tablets saw they bore rude hieroglyphs in Arabic, burned on the smooth surface by a sharp point of heated metal.
"Canst thou read them, O son of Israel ?" "No.

Thou must tell me their meaning." "Know thou, then, each tablet records the name of a foal of the pure blood born to my fathers through the hundreds of years passed; and also the names of sire and dam.

Take them, and note their age, that thou mayst the more readily believe." Some of the tablets were nearly worn away.

All were yellow with age.
"In the chest there, I can tell thee now, I have the perfect history; perfect because certified as history seldom is--showing of what stock all these are sprung--this one, and that now supplicating thy notice and caress; and as they come to us here, their sires, even the furthest removed in time, came to my sires, under a tent-roof like this of mine, to eat their measure of barley from the open hand, and be talked to as children; and as children kiss the thanks they have not speech to express.