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crow ugly enough to frighten the minister he kept it at Mother Rigby's cottage for the himself. But, on this occasion, as she had convenience of slipping it on whenever he awakened in an uncommonly pleasant humor, wished to make a grand appearance at the and was further dulcified by her pipe of to-governor's table. To match the coat, there bacco, she resolved to produce something was a velvet waistcoat of very ample size, fine, beautiful, and splendid, rather than hid- and formerly embroidered with foliage, that eous and horrible. had been as brightly golden as the maple"I don't want to set up a hobgoblin in my leaves in October, but which had now quite own corn-patch, and almost at my own door- vanished out of the substance of the velvet. step," said Mother Rigby to herself, puffing Next came a pair of scarlet breeches, once out a whiff of smoke; "I could do it if I pleas-worn by the French governor of Louisbourg, ed; but I'm tired of doing marvellous things, and the knees of which had touched the lowand so I'll keep within the bounds of every- er step of the throne of Louis le Grand. The day business, just for variety's sake. Besides, Frenchman had given these small-clothes to there is no use in scaring the little children, an Indian powwow, who parted with them for a mile roundabout, though 'tis true I'm a to the old witch for a gill of strong waters, witch!" at one of their dances in the forest. Furthermore, Mother Rigby produced a pair of silk stockings, and put them on the figure's legs, where they showed as unsubstantial as a dream, with the wooden reality of the two sticks making itself miserably apparent through the holes. Lastly, she put her dead husband's wig on the bare scalp of the pumpkin, and surmounted the whole with a dusty three-cornered hat, in which was stuck the longest tail feather of a rooster.

It was settled, therefore, in her own mind, that the scarecrow should represent a fine gentleman of the period, so far as the materials at hand would allow. Perhaps it may be as well to enumerate the chief of the articles that went to the composition of this figure.

The most important item of all, probably, although it made so little show, was a certain broomstick, on which Mother Rigby had taken many an airy gallop at midnight, and which now served the scarecrow by way of a spinal column, or, as the unlearned phrase it, a backbone. One of its arms was a disabled flail which used to be wielded by Goodman Rigby, before his spouse worried him out of this troublesome world; the other, if I mistake not, was composed of the puddingstick and a broken rung of a chair, tied loosely together at the elbow. As for its legs, the right was a hoe-handle, and the left an undistinguished and miscellaneous stick from the wood pile. Its lungs, stomach, and other affairs of that kind, were nothing better than a meal bag, stuffed with straw. Thus, we have made out the skeleton and entire corporcity of the scarecrow, with the exception of its head; and this was admirably supplied by a somewhat withered and shrivelled pumpkin, in which Mother Rigby cut two holes for the eyes and a slit for the mouth, leaving a bluish-colored knob in the middle, to pass for a nose. It was really quite a respectable face. "I've seen worse ones on human shoulders, at any rate," said Mother Rigby. "And many a fine gentleman has a pumpkin head, as well as my scarecrow!"

But the clothes, in this case, were to be the making of the man. So the good old woman took down from a peg an ancient plum-colored coat, of London make, and with relics of embroidery on its seams, cuffs, pocket-flabs, and button-holes, but lamentably worn and faded, patched at the elbows, tattered at the skirts, and threadbare all over. On the left breast was a round hole, whence either a star of nobility had been rent away, or else the hot heart of some former wearer had scorched it through and through. The neighbors said, that this rich garment belonged to the Black Man's wardrobe, and that

Then the old dame stood the figure up in a corner of her cottage, and chuckled to behold its yellow semblance of a visage, with its nobby little nose thrust into the air. It had a strangely self-satisfied aspect, and seemed to say, "Come look at me!"

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"And you are well worth looking at— that's a fact!" quoth Mother Rigby, in admiration at her own handiwork. I've made many a puppet, since I've been a witch; but methinks this is the finest of them all. 'Tis almost too good for a scarecrow. And, by the by, I'll just fill a fresh pipe of tobacco, and then take him out to the corn-patch.”

While filling her pipe, the old woman continued to gaze with almost motherly affection at the figure in the corner. To say the truth, whether it were chance, or skill, or downright witchcraft, there was something wonderfully human in this ridiculous shape, bedizened with its tattered finery; and as for the countenance, it appeared to shrivel its yellow surface into a grin-a funny kind of expres sion, betwixt scorn and merriment, as if it understood itself to be a jest at mankind. The more Mother Rigby looked, the better she was pleased.

"Dickon," cried she sharply, "another coal for my pipe!"

Hardly had she spoken than, just as before, there was a red-glowing coal on the top of the tobacco.

She drew in a long whiff, and puffed it forth again into the bar of morning sunshine, which struggled through the one dusty pane of her cottage window. Mother Rigby always liked to flavor her pipe with a coal of fire from the particular chimney corner whence this had been brought. But where that chimney corner might be, or who brought the coal from it-further than that

the invisible messenger seemed to respond to | crow's visage. The old witch clapt her skinthe name of Dickon-I cannot tell.

"That puppet, yonder," thought Mother Rigby, still with her eyes fixed on the scarecrow, "is too good a piece of work to stand all summer in a corn-patch, frightening away the crows and blackbirds. He's capable of better things. Why, I've danced with a worse one, when partners happened to be scarce, at our witch-meetings in the forest! What if I should let him take his chance among the other men of straw and empty fellows, who go bustling about the world?"" The old witch took three or four more whiff's of her pipe, and smiled.

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He'll meet plenty of his brethren at every street-corner!" continued she. "Well; I didn't mean to dabble in witchcraft to-day, further than the lighting of my pipe; but a witch I am, and a witch I'm likely to be, and there's no use trying to shirk it. I'll make a man of my scarecrow, were it only for the joke's sake!"

While muttering these words, Mother Rigby took the pipe from her own mouth, and thrust it into the crevice which represented the same feature in the pumpkin-visage of the scarecrow.

"Puff, darling, puff!" said she. "Puff away, my fine fellow! your life depends on it!"

This was a strange exhortation, undoubtedly, to be addressed to a mere thing of sticks, straw, and old clothes, with nothing better than a shrivelled pumpkin for a head; as we know to have been the scarecrow's case. Nevertheless, as we must carefully hold in remembrance, Mother Rigby was a witch of singular power and dexterity; and, keeping this fact duly before our minds, we shall see nothing beyond credibility in the remarkable incidents of our story. Indeed, the great difficulty will be at once got over, if we can only bring ourselves to believe, that, as soon as the old dame bade him puff, there came a whiff of smoke from the scarecrow's mouth. It was the very feeblest of whiffs, to be sure; but it was followed by another and another, each more decided than the preceding one.

ny hands together, and smiled encouragingly upon her handiwork. She saw that the charin worked well. The shrivelled, yellow face, which heretofore had been no face at all, had already a thin, fantastic haze, as it were, of human likeness, shifting to and fro across it; sometimes vanishing entirely, but growing more perceptible than ever with the next whiff from the pipe. The whole figure, in like manner, assumed a show of life, such as we impart to ill-defined shapes among the clouds, and half-deceive ourselves with the pastime of our own fancy.

If we must needs pry closely into the matter, it may be doubted whether there was any real change, after all, in the sordid, worn-out, worthless, and ill-jointed substance of the scarecrow; but merely a spectral illusion, and a cunning effect of light and shade, so colored and contrived as to delude the eyes of most men. The miracles of witchcraft seem always to have had a very shallow subtlety; and, at least, if the above explanation do not hit the truth of the process, I can suggest no better.

"Well puffed, my pretty lad!" still cried old Mother Rigby. "Come, another good, stout whiff, and let it be with might and main! Puff for thy life, I tell thee! Puff out of the very bottom of thy heart; if any heart thou hast, or any bottom to it! Well done, again! Thou didst suck in that mouthfull as if for the pure love of it."

And then the witch beckoned to the scarecrow, throwing so much magnetic potency into her gesture, that it seemed as if it must inevitably be obeyed, like the mystic call of the loadstone, when it summons the iron.

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Why lurkest thou in the corner, lazy one?" said she. "Step forth! Thou hast the world before thee?"

Upon my word, if the legend were not one which I heard on my grandmother's knee, and which had established its place among things credible before my childish judgment could analyze its probability, I question whether I should have the face to tell it now!

In obedience to Mother Rigby's word, and "Puff away, my pet! puff away, my pretty extending its arm as if to reach her outone!" Mother Rigby kept repeating, with her stretched hand, the figure made a step forpleasantest smile. "It is the breath of life ward-a kind of hitch and jerk, however, to ye; and that you may take my word for!" rather than a step-then tottered, and alinost Beyond all question the pipe was bewitch- lost its balance. What could the witch exed. There must have been a spell either in pect? It was nothing, after all, but a scarethe tobacco or in the fiercely glowing coal crow, stuck upon two sticks. But the strongthat so mysteriously burned on top of it, or willed old beldam scowled, and beckoned, in the pungently aromatic smoke which ex- and flung the energy of her purpose so forcihaled from the kindled weed. The figure, bly at this poor combination of rotten wood, after a few doubtful attempts, at length blew and musty straw, and ragged garments, that forth a volley of sinoke, extending all the it was compelled to show itself a man, in spite way from the obscure corner into the bar of of the reality of things. So it stepped into the sunshine. There it eddied and melted away bar of sunshine. There it stood—poor devil among the motes of dust. It seemed a con- of a contrivance that it was!-with only the vulsive effort; for the two or three next thinnest vesture of human similitude about whiff's were fainter, although the coal still it, through which was evident the stiff, rickglowed, and threw a gleam over the scare-etty, incongruous, faded, tattered, good-for

nothing patchwork of its substance, ready to sink in a heap upon the floor, as conscious of its own unworthiness to be erect. Shall I confess the truth? At its present point of vivification, the scarecrow reminds me of some of the lukewarm and abortive characters, composed of heterogeneous materials, used for the thousandth time, and never worth using, with which romance-writers (and myself, no doubt, among the rest), have so over-peopled the world of fiction.

"Thou hast a man's aspect," said she, sternly. "Have also the echo and mockery of a voice! I bid thee speak!"

The scarecrow gasped, struggled, and at length emitted a murmur, which was so incorporated with its smoky breath that you could scarcely tell whether it were indeed a voice, or only a whiff of tobacco. Some narrators of this legend, hold the opinion, that Mother Rigby's conjurations, and the fierceness of her will, had compelled a familiar spirit into the figure, and that the voice was his.

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But the fierce old hag began to get angry, and show a glimpse of her diabolic nature (like a snake's head, peeping with a hiss out 'Mother," mumbled the poor stifled voice, of her bosoin,) at this pusillanimous behavior" be not so awful with me! I would fain of the thing, which she had taken the trouble speak; but being without wits, what can I to put together.

"Puff away, wretch!" cried she, wrathfully. "Puff, puff, puff, thou thing of straw and emptiness!-thou rag or two!-thou meal-bag!-thou pumpkin-head!-thou nothing!-where shall I find a name vile enough to call thee by! Puff, I say, and suck in thy fantastic life along with the smoke; else I snatch the pipe from thy mouth, and hurl thee where that red coal came from!"

Thus threatened, the unhappy scarecrow had nothing for it, but to puff away for dear life. As need was, therefore, it applied itself lustily to the pipe, and sent forth such abundant volleys of tobacco-smoke, that the small cottage-kitchen became all vaporous. The one sunbeam struggled mistily through, and could but imperfectly define the image of tha cracked and dusty window-pane on the opposite wall. Mother Rigby, meanwhile, with one brown arm akimbo, and the other stretched towards the figure, loomed grimly amid the obscurity, with such port and expression as when she was wont to heave a ponderous nightmare on her victims, and stand at the bedside to enjoy their agony. In fear and trembling did this poor scarecrow puff. But its efforts, it must be acknowledged, served an excellent purpose; for, with each successive whiff, the figure lost more and more of its dizzy and perplexing tenuity, and seemed to take denser substance. Its very garments, moreover, partook of the magical change, and shone with the gloss of novelty, and glistened with the skilfully embroidered gold that had long ago been rent away. And, half-revealed among the smoke, a yellow visage bent its lustreless eyes on Mother Rigby.

At last, the old witch clenched her fist, and shook it at the figure. Not that she was positively angry, but merely acting on the principle-perhaps untrue, or not the only truth, though as high a one as Mother Rigby could be expected to attain-that feeble and torpid natures, being incapable of better inspiration, must be stirred up by fear. But here was the crisis. Should she fail in what she now sought to effect, it was her ruthless purpose to scatter the miserable simulacre into its original elements.

say?"

"Thou canst speak, darling, canst thou?" cried Mother Rigby, relaxing her grim countenance into a smile. "And what shalt thou say, quoth-a! Say, indeed! Art thou of the brotherhood of the empty skull, and demandest of me what thou shalt say? Thou shalt say a thousand things, and saying them a thousand times over, thou shalt still have said nothing! Be not afraid, I tell thee! When thou comest into the world (whither I purpose sending thee, forthwith), thou shalt not lack the wherewithal to talk. Talk! Why, thou shalt babble like a mill-stream, if thou wilt. Thou hast brains enough for that, I trow!"

"At your service, mother," responded the figure.

"And that was well said, my pretty one!" answered Mother Rigby. "Then thou spakest like thyself, and meant nothing. Thou shalt have a hundred such set phrases, and five hundred to the boot of them. And now, darling, I have taken so much pains with thee, and thou art so beautiful, that, by my troth, I love thee better than any witch's puppet in the world; and I've made them of all sorts-clay, wax, straw, sticks, night-fog, morning-mist, sea-foam, and chimney-smoke! But thou art the very best. So give heed to what I say!"

"Yes, kind mother," said the figure, "with all my heart!"

"With all thy heart!" cried the old witch, setting her hands to her sides, and laughing loudly. "Thou hast such a pretty way of speaking! With all thy heart! And thou didst put thy hand to the left side of thy waistcoat, as if thou really hadst one!"

So now, in high good humor with this fantastic contrivance of hers, Mother Rigby told the scarecrow that it must go and play its part in the great world, where not one man in a hundred, she affirmed, was gifted with more real substance than itself. And, that he might hold up his head with the best of them, she endowed him, on the spot, with an unreckonable amount of wealth. It consisted partly of a gold mine in Eldorado, and of ten thousand shares in a broken bubble, and of half a million acres of vineyard at the North

Pole, and of a castle in the air and a chateau in Spain, together with all the rents and income therefrom accruing. She further made

over to him the cargo of a certain ship, laden with salt of Cadiz, which she herself, by her necromantic arts, had caused to founder, ten years before, in the deepest part of mid-ocean. If the salt were not dissolved, and could be brought to market, it would fetch a pretty penny among the fishermen. That he might not lack ready money, she gave him a copper farthing, of Birmingham manufacture, being all the coin she had about her, and likewise a great deal of brass, which she applied to his forehead, thus making it yellower than

ever.

SMILES AND TEARS. WRITTEN FOR THE INTERNATIONAL MAGAZINE, BY RICHARD COE.

"ART thou happy, little child,

On this clear bright summer's day, In the garden sporting wild,

Art thou happy? tell me, pray!"

"If I had that pretty thing,

That has flown to yonder tree,

I would laugh, and dance, and sing-
Oh! how happy I should be!"
Then I caught the butterfly,

Placed it in his hands securely,
Now, methought, his pretty eye
Never more will look demurely!
"Art thou happy, now?" said I,
Tears were sparkling in his eye;
Lo! the butterfly was dead-
In his hands its life had sped!
"Art thou happy, maiden fair,

On this long, bright summer's day,
Culling flowerets so rare,

Art thou happy? tell me, pray!" "If my Henry were but here,

To enjoy the scene with me;
He whose love is so sincere,

Oh! how happy I should be!"
Soon I heard her lover's feet,

Sounding on the gravel lightly,
To his loving words so sweet,
Tender glances answered brightly!
"Art thou happy, now ?" I said,
Down she hung her lovely head,
Henry leaves for foreign skles-
Tears were in the maiden's eyes!

"Art thou happy, mother mild,

On this briglit, bright summer's day, Gazing on thy cherub child,

Art thou happy? tell me, pray!"

"If my baby-boy were well,"

Thus the mother spake to me,
"Gratitude my heart would swell-
Oh! how happy I should be!"
Then the cordial I supplied,

Soon the babe restored completely;
Cherub-faced and angel-eyed,

On his mother smiled he sweetly!
"Art thou happy, now?" I said;
"Would his father were not dead!"

Thus she answered me with sighs,
Scalding tear-drops in her eyes!
"Art thou happy, aged man,

On this glorious summer's day,
With a cheek all pale and wan,
Art thou happy tell me, pray!"
"If I were but safe above,"

Spake the old man unto me, "To enjoy my Saviour's love,

Oh how happy I should be!"
Then the angel Death came down,
And he welcomed him with gladness,
On his brow so pale and wan,

Not a trace was seen of sadness:
"Art thou happy, now?" I said;
"Yes!" he answered with his head;
Tears of joy were in his eyes,
Dew-drops from the upper skies!

FREEDOM OF THOUGHT AND THE
LATEST MIRACLES.

ARCHBISHOP HUGHES, in a late speech between the Roman Catholic Church and attempted an exposition of the relations Liberty, with special reference to the position assumed by him and other prelates, that the Roman Catholics are, not less than Protestants, upholders of freedom in opinion and his Grace will be better appreciated by our in discussion. The interesting brochure of readers, perhaps, if we mention a few recent facts illustrative of the subject, as it affects "authors and books." The French Roman

Catholic Bishop of Lucan has a pastoral in the Univers condemning Walter Scott's works, without exception. He does the same by Chateaubriand, and the Arabian Nights, and Don Quixote the first as Protestant, the second as insufficiently Catholic, the third as no Christian, the fourth as of no religion at all. One unhappy writer of school-books is condemned because he cites Guizot and Thierry; another because he blames the massacres of Saint Bartholomew, and thinks they were caused by "religious fanaticism." But first of all, and more than all, the bishop condemns "that irreligious" Parisian journal, La Presse. "The number of its subscribers is deplorable; but they are becoming and shall become less; no priest must subscribe to it. No priest must be seen with it. No priest must ordinarily' read it." This is all very proper, according to antecedents, but we should not like it if Bishop Hughes deprived us of the Tribune, the Herald, or the Journal of Commerce, all of which are as bad, in the same way, as the Presse. Another example of the prohibition of books, we add from the cyclic letter just issued by Cardinal Lambruschini, condemning Professor Nuytz's works

on ecclesiastical law:

"And further, although we derive great consolation from the promise of Jesus Christ, that the gates of hell shall never prevail against the Church, our soul cannot but feel excruciating pain, upon considering how daring outrages against divine and sacred things daily flow from the unbridled licentiousness, the perverse effrontery and impiety of the press. Now in this pestilence of corrupt books which invades us on all sides, the work entitled Institutes of Ecclesiastical Law, by John Nepomuc Nuytz, Professor in the Royal University of Turin, as also the work entitled Essays on Ecclesiastical Law, by the same author, claim a conspicuous place, inasmuch as the doctrines contained in the said nefarious works are so widely disseminated from one of the chairs of that university, that uncatholic theses selected from them are proposed as fit subjects for discussion to candidates aspiring to the doctor's degree. For in the above mentioned works and essays, such errors are taught under the semblance of asserting the rights of the priesthood and of the secular power, that instead of sound doctrines, thoroughly poisoned cups are offered to youth. For the said author hath not blushed to reproduce under a new form, in his impious propositions and comments, all those

doctrines which have been condemned by John II., Benedict XIV., Pius VI, and Gregory XVI., as well as by the decrees of the fourth Council of Lateran, and those of Florence and Trent. He openly asserts for example, that the Church has no right to enforce her authority by might, and that she has no temporal power whatever, whether direct

or indirect."

One of the latest miracles is described in the Paris Univers, as follows-in the most perfect good faith:

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baby herself, assuring her that, before she reached home, she would find herself in a condition to do so—a direction which the venerable applicant strictly obeyed, and found her hopes realized! Other supernatural answers were subsequently given by the saint to various applications of the neighboring peasantry, and stolen fowls and stray cattle were recovered by her indications. But the concourse of people at last grew so great that the ecclesiastical authorities interfered in behalf of the sybil, whom they placed in safety and repose within the walls of a convent, prohibiting, at the same time, any one from coming to consult her without the express permission of the bishop:

and at the close of the expiatory triduo which has been celebrated at Saint Andre della Valle in reparation of a sacrilegious outrage committed against the Madonna du Vicolo dell' Abate Luigi.'” Of course the girl never was ill at all. Miraculous agencies, it appears, have been applied to by the highest powers at Rome, with the purpose which actuates the old ladies who study Zadkiel. A young peasant girl living at Sezza, near the Neapolitan frontier, has been for some time in a kind of ecThere is much talk at Rome of an extraordi- static, or, as non-believers in miracles would nary cure which has taken a place in the very pal- call it, magnetic state, and in that part of the ace of the Vatican. The following is the manner province of Marittima and Campagna, is alin which this prodigious fact is described, ready known under the denomination of St. which will, without doubt, become the subject of Catherine. Her fame seems to have originated a judicial inquiry: A young girl of about twenty in a miracle which she worked some time ago years of age, whose family is employed in the domestic side of the palace, had contracted a bad on the person of an old woman, who came fever, owing to the loss of her father a little time to her in great distress because her daughter before, as well as to the influence of the season, had died in childbed, leaving the grandmowhich has multiplied at Rome diseases of this ther of the infant without pecuniary means kind, and by which a great number of victims for its support. "St. Catherine" is said to have fallen within the last few months. Notwith-have directed the old woman to suckle the standing the enlightened efforts of the doctor of the Pontifical family,' and of her parents, the young invalid was soon at the last extremity. The vice-curé of the palace (which, as is known, is a foundation), a member of the Augustin order (Monseigneur the Sacristan of the same order is the titular curé), had administered to her the sacrament of extreme unction, and had recited the prayer recommending her soul. Her last sigh was hourly expected. For the sake of enabling our readers to understand the prodigy about to be related, it is necessary to state that during the course of the malady the vice-curé had several times engaged the pious patient to invoke the aid of a venerable servant of God, of the Augustin order, whose beatification is about to be declared, and he had even mixed in the potions given to such girl some little fragments of the clothes of the ven- "From the accounts of dispassionate spectaerable man. On the other hand, according to the tors," writes the correspondent of the Daily News, usage of religious families, they had carried into "I am led to infer that there is really something the chamber of the dying person the Santo-Bam- extraordinary in the mental or physical organizabino del'Ara Coeli, demanding of these last re-tion of this young girl, as she alternates between Sources of the faithful a cure no longer in the reach of human science to bestow. Let us return to the bed of the dying girl, whom we find in a profound sleep, from which she shall soon awaken to relate with smiles on her lips how she had seen the infant Jesus, having at his side a venerable servant of God, clad in the habit of the order of St. Augustin. She adds that she feels herself cured, but very weak, and she asks for a cup of broth to give her strength. The broth is given to her, although the request is regarded as coming from one in the last agitation of dying; but the sick girl, who had felt the action of grace, and who knew well that she was cured, rises, throws off all the blisters, of which not a trace was left on her body, and on the following day repaired to the church of Ara Coli, at more than half a league distant, to thank the Santo Bambino and the servant of God, who had restored her to life and health. You may easily comprehend the sensation that a fact of this kind must have produced upon a population so full of faith, especially on the eve of the ceremony of the 21st, which will put solemnly upon the altar, in placing him among the blest, the venerable Father Clavier, of the Society of Jesus,

a dormant state, resembling magnetic sleep, and a strong degree of hysterical or nervous excitability; but whatever may be the real cause of the second sight or preternatural knowledge which she has, according to public rumor, so frequently displayed, it is certain that many persons of this city, including ecclesiastics of high rank, have profited by the opportunity of getting a peep into the future, and knowing betimes what they have to prepare for. Cardinals Lambruschini and Franzoni and the Duke Don Marino Torlonia are amongst the number of distinguished individuals who have applied to this modern oracle. The advocate Zaccaleoni, Monseigneur Appoloni, and many prelates have followed their example; indeed, the surprising replies and alarming prognostics of the Pythoness so far roused the fears and curiosity of the Pope himself, that he caused her to be sent for from the convent at Sezza, and brought to Rome, a few days ago, in the carriage of a respectable and religious couple, who went there for that express purpose. An interview took place between Pio Nono and the prophetess, immediately after which she was sent back to her retirement. The result of the interview has not

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