TO MAN

No matter how good thou art, O my Brother, or how bad thou art, no matter how high or how low in the scale of being thou art, I still would believe in thee, and have faith in thee, and love thee.  For do I not know what clings to thee, and what beckons to thee?  The claws of the one and the wings of the other, have I not felt and seen?  Look up, therefore, and behold this World-Temple, which, to us, shall be a resting-place, and not a goal.  On the border-line of the Orient and Occident it is built, on the mountain-heights overlooking both.  No false gods are worshipped in it,no philosophic, theologic, or anthropomorphic gods.  Yea, and the god of the priests and prophets is buried beneath the Fountain, which is the altar of the Temple, and from which flows the eternal spirit of our Makerour Maker who blinketh when the Claws are deep in our flesh, and smileth when the Wings spring from our Wounds.  Verily, we are the children of the God of Humour, and the Fountain in His Temple is ever flowing.  Tarry, and refresh thyself, O my Brother, tarry, and refresh thyself.

Khalid .

CHAPTER I - PROBING THE TRIVIAL

The most important in the history of nations and individuals was once the most trivial, and vice versa. The plebeian, who is called to-day the man-in-the-street, can never see and understand the significance of the hidden seed of things, which in time must develop or die. A garter dropt in the ballroom of Royalty gives birth to an Order of Knighthood; a movement to reform the spelling of the English language, initiated by one of the presidents of a great Republic, becomes eventually an object of ridicule. Only two instances to illustrate our point, which is applicable also to time-honoured truths and moralities. But no matter how important or trivial these, he who would give utterance to them must do so in cap and bells, if he would be heard nowadays. Indeed, the play is always the thing; the frivolous is the most essential, if only as a disguise. For look you, are we not too prosperous to consider seriously your ponderous preachment? And when you bring it to us in book form, do you expect us to take it into our homes and take you into our hearts to boot? Which argument is convincing even to the man in the barn.

But the Author of the Khedivial Library Manuscript can make his Genius dance the dance of the seven veils, if you but knew. It is to be regretted, however, that he has not mastered the most subtle of arts, the art of writing about one’s self. He seldom brushes his wings against the dust or lingers among the humble flowers close to the dust: he does not follow the masters in their entertaining trivialities and fatuities. We remember that even Gibbon interrupts the turgid flow of his spirit to tell us in his Autobiography that he really could, and often did, enjoy a game of cards in the evening. And Rousseau, in a suppurative passion, whispers to us in his Confessions that he even kissed the linen of Madame de Warens’ bed when he was alone in her room. And Spencer devotes whole pages in his dull and ponderous history of himself to narrate the all-important narration of his constant indisposition, to assure us that his ill health more than once threatened the mighty task he had in hand. These, to be sure, are most important revelations. But Khalid here misses his cue. Inspiration does not seem to come to him in firefly-fashion.

He would have done well, indeed, had he studied the method of the professional writers of Memoirs, especially those of France. For might he not then have discoursed delectably on The Romance of my Stick Pin, The Tragedy of my Sombrero, The Scandal of my Red Flannel, The Conquest of my Silk Socks, The Adventures of my Tuxedo, and such like? But Khalid is modest only in the things that pertain to the outward self. He wrote of other Romances and other Tragedies. And when his Genius is not dancing the dance of the seven veils, she is either flirting with the monks of the Lebanon hills or setting fire to something in New York. But this is not altogether satisfactory to the present Editor, who, unlike the Author of the Khedivial Library Ms ., must keep the reader in mind. ’Tis very well to endeavour to unfold a few of the mysteries of one’s palingenesis, but why conceal from us his origin? For is it not important, is it not the fashion at least, that one writing his own history should first expatiate on the humble origin of his ancestors and the distant obscure source of his genius? And having done this, should he not then tell us how he behaved in his boyhood; whether or not he made anklets of his mother’s dough for his little sister; whether he did not kindle the fire with his father’s Koran; whether he did not walk under the rainbow and try to reach the end of it on the hill-top; and whether he did not write verse when he was but five years of age. About these essentialities Khalid is silent. We only know from him that he is a descendant of the brave sea-daring Phoenicians a title which might be claimed with justice even by the aborigines of Yucatan and that he was born in the city of Baalbek, in the shadow of the great Heliopolis, a little way from the mountain-road to the Cedars of Lebanon. All else in this direction is obscure.

And the K. L. Ms . which we kept under our pillow for thirteen days and nights, was beginning to worry us. After all, might it not be a literary hoax, we thought, and might not this Khalid be a myth. And yet, he does not seem to have sought any material or worldly good from the writing of his Book. Why, then, should he resort to deception? Still, we doubted. And one evening we were detained by the sandomancer, or sand-diviner, who was sitting cross-legged on the sidewalk in front of the mosque. “I know your mind,” said he, before we had made up our mind to consult him. And mumbling his “abracadabra” over the sand spread on a cloth before him, he took up his bamboo-stick and wrote therein Khalid! This was amazing. “And I know more,” said he. But after scouring the heaven, he shook his head regretfully and wrote in the sand the name of one of the hasheesh-dens of Cairo. “Go thither; and come to see me again to-morrow evening.” Saying which, he folded his sand-book of magic, pocketed his fee, and walked away.

In that hasheesh-den, the reekiest, dingiest of the row in the Red Quarter, where the etiolated intellectualities of Cairo flock after midnight, the name of Khalid evokes much resounding wit, and sarcasm, and laughter.

“You mean the new Muhdi,” said one, offering us his chobok of hasheesh; “smoke to his health and prosperity. Ha, ha, ha.”

And the chorus of laughter, which is part and parcel of a hasheesh jag, was tremendous. Every one thereupon had something to say on the subject. The contagion could not be checked. And Khalid was called “the dervish of science” by one; “the rope-dancer of nature” by another.

“Our Prophet lived in a cave in the wilderness of New York for five years,” remarked a third.

“And he sold his camel yesterday and bought a bicycle instead.”

“The Young Turks can not catch him now.”

“Ah, but wait till England gets after our new Muhdi.”

“Wait till his new phthisic-stricken wife dies.”

“Whom will our Prophet marry, if among all the virgins of Egypt we can not find a consumptive for him?”

“And when he pulls down the pyramids to build American Skyscrapers with their stones, where shall we bury then our Muhdi?”

All of which, although mystifying to us, and depressing, was none the less reassuring. For Khalid, it seems, is not a myth. No; we can even see him, we are told, and touch him, and hear him speak.

“Shakib the poet, his most intimate friend and disciple, will bring you into the sacred presence.”

“You can not miss him, for he is the drummer of our new Muhdi, ha, ha, ha!”

And this Shakib was then suspended and stoned. But their humour, like the odor and smoke of gunjah, (hasheesh) was become stifling. So, we lay our chobok down; and, thanking them for the entertainment, we struggle through the rolling reek and fling to the open air.

In the grill-room of the Mena House we meet the poet Shakib, who was then drawing his inspiration from a glass of whiskey and soda. Nay, he was drowning his sorrows therein, for his Master, alas! has mysteriously disappeared.

“I have not seen him for ten days,” said the Poet; “and I know not where he is. If I did? Ah, my friend, you would not then see me here. Indeed, I should be with him, and though he be in the trap of the Young Turks.” And some real tears flowed down the cheeks of the Poet, as he spoke.

The Mena House, a charming little Branch of Civilisation at the gate of the desert, stands, like man himself, in the shadow of two terrible immensities, the Sphinx and the Pyramid, the Origin and the End. And in the grill-room, over a glass of whiskey and soda, we presume to solve in few words the eternal mystery. But that is not what we came for. And to avoid the bewildering depths into which we were led, we suggested a stroll on the sands. Here the Poet waxed more eloquent, and shed more tears.

“This is our favourite haunt,” said he; “here is where we ramble, here is where we loaf. And Khalid once said to me, ’In loafing here, I work as hard as did the masons and hod-carriers who laboured on these pyramids.’ And I believe him. For is not a book greater than a pyramid? Is not a mosque or a palace better than a tomb? An object is great in proportion to its power of resistance to time and the elements. That is why we think the pyramids are great. But see, the desert is greater than the pyramids, and the sea is greater than the desert, and the heavens are greater than the sea. And yet, there is not in all these that immortal intelligence, that living, palpitating soul, which you find in a great book. A man who conceives and writes a great book, my friend, has done more work than all the helots that laboured on these pyramidal futilities. That is why I find no exaggeration in Khalid’s words. For when he loafs, he does so in good earnest. Not like the camel-driver there or the camel, but after the manner of the great thinkers and mystics: like Al-Fared and Jelal’ud-Deen Rumy, like Socrates and St. Francis of Assisi, Khalid loafs. For can you escape being reproached for idleness by merely working? Are you going to waste your time and power in useless unproductive labour, carrying dates to Hajar (or coals to Newcastle, which is the English equivalent), that you might not be called an idler, a loafer?”

“Indeed not,” we reply; “for the Poet taking in the sea, or the woods, or the starry-night, the poet who might be just sharing the sunshine with the salamander, is as much a labourer as the stoker or the bricklayer.”

And with a few more such remarks, we showed our friend that, not being of india-rubber, we could not but expand under the heat of his grandiosity.

We then make our purpose known, and Shakib is overjoyed. He offers to kiss us for the noble thought.

“Yes, Europe should know Khalid better, and only through you and me can this be done. For you can not properly understand him, unless you read the Histoire Intime , which I have just finished. That will give you les dessous de cartes of his character.”

“ Les dessons ” and the Poet who intersperses his Arabic with fancy French, explains. “The lining, the ligaments.” “Ah, that is exactly what we want.”

And he offers to let us have the use of his Manuscript, if we link his name with that of his illustrious Master in this Book. To which we cheerfully agree. For after all, what’s in a name?

On the following day, lugging an enormous bundle under each arm, the Poet came. We were stunned as he stood in the door; we felt as if he had struck us in the head with them.

“This is the Histoire Intime ,” said he, laying it gently on the table.

And we laid our hand upon it, fetching a deep sigh. Our misgivings, however, were lighted with a happy idea. We will hire a few boys to read it, we thought, and mark out the passages which please them most. That will be just what an editor wants.

“And this,” continued the Poet, laying down the other bundle, “is the original manuscript of my forthcoming Book of Poems. ”

Sweet of him, we thought, to present it to us.

“It will be issued next Autumn in Cairo. ”

Fortunate City!

“And if you will get to work on it at once, ”

Mercy!

“You can get out an English Translation in three month, I am sure ”

We sink in our chair in breathless amazement.

“The Book will then appear simultaneously both in London and Cairo.”

We sit up, revived with another happy idea, and assure the Poet that his Work will be translated into a universal language, and that very soon. For which assurance he kisses us again and again, and goes away hugging his Muse.

The idea! A Book of Poems to translate into the English language! As if the English language has not enough of its own troubles! Translate it, O Fire, into your language! Which work the Fire did in two minutes. And the dancing, leaping, singing flames, the white and blue and amber flames, were more beautiful, we thought, than anything the Ms. might contain.

As for the Histoire Intime , we split it into three parts and got our boys working on it. The result was most satisfying. For now we can show, and though he is a native of Asia, the land of the Prophets, and though he conceals from us his origin after the manner of the Prophets, that he was born and bred and fed, and even thwacked, like all his fellows there, this Khalid.

CHAPTER II - THE CITY OF BAAL

The City of Baal, or Baalbek, is between the desert and the deep sea. It lies at the foot of Anti-Libanus, in the sunny plains of Coele-Syria, a day’s march from either Damascus or Beirut. It is a city with a past as romantic as Rome’s, as wicked as Babel’s; its ruins testify both to its glory and its shame. It is a city with a future as brilliant as any New-World city; the railroad at its gate, the modern agricultural implements in its fields, and the porcelain bath-tubs in its hotels, can testify to this. It is a city that enticed and still entices the mighty of the earth; Roman Emperors in the past came to appease the wrath of its gods, a German Emperor to-day comes to pilfer its temples. For the Acropolis in the poplar grove is a mine of ruins. The porphyry pillars, the statues, the tablets, the exquisite friezes, the palimpsests, the bas-reliefs, Time and the Turks have spared a few of these. And when the German Emperor came, Abd’ul-Hamid blinked, and the Berlin Museum is now the richer for it.

Of the Temple of Jupiter, however, only six standing columns remain; of the Temple of Bacchus only the god and the Bacchantes are missing. And why was the one destroyed, the other preserved, only the six columns, had they a tongue, could tell. Indeed, how many blustering vandals have they conquered, how many savage attacks have they resisted, what wonders and what orgies have they beheld! These six giants of antiquity, looking over Anti-Lebanon in the East, and down upon the meandering Leontes in the South, and across the Syrian steppes in the North, still hold their own against Time and the Elements. They are the dominating feature of the ruins; they tower above them as the Acropolis towers above the surrounding poplars. And around their base, and through the fissures, flows the perennial grace of the seasons. The sun pays tribute to them in gold; the rain, in mosses and ferns; the Spring, in lupine flowers. And the swallows, nesting in the portico of the Temple of Bacchus, above the curious frieze of egg-decoration, as curious, too, their art of egg-making, pour around the colossal columns their silvery notes. Surely, these swallows and ferns and lupine flowers are more ancient than the Acropolis. And the marvels of extinct nations can not hold a candle to the marvels of Nature.

Here, under the decaying beauty of Roman art, lies buried the monumental boldness of the Phoenicians, or of a race of giants whose extinction even Homer deplores, and whose name even the Phoenicians could not decipher. For might they not, too, have stood here wondering, guessing, even as we moderns guess and wonder? Might not the Phoenicians have asked the same questions that we ask to-day: Who were the builders? and with what tools? In one of the walls of the Acropolis are stones which a hundred bricklayers can not raise an inch from the ground; and among the ruins of the Temple of Zeus are porphyry pillars, monoliths, which fifty horses could barely move, and the quarry of which is beyond the Syrian desert. There, now, solve the problem for yourself.

Hidden in the grove of silver-tufted poplars is the little Temple of Venus, doomed to keep company with a Mosque. But it is a joy to stand on the bridge above the stream that flows between them, and listen to the muazzen in the minaret and the bulbuls in the Temple. Mohammad calling to Venus, Venus calling to Mohammad what a romance! We leave the subject to the poet that wants it. Another Laus Veneris to another Swinburne might suggest itself.

An Arab Prophet with the goddess, this time but the River flows between the Temple and the Mosque. In the city, life is one such picturesque languid stream. The shop-keepers sit on their rugs in their stalls, counting their beads, smoking their narghilahs, waiting indifferently for Allah’s bounties. And the hawkers shuffle along crying their wares in beautiful poetic illusions, the flower-seller singing, “Reconcile your mother-in-law! Perfume your spirit! Buy a jasmine for your soul!” the seller of loaves, his tray on his head, his arms swinging to a measured step, intoning in pious thankfulness, “O thou Eternal, O thou Bountiful!” The sakka of licorice-juice, clicking his brass cups calls out to the thirsty one, “Come, drink and live! Come, drink and live!” And ere you exclaim, How quaint! How picturesque! a train of laden camels drives you to the wall, rudely shaking your illusion. And the mules and donkeys, tottering under their heavy burdens, upsetting a tray of sweetmeats here, a counter of spices there, must share the narrow street with you and compel you to move along slowly, languidly like themselves. They seem to take Time by the sleeve and say to it, “What’s your hurry?” “These donkeys,” Shakib writes, quoting Khalid, “can teach the strenuous Europeans and hustling Americans a lesson.”

In the City Square, as we issue from the congested windings of the Bazaar, we are greeted by one of those scrub monuments that are found in almost every city of the Ottoman Empire. And in most cases, they are erected to commemorate the benevolence and public zeal of some wali or pasha who must have made a handsome fortune in the promotion of a public enterprise. Be this as it may. It is not our business here to probe the corruption of any particular Government. But we observe that this miserable botch of a monument is to the ruins of the Acropolis, what this modern absolutism, this effete Turkey is to the magnificent tyrannies of yore. Indeed, nothing is duller, more stupid, more prosaic than a modern absolutism as compared with an ancient one. But why concern ourselves with like comparisons? The world is better to-day in spite of its public monuments. These little flights or frights in marble are as snug in their little squares, in front of their little halls, as are the majestic ruins in their poplar groves. In both instances, Nature and Circumstance have harmonised between the subject and the background. Come along. And let the rhymsters chisel on the monument whatever they like about sculptures and the wali. To condemn in this case is to praise.

We issue from the Square into the drive leading to the spring at the foot of the mountain. On the meadows near the stream, is always to be found a group of Baalbekians bibbing arak and swaying languidly to the mellow strains of the lute and the monotonous melancholy of Arabic song. Among such, one occasionally meets with a native who, failing as peddler or merchant in America, returns to his native town, and, utilising the chips of English he picked up in the streets of the New-World cities, becomes a dragoman and guide to English and American tourists.

Now, under this sky, between Anti-Libanus rising near the spring, Rasulain, and the Acropolis towering above the poplars, around these majestic ruins, amidst these fascinating scenes of Nature, Khalid spent the halcyon days of his boyhood. Here he trolled his favourite ditties beating the hoof behind his donkey. For he preferred to be a donkey-boy than to be called a donkey at school. The pedagogue with his drivel and discipline, he could not learn to love. The company of muleteers was much more to his liking. The open air was his school; and everything that riots and rejoices in the open air, he loved. Bulbuls and beetles and butterflies, oxen and donkeys and mules, these were his playmates and friends. And when he becomes a muleteer, he reaches in his first venture, we are told, the top round of the ladder. This progressive scale in his trading, we observe. Husbanding his resources, he was soon after, by selling his donkey, able to buy a sumpter-mule; a year later he sells his mule and buys a camel; and finally he sells the camel and buys a fine Arab mare, which he gives to a tourist for a hundred pieces of English gold. This is what is called success. And with the tangible symbol of it, the price of his mare, he emigrates to America. But that is to come.

Let us now turn our “stereopticon on the screen of reminiscence,” using the pictures furnished by Shakib. But before they can be used to advantage, they must undergo a process of retroussage . Many of the lines need be softened, some of the shades modified, and not a few of the etchings, absolutely worthless, we consign to the flames. Who of us, for instance, was not feruled and bastinadoed by the town pedagogue? Who did not run away from school, whimpering, snivelling, and cursing in his heart and in his sleep the black-board and the horn-book? Nor can we see the significance of the fact that Khalid once smashed the icon of the Holy Virgin for whetting not his wits, for hearing not his prayers. It may be he was learning then the use of the sling, and instead of killing his neighbour’s laying-hen, he broke the sacred effigy. No, we are not warranted to draw from these trivialities the grand results which send Shakib in ecstasies about his Master’s genius. Nor do we for a moment believe that the waywardness of a genius or a prophet in boyhood is always a significant adumbration. Shakespeare started as a deer-poacher, and Rousseau as a thief. Yet, neither the one nor the other, as far as we know, was a plagiarist. This, however, does not disprove the contrary proposition, that he who begins as a thief or an iconoclast is likely to end as such. But the actuating motive has nothing to do with what we, in our retrospective analysis, are pleased to prove. Not so far forth are we willing to piddle among the knicknacks of Shakib’s Histoire Intime of his Master.

Furthermore, how can we interest ourselves in his fiction of history concerning Baalbek? What have we to do with the fact or fable that Seth the Prophet lived in this City; that Noah is buried in its vicinity; that Solomon built the Temple of the Sun for the Queen of Sheba; that this Prince and Poet used to lunch in Baalbek and dine at Istachre in Afghanistan; that the chariot of Nimrod drawn by four phoenixes from the Tower of Babel, lighted on Mt. Hermon to give said Nimrod a chance to rebuild the said Temple of the Sun? How can we bring any of these fascinating fables to bear upon our subject? It is nevertheless significant to remark that the City of Baal, from the Phoenicians and Moabites down to the Arabs and Turks, has ever been noted for its sanctuaries of carnal lust. The higher religion, too, found good soil here; for Baalbek gave the world many a saint and martyr along with its harlots and poets and philosophers. St. Minius, St. Cyril and St. Theodosius, are the foremost among its holy children; Ste . Odicksyia, a Magdalene, is one of its noted daughters. These were as famous in their days as Ashtarout or Jupiter-Ammon. As famous too is Al-Iman ul-Ouzaai the scholar; al -Makrizi the historian; Kallinichus the chemist, who invented the Greek fire; Kosta ibn Luka, a doctor and philosopher, who wrote among much miscellaneous rubbish a treaty entitled, On the Difference Between the Mind and the Soul; and finally the Muazzen of Baalbek to whom “even the beasts would stop to listen.” Ay, Shakib relates quoting al -Makrizi, who in his turn relates, quoting one of the octogenarian Drivellers, Muhaddetheen (these men are the chief sources of Arabic History) that he was told by an eye and ear witness that when this celebrated Muazzen was once calling the Faithful to prayer, the camels at the creek craned their necks to listen to the sonorous music of his voice. And such was their delight that they forgot they were thirsty. This, by the way of a specimen of the Muhaddetheen . Now, about these historical worthies of Baalbek, whom we have but named, Shakib writes whole pages, and concludes and here is the point that Khalid might be a descendant of any or all of them! For in him, our Scribe seriously believes, are lusty strains of many varied and opposing humours. And although he had not yet seen the sea, he longed when a boy for a long sea voyage, and he would sail little paper boats down the stream to prove the fact. In truth, that is what Shakib would prove. The devil and such logic had a charm for us once, but no more.

Here is another bubble of retrospective analysis to which we apply the needle. It is asserted as a basis for another astounding deduction that Khalid used to sleep in the ruined Temple of Zeus. As if ruined temples had anything to do with the formation or deformation of the brain-cells or the soul-afflatus! The devil and such logic, we repeat, had once a charm for us. But this, in brief, is how it came about. Khalid hated the pedagogue to whom he had to pay a visit of courtesy every day, and loved his cousin Najma whom he was not permitted to see. And when he runs away from the bastinado, breaking in revenge the icon of the Holy Virgin, his father turns him away from home. Complaining not, whimpering not, he goes. And hearing the bulbuls calling in the direction of Najma’s house that evening, he repairs thither. But the crabbed, cruel uncle turns him away also, and bolts the door. Whereupon Khalid, who was then in the first of his teens, takes a big scabrous rock and sends it flying against that door. The crabbed uncle rushes out, blustering, cursing; the nephew takes up another of those scabrous missiles and sends it whizzing across his shoulder. The second one brushes his ear. The third sends the blood from his temple. And this, while beating a retreat and cursing his father and his uncle and their ancestors back to fifty generations. He is now safe in the poplar grove, and his uncle gives up the charge. With a broken noddle he returns home, and Khalid with a broken heart wends his way to the Acropolis, the only shelter in sight. In relating this story, Shakib mentions “the horrible old moon, who was wickedly smiling over the town that night.” A broken icon, a broken door, a broken pate, a big price this, the crabbed uncle and the cruel father had to pay for thwarting the will of little Khalid. “But he entered the Acropolis a conqueror,” says our Scribe; “he won the battle.” And he slept in the temple, in the portico thereof, as sound as a muleteer. And the swallows in the niches above heard him sleep.

In the morning he girds his loins with a firm resolution. No longer will he darken his father’s door. He becomes a muleteer and accomplishes the success of which we have spoken. His first beau ideal was to own the best horse in Baalbek; and to be able to ride to the camp of the Arabs and be mistaken for one of them, was his first great ambition. Which he realises sooner than he thought he would. For thrift, grit and perseverance, are a few of the rough grains in his character. But no sooner he is possessed of his ideal than he begins to loosen his hold upon it. He sold his mare to the tourist, and was glad he did not attain the same success in his first love. For he loved his mare, and he could not have loved his cousin Najma more. “The realisation is a terrible thing,” writes our Scribe, quoting his Master. But when this fine piece of wisdom was uttered, whether when he was sailing paper boats in Baalbek, or unfurling his sails in New York, we can not say.

And now, warming himself on the fire of his first ideal, Khalid will seek the shore and launch into unknown seas towards unknown lands. From the City of Baal to the City of Demiurgic Dollar is not in fact a far cry. It has been remarked that he always dreamt of adventures, of long journeys across the desert or across the sea. He never was satisfied with the seen horizon, we are told, no matter how vast and beautiful. His soul always yearned for what was beyond, above or below, the visible line. And had not the European tourist alienated from him the love of his mare and corrupted his heart with the love of gold, we might have heard of him in Mecca, in India, or in Dahomey. But Shakib prevails upon him to turn his face toward the West. One day, following some tourists to the Cedars, they behold from Dahr’ul-Qadhib the sun setting in the Mediterranean and make up their minds to follow it too. “For the sundown,” writes Shakib, “was more appealing to us than the sunrise, ay, more beautiful. The one was so near, the other so far away. Yes, we beheld the Hesperian light that day, and praised Allah. It was the New World’s bonfire of hospitality: the sun called to us, and we obeyed.”

CHAPTER III - VIA DOLOROSA

In their baggy, lapping trousers and crimson caps, each carrying a bundle and a rug under his arm, Shakib and Khalid are smuggled through the port of Beirut at night, and safely rowed to the steamer. Indeed, we are in a country where one can not travel without a passport, or a password, or a little pass-money. And the boatmen and officials of the Ottoman Empire can better read a gold piece than a passport. So, Shakib and Khalid, not having the latter, slip in a few of the former, and are smuggled through. One more longing, lingering glance behind, and the dusky peaks of the Lebanons, beyond which their native City of Baal is sleeping in peace, recede from view. On the high sea of hope and joy they sail; “under the Favonian wind of enthusiasm, on the friendly billows of boyish dreams,” they roll. Ay, and they sing for joy. On and on, to the gold-swept shores of distant lands, to the generous cities and the bounteous fields of the West, to the Paradise of the World to America.

We need not dwell too much with our Scribe, on the repulsive details of the story of the voyage. We ourselves have known a little of the suffering and misery which emigrants must undergo, before they reach that Western Paradise of the Oriental imagination. How they are huddled like sheep on deck from Beirut to Marseilles; and like cattle transported under hatches across the Atlantic; and bullied and browbeaten by rough disdainful stewards; and made to pay for a leathery gobbet of beef and a slice of black flint-like bread: all this we know. But that New World paradise is well worth these passing privations.

The second day at sea, when the two Baalbekian lads are snug on deck, their rugs spread out not far from the stalls in which Syrian cattle are shipped to Egypt and Arab horses to Europe or America, they rummage in their bags and behold, a treat! Shakib takes out his favourite poet Al-Mutanabbi, and Khalid, his favourite bottle, the choicest of the Ksarah distillery of the Jesuits. For this whilom donkey-boy will begin by drinking the wine of these good Fathers and then their blood! His lute is also with him; and he will continue to practise the few lessons which the bulbuls of the poplar groves have taught him. No, he cares not for books. And so, he uncorks the bottle, hands it to Shakib his senior, then takes a nip himself, and, thrumming his lute strings, trolls a few doleful pieces of Arabic song. “In these,” he would say to Shakib, pointing to the bottle and the lute, “is real poetry, and not in that book with which you would kill me.” And Shakib, in stingless sarcasm, would insist that the music in Al-Mutanabbi’s lines is just a little more musical than Khalid’s thrumming. They quarrel about this. And in justice to both, we give the following from the Histoire Intime .

“When we left our native land,” Shakib writes, “my literary bent was not shared in the least by Khalid. I had gone through the higher studies which, in our hedge-schools and clerical institutions, do not reach a very remarkable height. Enough of French to understand the authors tabooed by our Jesuit professors, the Voltaires , the Rousseaus, the Diderots; enough of Arabic to enable one to parse and analyse the verse of Al-Mutanabbi; enough of Church History to show us, not how the Church wielded the sword of persecution, but how she was persecuted herself by the pagans and barbarians of the earth; of these and such like consists the edifying curriculum. Now, of this high phase of education, Khalid was thoroughly immune. But his intuitive sagacity was often remarkable, and his humour, sweet and pathetic. Once when I was reading aloud some of the Homeric effusions of Al-Mutanabbi, he said to me, as he was playing his lute, ’In the heart of this,’ pointing to the lute, ’and in the heart of me, there be more poetry than in that book with which you would kill me.’ And one day, after wandering clandestinely through the steamer, he comes to me with a gesture of surprise and this: ’Do you know, there are passengers who sleep in bunks below, over and across each other? I saw them, billah! And I was told they pay more than we do for such a low passage the fools! Think on it. I peeped into a little room, a dingy, smelling box, which had in it six berths placed across and above each other like the shelves of the reed manchons we build for our silk-worms at home. I wouldn’t sleep in one of them, billah! even though they bribe me. This bovine fragrance, the sight of these fine horses, the rioting of the wind above us, should make us forget the brutality of the stewards. Indeed, I am as content, as comfortable here, as are their Excellencies in what is called the Salon. Surely, we are above them at least, in the night. What matters it, then, if ours is called the Fourth Class and theirs the Primo. Wherever one is happy, Shakib, there is the Primo.’”

But this happy humour is assailed at Marseilles. His placidity and stolid indifference are rudely shaken by the sharpers, who differ only from the boatmen of Beirut in that they wear pantaloons and intersperse their Arabic with a jargon of French. These brokers, like rapacious bats, hover around the emigrant and before his purse is opened for the fourth time, the trick is done. And with what ceremony, you shall see. From the steamer the emigrant is led to a dealer in frippery, where he is required to doff his baggy trousers and crimson cap, and put on a suit of linsey-woolsey and a hat of hispid felt: end of First Act; open the purse. From the dealer of frippery, spick and span from top to toe, he is taken to the hostelry, where he is detained a fortnight, sometimes a month, on the pretext of having to wait for the best steamer: end of Second Act; open the purse. From the hostelry at last to the steamship agent, where they secure for him a third-class passage on a fourth-class ship across the Atlantic: end of Third Act; open the purse. And now that the purse is almost empty, the poor emigrant is permitted to leave. They send him to New York with much gratitude in his heart and a little trachoma in his eyes. The result being that a month later they have to look into such eyes again. But the purse of the distressed emigrant now being empty, empty as his hopes and dreams, the rapacious bats hover not around him, and the door of the verminous hostelry is shut in his face. He is left to starve on the western shore of the Mediterranean.

Ay, even the droll humour and stolidity of Khalid, are shaken, aroused, by the ghoulish greed, the fell inhumanity of these sharpers. And Shakib from his cage of fancy lets loose upon them his hyenas of satire. In a squib describing the bats and the voyage he says: “The voyage to America is the Via Dolorosa of the emigrant; and the Port of Beirut, the verminous hostelries of Marseilles, the Island of Ellis in New York, are the three stations thereof. And if your hopes are not crucified at the third and last station, you pass into the Paradise of your dreams. If they are crucified, alas! The gates of the said Paradise will be shut against you; the doors of the hostelries will be slammed in your face; and with a consolation and a vengeance you will throw yourself at the feet of the sea in whose bosom some charitable Jonah will carry you to your native strands.”

And when the emigrant has a surplus of gold, when his capital is such as can not be dissipated on a suit of shoddy, a fortnight’s lodging, and a passage across the Atlantic, the ingenious ones proceed with the Fourth Act of Open Thy Purse . “Instead of starting in New York as a peddler,” they say, unfolding before him one of their alluring schemes, “why not do so as a merchant?” And the emigrant opens his purse for the fourth time in the office of some French manufacturer, where he purchases a few boxes of trinketry, scapulars, prayer-beads, crosses, jewelry, gewgaws, and such like, all said to be made in the Holy Land. These he brings over with him as his stock in trade.

Now, Khalid and Shakib, after passing a fortnight in Marseilles, and going through the Fourth Act of the Sorry Show, find their dignity as merchants rudely crushed beneath the hatches of the Atlantic steamer. For here, even the pleasure of sleeping on deck is denied them. The Atlantic Ocean would not permit of it. Indeed, everybody has to slide into their stivy bunks to save themselves from its rising wrath. A fortnight of such unutterable misery is quite supportable, however, if one continues to cherish the Paradise already mentioned. But in this dark, dingy smelling hole of the steerage, even the poets cease to dream. The boatmen of Beirut and the sharpers of Marseilles we could forget; but in this grave among a hundred and more of its kind, set over and across each other, neither the lute nor the little that remained in that Ksarah bottle, could bring us any solace.

We are told that Khalid took up his lute but once throughout the voyage. And this when they were permitted one night to sleep on deck. We are also informed that Khalid had a remarkable dream, which, to our Scribe at least, is not meaningless. And who of us, thou silly Scribe, did not in his boyhood tell his dreams to his mother, who would turn them in her interpretation inside out? But Khalid, we are assured, continued to cherish the belief, even in his riper days, that when you dream you are in Jannat, for instance, you must be prepared to go through Juhannam the following day. A method of interpretation as ancient as Joseph, to be sure. But we quote the dream to show that Khalid should not have followed the setting sun. He should have turned his face toward the desert.

They slept on deck that night. They drank the wine of the Jesuits, repeated, to the mellow strains of the lute, the song of the bulbuls, intoned the verses of Al-Mutanabbi, and, wrapping themselves in their rugs, fell asleep. But in the morning they were rudely jostled from their dreams by a spurt from the hose of the sailors washing the deck. Complaining not, they straggle down to their bunks to change their clothes. And Khalid, as he is doing this, implores Shakib not to mention to him any more that New-World paradise. “For I have dreamt last night,” he continues, “that, in the multicoloured robes of an Arab amir, on a caparisoned dromedary, at the head of an immense multitude of people, I was riding through the desert. Whereto and wherefrom, I know not. But those who followed me seemed to know; for they cried, ’Long have we waited for thee, now we shall enter in peace.’ And at every oasis we passed, the people came to the gate to meet us, and, prostrating themselves before me, kissed the fringe of my garment. Even the women would touch my boots and kiss their hands, exclaiming, ‘ Allahu akbar! ’ And the palm trees, billah! I could see bending towards us that we might eat of their fruits, and the springs seemed to flow with us into the desert that we might never thirst. Ay, thus in triumph we marched from one camp to another, from one oasis to the next, until we reached the City on the Hills of the Cedar Groves. Outside the gate, we were met by the most beautiful of its tawny women, and four of these surrounded my camel and took the reins from my hand. I was then escorted through the gates, into the City, up to the citadel, where I was awaited by their Princess. And she, taking a necklace of cowries from a bag that hung on her breast, placed it on my head, saying, ‘I crown thee King of ’ But I could not hear the rest, which was drowned by the cheering of the multitudes. And the cheering, O Shakib, was drowned by the hose of the sailors. Oh, that hose! Is it not made in the paradise you harp upon, the paradise we are coming to? Never, therefore, mention it to me more.”

This is the dream, at once simple and symbolic, which begins to worry Khalid. “For in the evening of the day he related it to me,” writes Shakib, “I found him sitting on the edge of his bunk brooding over I know not what. It was the first time he had the blues. Nay, it was the first time he looked pensive and profound. And upon asking him the reason for this, he said, ’I am thinking of the paper-boats which I used to sail down the stream in Baalbek, and that makes me sad.’”

How strange! And yet, this first event recorded by our Scribe, in which Khalid is seen struggling with the mysterious and unknown, is most significant. Another instance, showing a latent phase, hitherto dormant, in his character, we note. Among the steerage passengers is a Syrian girl who much resembles his cousin Najma. She was sea-sick throughout the voyage, and when she comes out to breathe of the fresh air, a few hours before they enter the harbour of New York, Khalid sees her, and Shakib swears that he saw a tear in Khalid’s eye as he stood there gazing upon her. Poor Khalid! For though we are approaching the last station of the Via Dolorosa , though we are nearing the enchanted domes of the wonder-working, wealth-worshipping City, he is inexplicably sad.

And Shakib, directly after swearing that he saw a tear in his eye, writes the following: “Up to this time I observed in my friend only the dominating traits of a hard-headed, hard-hearted boy, stubborn, impetuous, intractable. But from the time he related to me his dream, a change in his character was become manifest. In fact a new phase was being gradually unfolded. Three things I must emphasise in this connection: namely, the first dream he dreamt in a foreign land, the first time he looked pensive and profound, and the first tear he shed before we entered New York. These are keys to the secret chamber of one’s soul.”

And now, that the doors, by virtue of our Scribe’s open - sésames , are thrown open, we enter, bismillah .

CHAPTER IV - ON THE WHARF OF ENCHANTMENT

Not in our make-up, to be sure, not in the pose which is preceded by the tantaras of a trumpet, do the essential traits in our character first reveal themselves. But truly in the little things the real self is exteriorised. Shakib observes closely the rapid changes in his co-adventurer’s humour, the shadowy traits which at that time he little understood. And now, by applying his palm to his front, he illumines those chambers of which he speaks, and also the niches therein. He helps us to understand the insignificant points which mark the rapid undercurrents of the seemingly sluggish soul of Khalid. Not in vain, therefore, does he crystallise for us that first tear he shed in the harbour of Manhattan. But his gush about the recondite beauty of this pearl of melancholy, shall not be intended upon the gustatory nerves of the Reader. This then we note his description of New York harbour.

“And is this the gate of Paradise,” he asks, “or the port of some subterrestrial city guarded by the Jinn? What a marvel of enchantment is everything around us! What manifestations of industrial strength, what monstrosities of wealth and power, are here! These vessels proudly putting to sea; these tenders scurrying to meet the Atlantic greyhound which is majestically moving up the bay; these barges loading and unloading schooners from every strand, distant and near; these huge lighters carrying even railroads over the water; these fire-boats scudding through the harbour shrilling their sirens; these careworn, grim, strenuous multitudes ferried across from one enchanted shore to another; these giant structures tickling heaven’s sides; these cable bridges, spanning rivers, uniting cities; and this superterrestrial goddess, torch in hand wake up, Khalid, and behold these wonders. Salaam, this enchanted City! There is the Brooklyn Bridge, and here is the Statue of Liberty which people speak of, and which are as famous as the Cedars of Lebanon.”

But Khalid is as impassive as the bronze goddess herself. He leans over the rail, his hand supporting his cheek, and gazes into the ooze. The stolidity of his expression is appalling. With his mouth open as usual, his lips relaxed, his tongue sticking out through the set teeth, he looks as if his head were in a noose. But suddenly he braces up, runs down for his lute, and begins to serenade Greater New York?

“On thee be Allah’s grace,
Who hath the well-loved face!”

No; not toward this City does his heart flap its wings of song. He is on another sea, in another harbour. Indeed, what are these wonders as compared with those of the City of Love? The Statue of Eros there is more imposing than the Statue of Liberty here. And the bridges are not of iron and concrete, but of rainbows and moonshine! Indeed, both these lads are now on the wharf of enchantment; the one on the palpable, the sensuous, the other on the impalpable and unseen. But both, alas, are suddenly, but temporarily, disenchanted as they are jostled out of the steamer into the barge which brings them to the Juhannam of Ellis Island. Here, the unhappy children of the steerage are dumped into the Bureau of Emigration as such stuff! For even in the land of equal rights and freedom, we have a right to expect from others the courtesy and decency which we ourselves do not have to show, or do not know.

These are sturdy and adventurous foreigners whom the grumpy officers jostle and hustle about. For neither poverty, nor oppression, nor both together can drive a man out of his country, unless the soul within him awaken. Indeed, many a misventurous cowering peasant continues to live on bread and olives in his little village, chained in the fear of dying of hunger in a foreign land. Only the brave and daring spirits hearken to the voice of discontent within them. They give themselves up to the higher aspirations of the soul, no matter how limited such aspirations might be, regardless of the dangers and hardship of a long sea voyage, and the precariousness of their plans and hopes. There may be nothing noble in renouncing one’s country, in abandoning one’s home, in forsaking one’s people; but is there not something remarkable in this great move one makes? Whether for better or for worse, does not the emigrant place himself above his country, his people and his Government, when he turns away from them, when he goes forth propelled by that inner self which demands of him a new life?

And might it not be a better, a cleaner, a higher life? What say our Masters of the Island of Ellis? Are not these straggling, smelling, downcast emigrants almost as clean inwardly, and as pure, as the grumpy officers who harass and humiliate them? Is not that spirit of discontent which they cherish, and for which they carry the cross, so to speak, across the sea, deserving of a little consideration, a little civility, a little kindness?

Even louder than this Shakib cries out, while Khalid open-mouthed sucks his tongue. Here at the last station, where the odours of disinfectants are worse than the stench of the steerage, they await behind the bars their turn; stived with Italian and Hungarian fellow sufferers, uttering such whimpers of expectancy, exchanging such gestures of hope. Soon they shall be brought forward to be examined by the doctor and the interpreting officer; the one shall pry their purses, the other their eyes. For in this United States of America we want clear-sighted citizens at least. And no cold-purses, if the matter can be helped. But neither the eyes, alas, nor the purses of our two emigrants are conformable to the Law; the former are filled with granulations of trachoma, the latter have been emptied by the sharpers of Marseilles. Which means that they shall be detained for the present; and if within a fortnight nothing turns up in their favour, they shall certainly be deported.

Trachoma! a little granulation on the inner surface of the eyelids, what additional misery does it bring upon the poor deported emigrant? We are asked to shed a tear for him, to weep with him over his blasted hopes, his strangled aspirations, his estate in the mother country sold or mortgaged, in either case lost, and his seed of a new life crushed in its cotyledon by the physician who might be short-sighted himself, or even blind. But the law must be enforced for the sake of the clear-sighted citizens of the Republic. We will have nothing to do with these poor blear-eyed foreigners.

And thus our grievous Scribe would continue, if we did not exercise the prerogative of our Editorial Divan. Rather let us pursue our narration. Khalid is now in the hospital, awaiting further development in his case. But in Shakib’s, whose eyes are far gone in trachoma, the decision of the Board of Emigration is final, irrevokable. And so, after being detained a week in the Emigration pen, the unfortunate Syrian must turn his face again toward the East. Not out into the City, but out upon the sea, he shall be turned adrift. The grumpy officer shall grumpishly enforce the decision of the Board by handing our Scribe to the Captain of the first steamer returning to Europe if our Scribe can be found! For this flyaway son of a Phoenician did not seem to wait for the decision of the polyglot Judges of the Emigration Board.

And that he did escape, we are assured. For one morning he eludes the grumpy officer, and sidles out among his Italian neighbours who were permitted to land. See him genuflecting now, to kiss the curbstone and thank Allah that he is free. But before he can enjoy his freedom, before he can sit down and chuckle over the success of his escapade, he must bethink him of Khalid. He will not leave him to the mercy of the honourable Agents of the Law, if he can help it. Trachoma, he knows, is a hard case to cure. And in ten days, under the care of the doctors, it might become worse. Straightway, therefore, he puts himself to the dark task. A few visits to the Hospital where Khalid is detained the patients in those days were not held at Ellis Island and the intrigue is afoot. On the third or fourth visit, we can not make out which, a note in Arabic is slipt into Khalid’s pocket, and with a significant Arabic sign, Shakib takes himself off.

The evening of that very day, the trachoma-afflicted Syrian was absent from the ward. He was carried off by Iblis, the porter and a few Greenbacks assisting. Yes, even Shakib, who knew only a few English monosyllables, could here make himself understood. For money is one of the two universal languages of the world, the other being love. Indeed, money and love are as eloquent in Turkey and Dahomey as they are in Paris or New York.

And here we reach one of those hedges in the Histoire Intime which we must go through in spite of the warning-signs. Between two paragraphs, to be plain, in the one of which we are told how the two Syrians established themselves as merchants in New York, in the other, how and wherefor they shouldered the peddling-box and took to the road, there is a crossed paragraph containing a most significant revelation. It seems that after giving the matter some serious thought, our Scribe came to the conclusion that it is not proper to incriminate his illustrious Master. But here is a confession which a hundred crosses can not efface. And if he did not want to bring the matter to our immediate cognisance, why, we ask, did he not re-write the page? Why did he not cover well that said paragraph with crosses and arabesques ? We do suspect him here of chicanery; for by this plausible recantation he would shift the responsibility to the shoulders of the Editor, if the secret is divulged. Be this as it may, no red crosses can conceal from us the astounding confession, which we now give out. For the two young Syrians, who were smuggled out of their country by the boatmen of Beirut, and who smuggled themselves into the city of New York (we beg the critic’s pardon; for, being foreigners ourselves, we ought to be permitted to stretch this term, smuggle, to cover an Arabic metaphor, or to smuggle into it a foreign meaning), these two Syrians, we say, became, in their capacity of merchants, smugglers of the most ingenious and most evasive type.

We now note the following, which pertains to their business. We learn that they settled in the Syrian Quarter directly after clearing their merchandise. And before they entered their cellar, we are assured, they washed their hands of all intrigues and were shrived of their sins by the Maronite priest of the Colony. For they were pious in those days, and right Catholics. ’Tis further set down in the Histoire Intime :

“We rented a cellar, as deep and dark and damp as could be found. And our landlord was a Teague, nay, a kind-hearted old Irishman, who helped us put up the shelves, and never called for the rent in the dawn of the first day of the month. In the front part of this cellar we had our shop; in the rear, our home. On the floor we laid our mattresses, on the shelves, our goods. And never did we stop to think who in this case was better off. The safety of our merchandise before our own. But ten days after we had settled down, the water issued forth from the floor and inundated our shop and home. It rose so high that it destroyed half of our capital stock and almost all our furniture. And yet, we continued to live in the cellar, because, perhaps, every one of our compatriot-merchants did so. We were all alike subject to these inundations in the winter season. I remember when the water first rose in our store, Khalid was so hard set and in such a pucker that he ran out capless and in his shirt sleeves to discover in the next street the source of the flood. And one day, when we were pumping out the water he asked me if I thought this was easier than rolling our roofs in Baalbek. For truly, the paving-roller is child’s play to this pump. And a leaky roof is better than an inundated cellar.”

However, this is not the time for brooding. They have to pump ahead to save what remained of their capital stock. But Khalid, nevertheless, would brood and jabber. And what an inundation of ideas, and what questions!

“Think you,” he asks, “that the inhabitants of this New World are better off than those of the Old? Can you imagine mankind living in a huge cellar of a world and you and I pumping the water out of its bottom? I can see the palaces on which you waste your rhymes, but mankind live in them only in the flesh. The soul I tell you, still occupies the basement, even the sub-cellar. And an inundated cellar at that. The soul, Shakib, is kept below, although the high places are vacant.”

And his partner sputters out his despair; for instead of helping to pump out the water, Khalid stands there gazing into it, as if by some miracle he would draw it out with his eyes or with his breath. And the poor Poet cries out, “Pump! the water is gaining on us, and our shop is going to ruin. Pump!” Whereupon the lazy, absent-minded one resumes pumping, while yearning all the while for the plashing stone-rollers and the purling eaves of his home in Baalbek. And once in a pinch, they are labouring under a peltering rain, he stops as is his wont to remind Shakib of the Arabic saying, “From the dripping ceiling to the running gargoyle.” He is labouring again under a hurricane of ideas. And again he asks, “Are you sure we are better off here?”

And our poor Scribe, knee-deep in the water below, blusters out curses, which Khalid heeds not. “I am tired of this job,” he growls; “the stone-roller never drew so much on my strength, nor did muleteering. Ah, for my dripping ceiling again, for are we not now under the running gargoyle?” And he reverts into a stupor, leaving the world to the poet and the pump.

For five years and more they lead such a life in the cellar. And they do not move out of it, lest they excite the envy of their compatriots. But instead of sleeping on the floor, they stretch themselves on the counters. The rising tide teaches them this little wisdom, which keeps the doctor and Izraeil away. Their merchandise, however, their crosses, and scapulars and prayer-beads, are beyond hope of recovery. For what the rising tide spares, the rascally flyaway peddlers carry away. That is why they themselves shoulder the box and take to the road. And the pious old dames of the suburbs, we are told, receive them with such exclamations of joy and wonder, and almost tear their coats to get from them a sacred token. For you must remember, they are from the Holy Land. Unlike their goods, they at least are genuine. And every Saturday night, after beating the hoof in the country and making such fabulous profits on their false Holy-Land gewgaws, they return to their cellar happy and content.

“In three years,” writes our Scribe, “Khalid and I acquired what I still consider a handsome fortune. Each of us had a bank account, and a check book which we seldom used.... In spite of which, we continued to shoulder the peddling box and tramp along.... And Khalid would say to me, ’A peddler is superior to a merchant; we travel and earn money; our compatriots the merchants rust in their cellars and lose it.’ To be sure, peddling in the good old days was most attractive. For the exercise, the gain, the experience these are rich acquirements.”

And both Shakib and Khalid, we apprehend, have been hitherto most moderate in their habits. The fact that they seldom use their check books, testifies to this. They have now a peddleress, Im-Hanna by name, who occupies their cellar in their absence, and keeps what little they have in order. And when they return every Saturday night from their peddling trip, they find the old woman as ready to serve them as a mother. She cooks mojadderah for them, and sews the bed-linen on the quilts as is done in the mother country.

“The linen,” says Shakib, “was always as white as a dove’s wing, when Im-Hanna was with us.”

And in the Khedivial Library Manuscript we find this curious note upon that popular Syrian dish of lentils and olive oil.

“ Mojadderah ,” writes Khalid, “has a marvellous effect upon my humour and nerves. There are certain dishes, I confess, which give me the blues. Of these, fried eggplants and cabbage boiled with corn-beef on the American system of boiling, that is to say, cooking, I abominate the most. But mojadderah has such a soothing effect on the nerves; it conduces to cheerfulness, especially when the raw onion or the leek is taken with it. After a good round pewter platter of this delicious dish and a dozen leeks, I feel as if I could do the work of all mankind. And I am then in such a beatific state of mind that I would share with all mankind my sack of lentils and my pipkin of olive oil. I wonder not at Esau’s extravagance, when he saw a steaming mess of it. For what is a birthright in comparison?”

That Shakib also shared this beatific mood, the following quaint picture of their Saturday nights in the cellar, will show.

“A bank account,” he writes, “a good round dish of mojadderah , the lute for Khalid, Al-Mutanabbi for me, neither of us could forego his hobby, and Im-Hanna, affectionate, devoted as our mothers, these were the joys of our Saturday nights in our underground diggings. We were absolutely happy. And we never tried to measure our happiness in those days, or gauge it, or flay it to see if it be dead or alive, false or real. Ah, the blessedness of that supreme unconsciousness which wrapped us as a mother would her babe, warming and caressing our hearts. We did not know then that happiness was a thing to be sought. We only knew that peddling is a pleasure, that a bank account is a supreme joy, that a dish of mojadderah cooked by Im-Hanna is a royal delight, that our dour dark cellar is a palace of its kind, and that happiness, like a bride, issues from all these, and, touching the strings of Khalid’s lute, mantles us with song.”

CHAPTER V - THE CELLAR OF THE SOUL

Heretofore, Khalid and Shakib have been inseparable as the Pointers. They always appeared together, went the rounds of their peddling orbit together, and together were subject to the same conditions and restraints. Which restraints are a sort of sacrifice they make on the altar of friendship. One, for instance, would never permit himself an advantage which the other could not enjoy, or a pleasure in which the other could not share. They even slept under the same blanket, we learn, ate from the same plate, puffed at the same narghilah, which Shakib brought with him from Baalbek, and collaborated in writing to one lady-love! A condition of unexampled friendship this, of complete oneness. They had both cut themselves garments from the same cloth, as the Arabic saying goes. And on Sunday afternoon, in garments spick and span, they would take the air in Battery Park, where the one would invoke the Statue of Liberty for a thought, or the gilded domes of Broadway for a metaphor, while the other would be scouring the horizon for the Nothingness, which is called, in the recondite cant of the sophisticated, a vague something.

In the Khedivial Library MS. we find nothing which this Battery Park might have inspired. And yet, we can not believe that Khalid here was only attracted by that vague something which, in his spiritual enceinteship, he seemed to relish. Nothing? Not even the does and kangaroos that adorn the Park distracted or detained him? We doubt it; and Khalid’s lute sustains us in our doubt. Ay, and so does our Scribe; for in his Histoire Intime we read the following, which we faithfully transcribe.

“Of the many attractions of Battery Park, the girls and the sea were my favourite. For the girls in a crowd have for me a fascination which only the girls at the bath can surpass. I love to lose myself in a crowd, to buffet, so to speak, its waves, to nestle under their feathery crests. For the rolling waves of life, the tumbling waves of the sea, and the fiery waves of Al-Mutanabbi’s poetry have always been my delight. In Battery Park I took especial pleasure in reading aloud my verses to Khalid, or in fact to the sea, for Khalid never would listen.

“Once I composed a few stanzas to the Milkmaid who stood in her wagon near the lawn, rattling out milk-punches to the boys. A winsome lass she was, fresh in her sororiation, with fair blue eyes, a celestial flow of auburn hair, and cheeks that suggested the milk and cherry in the glass she rattled out to me. I was reading aloud the stanzas which she inspired, when Khalid, who was not listening, pointed out to me a woman whose figure and the curves thereof were remarkable. ’Is it not strange,’ said he, ’how the women here indraw their stomachs and outdraw their hips? And is not this the opposite of the shape which our women cultivate?’

“Yes, with the Lebanon women, the convex curve beneath the waist is frontward, not hindward. But that is a matter of taste, I thought, and man is partly responsible for either convexity. I have often wondered, however, why the women of my country cultivate that shape. And why do they in America cultivate the reverse of it? Needless to say that both are pruriently titillating, both distentions are damnably suggestive, quite killing. The American woman, from a fine sense of modesty, I am told, never or seldom ventures abroad, when big with child. But in the kangaroo figure, the burden is slightly shifted and naught is amiss. Ah, such haunches as are here exhibited suggest the aliats of our Asiatic sheep.”

And what he says about the pruriently titillating convexities, whether frontward or hindward, suggests a little prudery. For in his rhymes he betrays both his comrade and himself. Battery Park and the attractions thereof prove fatal. Elsewhere, therefore, they must go, and begin to draw on their bank accounts. Which does not mean, however, that they are far from the snare. No; for when a young man begins to suffer from what the doctors call hebephrenia, the farther he draws away from such snares the nearer he gets to them. And these lusty Syrians could not repel the magnetic attraction of the polypiosis of what Shakib likens to the aliat (fattail) of our Asiatic sheep. Surely, there be more devils under such an aliat than under the hat of a Jesuit. And Khalid is the first to discover this. Both have been ensnared, however, and both, when in the snare, have been infernally inspired. What Khalid wrote, when he was under the influence of feminine curves, was preserved by Shakib, who remarks that one evening, after returning from the Park, Khalid said to him, ‘I am going to write a poem.’ A fortnight later, he hands him the following, which he jealously kept among his papers.

I dreamt I was a donkey-boy again.
Out on the sun-swept roads of Baalbek, I tramp behind my
burro, trolling my mulayiah .
At noon, I pass by a garden redolent of mystic scents and
tarry awhile.
Under an orange tree, on the soft green grass, I stretch my
limbs.
The daisies, the anémones , and the cyclamens are round me
pressing:
The anemone buds hold out to me their precious rubies; the
daisies kiss me in the eyes and lips; and the cyclamens
shake their powder in my hair.
On the wall, the roses are nodding, smiling; above me the
orange blossoms surrender themselves to the wooing
breeze; and on yonder rock the salamander sits, complacent
and serene.
I take a daisy, and, boy as boys go, question its
petals:
Married man or monk, I ask, plucking them off one by one,
And the last petal says, Monk.
I perfume my fingers with crumpled cyclamens , cover my
face with the dark-eyed anémones , and fall asleep.
And my burro sleeps beneath the wall, in the shadow of
nodding roses.
And the black-birds too are dozing, and the bulbuls flitting
by whisper with their wings, ‘salaam.’
Peace and salaam!
The bulbul, the black-bird, the salamander, the burro, and
the burro-boy, are to each other shades of noon-day sun:
Happy, loving, generous, and free;
As happy as each other, and as free.
We do what we please in Nature’s realm, go where we
please;
No one’s offended, no one ever wronged.
No sentinels hath Nature, no police.
But lo, a goblin as I sleep comes forth;
A goblin taller than the tallest poplar, who carries me upon
his neck to the Park in far New York.
Here women, light-heeled, heavy-haunched, pace up and
down the flags in graceful gait.
My roses these, I cry, and my orange blossoms.
But the goblin placed his hand upon my mouth, and I was
dumb.
The cyclamens , the anémones , the daisies, I saw them, but I
could not speak to them.
The goblin placed his hand upon my mouth, and I was
dumb.
O take me back to my own groves, I cried, or let me speak.
But he threw me off his shoulders in a huff, among the daisies
and the cyclamens .
Alone among them, but I could not speak.
He had tied my tongue, the goblin, and left me there alone.
And in front of me, and towards me, and beside me,
Walked Allah’s fairest cyclamens and anémones .
I smell them, and the tears flow down my cheeks;
I can not even like the noon-day bulbul
Whisper with my wings, salaam!
I sit me on a bench and weep.
And in my heart I sing
O, let me be a burro-boy again;
O, let me sleep among the cyclamens
Of my own land.

Shades of Whitman! But Whitman, thou Donkey, never weeps. Whitman, if that goblin tried to silence him, would have wrung his neck, after he had ridden upon it. The above, nevertheless, deserves the space we give it here, as it shadows forth one of the essential elements of Khalid’s spiritual make-up. But this slight symptom of that disease we named, this morbidness incident to adolescence, is eventually overcome by a dictionary and a grammar. Ay, Khalid henceforth shall cease to scour the horizon for that vague something of his dreams; he has become far-sighted enough by the process to see the necessity of pursuing in America something more spiritual than peddling crosses and scapulars. Especially in this America, where the alphabet is spread broadcast, and free of charge. And so, he sets himself to the task of self-education. He feels the embryo stir within him, and in the squeamishness of enceinteship, he asks but for a few of the fruits of knowledge. Ah, but he becomes voracious of a sudden, and the little pocket dictionary is devoured entirely in three sittings. Hence his folly of treating his thoughts and fancies, as he was treated by the goblin. For do not words often rob a fancy of its tongue, or a thought of its soul? Many of the pieces Khalid wrote when he was devouring dictionaries were finally disposed of in a most picturesque manner, as we shall relate. And a few were given to Shakib, of which that Dream of Cyclamens was preserved.

And Khalid’s motto was, “One book at a time.” He would not encumber himself with books any more than he would with shoes. But that the mind might not go barefoot, he always bought a new book before destroying the one in hand. Destroying? Yes; for after reading or studying a book, he warms his hands upon its flames, this Khalid, or makes it serve to cook a pot of mojadderah . In this extraordinary and outrageous manner, barbarously capricious, he would baptise the ideal in the fire of the real. And thus, glowing with health and confidence and conceit, he enters another Park from which he escapes in the end, sad and wan and bankrupt. Of a truth, many attractions and distractions are here; else he could not forget the peddling-box and the light-heeled, heavy-haunched women of Battery Park. Here are swings for the mind; toboggan-chutes for the soul; merry-go-rounds for the fancy; and many devious and alluring paths where one can lose himself for years. A sanitarium this for the hebephreniac. And like all sanitariums, you go into it with one disease and come out of it with ten. Had Shakib been forewarned of Khalid’s mind, had he even seen him at the gate before he entered, he would have given him a few hints about the cross-signs and barbed- cordons therein. But should he not have divined that Khalid soon or late was coming? Did he not call enough to him, and aloud? “Get thee behind me on this dromedary,” our Scribe, reading his Al-Mutanabbi, would often say to his comrade, “and come from this desert of barren gold, if but for a day, come out with me to the oasis of poesy.”

But Khalid would only ride alone. And so, he begins his course of self-education. But how he shall manage it, in this cart-before-the-horse fashion, the reader shall know. Words before rules, ideas before systems, epigrams before texts, that is Khalid’s fancy. And that seems feasible, though not logical; it will prove effectual, too, if one finally brushed the text and glanced at the rules. For an epigram, when it takes possession of one, goes farther in influencing his thoughts and actions than whole tomes of ethical culture science. You know perhaps how the Arabs conquered the best half of the world with an epigram, a word. And Khalid loves a fine-sounding, easy-flowing word; a word of supple joints, so to speak; a word that you can twist and roll out, flexible as a bamboo switch, resilient as a fine steel rapier. But once Shakib, after reading one of Khalid’s first attempts, gets up in the night when his friend is asleep, takes from the bottom drawer of the peddling-box the evil-working dictionary, and places therein a grammar. This touch of delicacy, this fine piece of criticism, brief and neat, without words withal, Khalid this time is not slow to grasp and appreciate. He plunges, therefore, headlong into the grammar, turns a few somersaults in the mazes of Sibawai and Naftawai, and coming out with a broken noddle, writes on the door the following: “What do I care about your theories of nouns and verbs? Whether the one be derived from the other, concerns not me. But this I know, after stumbling once or twice in your labyrinths, one comes out parsing the verb, to run. Indeed, verbs are more essential than nouns and adjectives. A noun can be represented pictorially; but how, pictorially, can you represent a noun in motion, Khalid, for instance, running out of your labyrinths? Even an abstract state can be represented in a picture, but a transitive state never. The richest language, therefore, is not the one which can boast of a thousand names for the lion or two thousand for the camel, but the one whose verbs have a complete and perfect gamut of moods and tenses.”

That is why, although writing in Arabic, Khalid prefers English. For the Arabic verb is confined to three tenses, the primary ones only; and to break through any of these in any degree, requires such crowbars as only auxiliaries and other verbs can furnish. For this and many other reasons Khalid stops short in the mazes of Sibawai, runs out of them exasperated, depressed, and never for a long time after looks in that direction. He is now curious to know if the English language have its Sibawais and Naftawais. And so, he buys him a grammar, and there finds the way somewhat devious, too, but not enough to constitute a maze. The men who wrote these grammars must have had plenty of time to do a little useful work. They do not seem to have walked leisurely in flowing robes disserting a life-long dissertation on the origin and descent of a preposition. One day Shakib is amazed by finding the grammars page by page tacked on the walls of the cellar and Khalid pacing around leisurely lingering a moment before each page, as if he were in an art gallery. That is how he tackled his subject. And that is why he and Shakib begin to quarrel. The idea! That a fledgling should presume to pick flaws. To Shakib, who is textual to a hair, this is intolerable. And that state of oneness between them shall be subject hereafter to “the corrosive action of various unfriendly agents.” For Khalid, who has never yet been snaffled, turns restively from the bit which his friend, for his own sake, would put in his mouth. The rupture follows. The two for a while wend their way in opposite directions. Shakib still cherishing and cultivating his bank account, shoulders his peddling-box and jogs along with his inspiring demon, under whose auspices, he tells us, he continues to write verse and gull with his brummagems the pious dames of the suburbs. And Khalid sits on his peddling-box for hours pondering on the necessity of disposing of it somehow. For now he scarcely makes more than a few peddling-trips each month, and when he returns, he does not go to the bank to add to his balance, but to draw from it. That is why the accounts of the two Syrians do not fare alike; Shakib’s is gaining in weight, Khalid’s is wasting away.

Yes, the strenuous spirit is a long time dead in Khalid. He is gradually reverting to the Oriental instinct. And when he is not loafing in Battery Park, carving his name on the bench, he is burrowing in the shelves of some second-hand book-shop or dreaming in the dome of some Broadway skyscraper. Does not this seem inevitable, however, considering the palingenetic burden within him? And is not loafing a necessary prelude to the travail? Khalid, of course, felt the necessity of this, not knowing the why and wherefor. And from the vast world of paper-bound souls, for he relished but pamphlets at the start they do not make much smoke in the fire, he would say from that vast world he could command the greatest of the great to help him support the loafing while. And as by a miracle, he came out of that chaos of contending spirits without a scratch. He enjoyed the belligerency of pamphleteers as an American would enjoy a prize fight. But he sided with no one; he took from every one his best and consigned him to Im-Hanna’s kitchen. Torquemada could not have done better; but Khalid, it is hoped, will yet atone for his crimes.

Monsieur Pascal, with whom he quarrels before he burns, had a particular influence upon him. He could not rest after reading his “Thoughts” until he read the Bible. And of the Prophets of the Old Testament he had an especial liking for Jeremiah and Isaiah. And once he bought a cheap print of Jeremiah which he tacked on the wall of his cellar. From the Khedivial Library MS. we give two excerpts relating to Pascal and this Prophet.

“O Monsieur Pascal,

“I tried hard to hate and detest myself, as you advise, and I found that I could not by so doing love God. ’Tis in loving the divine in Man, in me, in you, that we rise to the love of our Maker. And in giving your proofs of the true religion, you speak of the surprising measures of the Christian Faith, enjoining man to acknowledge himself vile, base, abominable, and obliging him at the same time to aspire towards a resemblance of his Maker. Now, I see in this a foreshadowing of the theory of evolution, nay a divine warrant for it. Nor is it the Christian religion alone which unfolds to man the twofold mystery of his nature; others are as dark and as bright on either side of the pole. And Philosophy conspiring with Biology will not consent to the apotheosis of Man, unless he wear on his breast a symbol of his tail.... Au-revoir , Monsieur Pascal, Remember me to St. Augustine.”

“O Jeremiah,

“Thy picture, sitting among the ruins of the City of Zion, appeals to my soul. Why, I know not. It may be because I myself once sat in that posture among the ruins of my native City of Baal. But the ruins did not grieve me as did the uncle who slammed the door in my face that night. True, I wept in the ruins, but not over them. Something else had punctured the bladderets of my tears. And who knows who punctured thine, O Jeremiah? Perhaps a daughter of Tamar had stuck a bodkin in thine eye, and in lamenting thine own fate Pardon me, O Jeremiah. Melikes not all these tears of thine. Nor did Zion and her children in Juhannam, I am sure.... Instead of a scroll in thy hand, I would have thee hold a harp. Since King David, Allah has not thought of endowing his prophets with musical talent. Why, think what an honest prophet could accomplish if his message were put into music. And withal, if he himself could sing it. Yes, our modern Jeremiahs should all take music lessons; for no matter how deep and poignant our sorrows, we can always rise from them, harp in hand, to an ecstasy, joyous and divine.”

Now, connect with this the following from the Histoire Intime , and you have the complete history of this Prophet in Khalid’s cellar. For Khalid himself never gives us the facts in the case. Our Scribe, however, comes not short in this.

“The picture of the Prophet Jeremiah,” writes he, “Khalid hung on the wall, above his bed. And every night he would look up to it invokingly, muttering I know not what. One evening, while in this posture, he took up his lute and trolled a favourite ditty. For three days and three nights that picture hung on the wall. And on the morning of the fourth day it was a cold December morning, I remember he took it down and lighted the fire with it. The Pamphlet he had read a few days since, he also threw into the fire, and thereupon called to me saying, ‘Come, Shakib, and warm yourself.’”

And the Pamphlet, we learn, which was thus baptised in the same fire with the Prophet’s picture, was Tom Paine’s Age of Reason .

CHAPTER VI - THE SUMMER AFTERNOON OF A SHAM

For two years and more Khalid’s young mind went leaping from one swing to another, from one carousel or toboggan-chute to the next, without having any special object in view, without knowing why and wherefor. He even entered such mazes of philosophy, such labyrinths of mysticism as put those of the Arabian grammaticasters in the shade. To him, education was a sport, pursued in a free spirit after his own fancy, without method or discipline. For two years and more he did little but ramble thus, drawing meanwhile on his account in the bank, and burning pamphlets.

One day he passes by a second-hand book-shop, which is in the financial hive of the city, hard by a church and within a stone’s throw from the Stock Exchange. The owner, a shabby venerable, standing there, pipe in mouth, between piles of pamphlets and little pyramids of books, attracts Khalid. He too occupies a cellar. And withal he resembles the Prophet in the picture which was burned with Tom Paine’s Age of Reason . Nothing in the face at least is amiss. A flowing, serrated, milky beard, with a touch of gold around the mouth; an aquiline nose; deep set blue eyes canopied with shaggy brows; a forehead broad and high; a dome a little frowsy but not guilty of a hair the Prophet Jeremiah! Only one thing, a clay pipe which he seldom took out of his mouth except to empty and refill, seemed to take from the prophetic solemnity of the face. Otherwise, he is as grim and sullen as the Prophet. In his voice, however, there is a supple sweetness which the hard lines in his face do not express. Khalid nicknames him second-hand Jerry, makes to him professions of friendship, and for many months comes every day to see him. He comes with his bucket, as he would say, to Jerry’s well. For the two, the young man and the old man of the cellar, the neophite and the master, would chat about literature and the makers of it for hours. And what a sea of information is therein under that frowsy dome. Withal, second-hand Jerry is a man of ideals and abstractions, exhibiting now and then an heretical twist which is as agreeable as the vermiculations in a mahogany. “We moderns,” said he once to Khalid, “are absolutely one-sided. Here, for instance, is my book-shop, there is the Church, and yonder is the Stock Exchange. Now, the men who frequent them, and though their elbows touch, are as foreign to each other as is a jerboa to a polar bear. Those who go to Church do not go to the Stock Exchange; those who spend their days on the Stock Exchange seldom go to Church; and those who frequent my cellar go neither to the one nor the other. That is why our civilisation produces so many bigots, so many philistines, so many pedants and prigs. The Stock Exchange is as necessary to Society as the Church, and the Church is as vital, as essential to its spiritual well-being as my book-shop. And not until man develops his mental, spiritual and physical faculties to what Matthew Arnold calls ‘a harmonious perfection,’ will he be able to reach the heights from which Idealism is waving to him.”

Thus would the master discourse, and the neophite, sitting on the steps of the cellar, smoking his cigarette, listens, admiring, pondering. And every time he comes with his bucket, Jerry would be standing there, between his little pyramids of books, pipe in mouth, hands in pockets, ready for the discourse. He would also conduct through his underworld any one who had the leisure and inclination. But fortunately for Khalid, the people of this district are either too rich to buy second-hand books, or too snobbish to stop before this curiosity shop of literature. Hence the master is never too busy; he is always ready to deliver the discourse.

One day Khalid is conducted into the labyrinthine gloom and mould of the cellar. Through the narrow isles, under a low ceiling, papered, as it were, with pamphlets, between ramparts and mounds of books, old Jerry, his head bowed, his lighted taper in hand, proceeds. And Khalid follows directly behind, listening to his guide who points out the objects and places of interest. And thus, through the alleys and by-ways, through the nooks and labyrinths of these underground temple-ruins, we get to the rear, where the ramparts and mounds crumble to a mighty heap, rising pell-mell to the ceiling. Here, one is likely to get a glimpse into such enchanted worlds as the name of a Dickens or a Balzac might suggest. Here, too, is Shakespeare in lamentable state; there is Carlyle in rags, still crying, as it were, against the filth and beastliness of this underworld. And look at my lord Tennyson shivering in his nakedness and doomed to keep company with the meanest of poetasters. Observe how Emerson is wriggled and ruffled in this crushing crowd. Does he not seem to be still sighing for a little solitude? But here, too, are spots of the rarest literary interest. Close to the vilest of dime novels is an autograph copy of a book which you might not find at Brentano’s. Indeed, the rarities here stand side by side with the superfluities the abominations with the blessings of literature cluttered together, reduced to a common level. And all in a condition which bespeaks the time when they were held in the affection of some one. Now, they lie a-mouldering in these mounds, and on these shelves, awaiting a curious eye, a kindly hand.

“To me,” writes Khalid in the K. L. MS., “there is always something pathetic in a second-hand book offered again for sale. Why did its first owner part with it? Was it out of disgust or surfeit or penury? Did he throw it away, or give it away, or sell it? Alas, and is this how to treat a friend? Were it not better burned, than sold or thrown away? After coming out of the press, how many have handled this tattered volume? How many has it entertained, enlightened, or perverted? Look at its pages, which evidence the hardship of the journey it has made. Here still is a pressed flower, more convincing in its shrouded eloquence than the philosophy of the pages in which it lies buried. On the fly-leaf are the names of three successive owners, and on the margin are lead pencil notes in which the reader criticises the author. Their spirits are now shrouded together and entombed in this pile, where the mould never fails and the moths never die. They too are fallen a prey to the worms of the earth. A second-hand book-shop always reminds me of a Necropolis. It is a kind of Serapeum where lies buried the kings and princes with the helots and underlings of literature. Ay, every book is a mortuary chamber containing the remains of some poor literary wretch, or some mighty genius.... A book is a friend, my brothers, and when it ceases to entertain or instruct or inspire, it is dead. And would you sell a dead friend, would you throw him away? If you can not keep him embalmed on your shelf, is it not the wiser part, and the kinder, to cremate him?”

And Khalid tells old Jerry, that if every one buying and reading books, disposed of them in the end as he himself does, second-hand book-shops would no longer exist. But old Jerry never despairs of business. And the idea of turning his Serapeum into a kiln does not appeal to him. Howbeit, Khalid has other ideas which the old man admires, and which he would carry out if the police would not interfere. “If I were the owner of this shop,” thus the neophite to the master, “I would advertise it with a bonfire of pamphlets. I would take a few hundreds from that mound there and give them the match right in front of that Church, or better still before the Stock Exchange. And I would have two sandwich-men stand about the bonfire, as high priests of the Temple, and chant the praises of second-hand Jerry and his second-hand book-shop. This will be the sacrifice which you will have offered to the god of Trade right in front of his sanctuary that he might soften the induration in the breasts of these worthy citizens, your rich neighbours. And if he does not, why, shut up shop or burn it up, and let us go out peddling together.”

We do not know, however, whether old Jerry ever adopted Khalid’s idea. He himself is an Oriental in this sense; and the business is good enough to keep up, so long as Khalid comes. He is supremely content. Indeed, Shakib asseverates in round Arabic, that the old man of the cellar got a good portion of Khalid’s balance, while balancing Khalid’s mind. Nay, firing it with free-thought literature. Are we then to consider this cellar as Khalid’s source of spiritual illumination? And is this genial old heretic an American avatar of the monk Bohaira? For Khalid is gradually becoming a man of ideas and crotchets. He is beginning to see a purpose in all his literary and spiritual rambles. His mental nebulosity is resolving itself into something concrete, which shall weigh upon him for a while and propel him in the direction of Atheism and Demagogy. For old Jerry once visits Khalid in his cellar, and after partaking of a dish of mojadderah , takes him to a political meeting to hear the popular orators of the day.

And in this is ineffable joy for Khalid. Like every young mind he is spellbound by one of those masters of spread-eagle oratory, and for some time he does not miss a single political meeting in his district. We even see him among the crowd before the corner groggery, cheering one of the political spouters of the day.

And once he accompanies Jerry to the Temple of Atheism to behold its high Priest and hear him chant halleluiah to the Nebular Hypothesis. This is wonderful. How easy it is to dereligionise the human race and banish God from the Universe! But after the High Priest had done this, after he had proven to the satisfaction of every atheist that God is a myth, old Jerry turns around and gives Khalid this warning: “Don’t believe all he says, for I know that atheist well. He is as eloquent as he is insincere.”

And so are all atheists. For at bottom, atheism is either a fad or a trade or a fatuity. And whether the one or the other, it is a sham more pernicious than the worst. To the young mind, it is a shibboleth of cheap culture; to the shrewd and calculating mind, to such orators as Khalid heard, it is a trade most remunerative; and to the scientists, or rather monists, it is the aliment with which they nourish the perversity of their preconceptions. Second-hand Jerry did not say these things to our young philosopher; for had he done so, Khalid, now become edacious, would not have experienced those dyspeptic pangs which almost crushed the soul-fetus in him. For we are told that he is as sedulous in attending these atheistic lectures as he is in flocking with his fellow citizens to hear and cheer the idols of the stump. Once he took Shakib to the Temple of Atheism, but the Poet seems to prefer his Al-Mutanabby . In relating of Khalid’s waywardness he says:

“Ever since we quarrelled about Sibawai, Khalid and I have seldom been together. And he had become so opinionated that I was glad it was so. Even on Sunday I would leave him alone with Im-Hanna, and returning in the evening, I would find him either reading or burning a pamphlet. Once I consented to accompany him to one of the lectures he was so fond of attending. And I was really surprised that one had to pay money for such masquerades of eloquence as were exhibited that night on the platform. Yes, it occurred to me that if one had not a dollar one could not become an atheist. Billah! I was scandalized. For no matter how irreverent one likes to pose, one ought to reverence at least his Maker. I am a Christian by the grace of Allah, and my ancestors are counted among the martyrs of the Church. And thanks to my parents, I have been duly baptized and confirmed. For which I respect them the more, and love them. Now, is it not absurd that I should come here and pay a hard dollar to hear this heretical speechifier insult my parents and my God? Better the ring of Al-Mutanabbi’s scimitars and spears than the clatter of these atheistical bones!”

From which we infer that Shakib was not open to reason on the subject. He would draw his friend away from the verge of the abyss at any cost. “And this,” continues he, “did not require much effort. For Khalid like myself is constitutionally incapable of denying God. We are from the land in which God has always spoken to our ancestors.”

And the argument between the shrewd verse-maker and the foolish philosopher finally hinges on this: namely, that these atheists are not honest investigators, that in their sweeping generalisations, as in their speciosity and hypocrisy, they are commercially perverse. And Khalid is not long in deciding about the matter. He meets with an accident and accidents have always been his touchstones of success which saves his soul and seals the fate of atheism.

One evening, returning from a ramble in the Park, he passes by the Hall where his favourite Mountebank was to lecture on the Gospel of Soap. But not having the price of admittance that evening, and being anxious to hear the orator whom he had idolised, Khalid bravely appeals to his generosity in this quaint and touching note: “My pocket,” he wrote, “is empty and my mind is hungry. Might I come to your Table to-night as a beggar?” And the man at the stage door, who carries the note to the orator, returns in a trice, and tells Khalid to lift himself off. Khalid hesitates, misunderstands; and a heavy hand is of a sudden upon him, to say nothing of the heavy boot.

Ay, and that boot decided him. Atheism, bald, bold, niggardly, brutal, pretending withal, Khalid turns from its door never to look again in that direction, Shakib is right. “These people,” he growled, “are not free thinkers, but free stinkards. They do need soap to wash their hearts and souls.”

An idea did not come to Khalid, as it were, by instalments. In his puerperal pains of mind he was subject to such crises, shaken by such downrushes of light, as only the few among mortals experience. (We are quoting our Scribe, remember.) And in certain moments he had more faith in his instincts than in his reason. “Our instincts,” says he, “never lie. They are honest, and though they be sometimes blind.” And here, he seems to have struck the truth. He can be practical too. Honesty in thought, in word, in deed this he would have as the cornerstone of his truth. Moral rectitude he places above all the cardinal virtues, natural and theological. “Better keep away from the truth, O Khalid,” he writes, “better remain a stranger to it all thy life, if thou must sully it with the slimy fingers of a mercenary juggler.” Now, these brave words, we can not in conscience criticise. But we venture to observe that Khalid must have had in mind that Gospel of Soap and the incident at the stage door.

And in this, we, too, rejoice. We, too, forgetting the dignity of our position, participate of the revelry in the cellar on this occasion. For our editorialship, dear Reader, is neither American nor English. We are not bound, therefore, to maintain in any degree the algidity and indifference of our confreres’ sublime attitude. We rejoice in the spiritual safety of Khalid. We rejoice that he and Shakib are now reconciled. For the reclaimed runagate is now even permitted to draw on the poet’s balance at the banker. Ay, even Khalid can dissimulate when he needs the cash. For with the assistance of second-hand Jerry and the box-office of the atheistical jugglers, he had exhausted his little saving. He would not even go out peddling any more. And when Shakib asks him one morning to shoulder the box and come out, he replies: “I have a little business with it here.” For after having impeached the High Priests of Atheism he seems to have turned upon himself. We translate from the K. L. MS.

“When I was disenchanted with atheism, when I saw somewhat of the meanness and selfishness of its protagonists, I began to doubt in the honesty of men. If these, our supposed teachers, are so vile, so mercenary, so false, why, welcome Juhannam! But the more I doubted in the honesty of men, the more did I believe that honesty should be the cardinal virtue of the soul. I go so far in this, that an honest thief in my eyes is more worthy of esteem than a canting materialist or a hypocritical free thinker. Still, the voice within me asked if Shakib were honest in his dealings, if I were honest in my peddling? Have I not misrepresented my gewgaws as the atheist misrepresents the truth? ’This is made in the Holy Land,’ ’This is from the Holy Sepulchre’ these lies, O Khalid, are upon you. And what is the difference between the jewellery you passed off for gold and the arguments of the atheist-preacher? Are they not both instruments of deception, both designed to catch the dollar? Yes, you have been, O Khalid, as mean, as mercenary, as dishonest as those canting infidels.

“And what are you going to do about it? Will you continue, while in the quagmires yourself, to point contemptuously at those standing in the gutter? Will you, in your dishonesty, dare impeach the honesty of men? Are you not going to make a resolution now, either to keep silent or to go out of the quagmires and rise to the mountain-heights? Be pure yourself first, O Khalid; then try to spread this purity around you at any cost.

“Yes; that is why, when Shakib asked me to go out peddling one day, I hesitated and finally refused. For atheism, in whose false dry light I walked a parasang or two, did not only betray itself to me as a sham, but also turned my mind and soul to the sham I had shouldered for years. From the peddling-box, therefore, I turned even as I did from atheism. Praised be Allah, who, in his providential care, seemed to kick me away from the door of its temple. The sham, although effulgent and alluring, was as brief as a summer afternoon.”

As for the peddling-box, our Scribe will tell of its fate in the following Chapter.

CHAPTER VII - IN THE TWILIGHT OF AN IDEA

It is Voltaire, we believe, who says something to the effect that one’s mind should be in accordance with one’s years. That is why an academic education nowadays often fails of its purpose. For whether one’s mind runs ahead of one’s years, or one’s years ahead of one’s mind, the result is much the same; it always goes ill with the mind. True, knowledge is power; but in order to feel at home with it, we must be constitutionally qualified. And if we are not, it is likely to give the soul such a wrenching as to deform it forever. Indeed, how many of us go through life with a fatal spiritual or intellectual twist which could have been avoided in our youth, were we a little less wise. The young philosophes , the products of the University Machine of to-day, who go about with a nosegay of -isms, as it were, in their lapels, and perfume their speech with the bottled logic of the College Professor, are not most of them incapable of honestly and bravely grappling with the real problems of life? And does not a systematic education mean this, that a young man must go through life dragging behind him his heavy chains of set ideas and stock systems, political, social, or religious? (Remember, we are translating from the Khedivial Library MS.) The author continues:

“Whether one devour the knowledge of the world in four years or four nights, the process of assimilation is equally hindered, if the mind is sealed at the start with the seal of authority. Ay, we can not be too careful of dogmatic science in our youth; for dogmas often dam certain channels of the soul through which we might have reached greater treasures and ascended to purer heights. A young man, therefore, ought to be let alone. There is an infinite possibility of soul-power in every one of us, if it can be developed freely, spontaneously, without discipline or restraint. There is, too, an infinite possibility of beauty in every soul, if it can be evoked at an auspicious moment by the proper word, the proper voice, the proper touch. That is why I say, Go thy way, O my Brother. Be simple, natural, spontaneous, courageous, free. Neither anticipate your years, nor lag child-like behind them. For verily, it is as ridiculous to dye the hair white as to dye it black. Ah, be foolish while thou art young; it is never too late to be wise. Indulge thy fancy, follow the bent of thy mind; for in so doing thou canst not possibly do thyself more harm than the disciplinarians can do thee. Live thine own life; think thine own thoughts; keep developing and changing until thou arrive at the truth thyself. An ounce of it found by thee were better than a ton given to thee gratis by one who would enslave thee. Go thy way, O my Brother. And if my words lead thee to Juhannam, why, there will be a great surprise for thee. There thou wilt behold our Maker sitting on a flaming glacier waiting for the like of thee. And he will take thee into his arms and poke thee in the ribs, and together you will laugh and laugh, until that glacier become a garden and thou a flower therein. Go thy way, therefore; be not afraid. And no matter how many tears thou sheddest on this side, thou wilt surely be poked in the ribs on the other. Go thy but let Nature be thy guide; acquaint thyself with one or two of her laws ere thou runnest wild.”

And to what extent did this fantastic mystic son of a Phoenician acquaint himself with Nature’s laws, we do not know. But truly, he was already running wild in the great cosmopolis of New York. From his stivy cellar he issues forth into the plashing, plangent currents of city life. Before he does this, however, he rids himself of all the encumbrances of peddlery which hitherto have been his sole means of support. His little stock of crosses, rosaries, scapulars, false jewellery, mother-of-pearl gewgaws, and such like, which he has on the little shelf in the cellar, he takes down one morning but we will let our Scribe tell the story.

“My love for Khalid,” he writes, “has been severely tried. We could no longer agree about anything. He had become such a dissenter that often would he take the wrong side of a question if only for the sake of bucking. True, he ceased to frequent the cellar of second-hand Jerry, and the lectures of the infidels he no longer attended. We were in accord about atheism, therefore, but in riotous discord about many other things, chief among which was the propriety, the necessity, of doing something to replenish his balance at the banker. For he was now impecunious, and withal importunate. Of a truth, what I had I was always ready to share with him; but for his own good I advised him to take up the peddling-box again. I reminded him of his saying once, ‘Peddling is a healthy and profitable business.’ ‘Come out,’ I insisted, ’and though it be for the exercise. Walking is the whetstone of thought.’

“One evening we quarrelled about this, and Im-Hanna sided with me. She rated Khalid, saying, ’You’re a good-for-nothing loafer; you don’t deserve the mojadderah you eat.’ And I remember how she took me aside that evening and whispered something about books, and Khalid’s head, and Mar-Kizhayiah. Indeed, Im-Hanna seriously believed that Khalid should be taken to Mar-Kizhayiah. She did not know that New York was full of such institutions. Her scolding, however, seemed to have more effect on Khalid than my reasoning. And consenting to go out with me, he got up the following morning, took down his stock from the shelf, every little article of it he left nothing there and packed all into his peddling-box. He then squeezed into the bottom drawer, which he had filled with scapulars, the bottle with a little of the Stuff in it. For we were in accord about this, that in New York whiskey is better than arak. And we both took a nip now and then. So I thought the bottle was in order. But why he placed his bank book, which was no longer worth a straw, into that bottom drawer, I could not guess. With these preparations, however, we shouldered our boxes, and in an hour we were in the suburbs. We foot it along then, until we reach a row of cottages not far from the railway station. ’Will you knock at one of these doors,’ I asked. And he, ’I do not feel like chaffering and bargaining this morning.’ ‘Why then did you come out,’ I urged. And he, in an air of nonchalance, ‘Only for the walk.’ And so, we pursued our way in the Bronx, until we reached one of our favourite spots, where a sycamore tree seemed to invite us to its ample shade.

“Here, Khalid, absent-minded, laid down his box and sat upon it, and I stretched my limbs on the grass. But of a sudden, he jumped up, opened the bottom drawer of his case, and drew from it the bottle. It is quite in order now, I mused; but ere I had enjoyed the thought, Khalid had placed his box at a little distance, and, standing there beside it, bottle in hand, delivered himself in a semi-solemn, semi-mocking manner of the following: ‘This is the oil,’ I remember him saying, ‘with which I anoint thee the extreme unction I apply to thy soul.’ And he poured the contents of the bottle into the bottom drawer and over the box, and applied to it a match. The bottle was filled with kerosene, and in a jiffy the box was covered with the flame. Yes; and so quickly, so neatly it was done, that I could not do aught to prevent it. The match was applied to what I thought at first was whiskey, and I was left in speechless amazement. He would not even help me to save a few things from the fire. I conjured him in the name of Allah, but in vain. I clamoured and remonstrated, but to no purpose. And when I asked him why he had done this, he asked me in reply, ’And why have you not done the same? Now, methinks I deserve my mojadderah . And not until you do likewise, will you deserve yours, O Shakib. Here are the lies, now turned to ashes, which brought me my bread and are still bringing you yours. Here are our instruments of deception, our poisoned sources of lucre. I am most happy now, O Shakib. And I shall endeavour to keep my blood in circulation by better, purer means.’ And he took me thereupon by the shoulders, looked into my face, then pushed me away, laughing the laugh of the hasheesh-smokers.

“Indeed, Im-Hanna was right. Khalid had become too odd, too queer to be sane. Needless to say, I was not prone to follow his example at that time. Nor am I now. Mashallah! Lacking the power and madness to set fire to the whole world, it were folly, indeed, to begin with one’s self. I believe I had as much right to exaggerate in peddling as I had in writing verse. My license to heighten the facts holds good in either case. And to some extent, every one, a poet be he or a cobbler, enjoys such a license. I told Khalid that the logical and most effective course to pursue, in view of his rigorous morality, would be to pour a gallon of kerosene over his own head and fire himself out of existence. For the instruments of deception and debasement are not in the peddling-box, but rather in his heart. No; I did not think peddling was as bad as other trades. Here at least, the means of deception were reduced to a minimum. And of a truth, if everybody were to judge themselves as strictly as Khalid, who would escape burning? So I turned from him that day fully convinced that my little stock of holy goods was innocent, and my balance at the banker’s was as pure as my rich neighbour’s. And he turned from me fully convinced, I believe, that I was an unregenerate rogue. Ay, and when I was knocking at the door of one of my customers, he was walking away briskly, his hands clasped behind his back, and his eyes, as usual, scouring the horizon.”

And on that horizon are the gilded domes and smoking chimneys of the seething city. Leaving his last friend and his last burden behind, he will give civilised life another trial. Loafer and tramp that he is! For even the comforts of the grand cable-railway he spurns, and foots it from the Bronx down to his cellar near Battery Park, thus cutting the city in half and giving one portion to Izraeil and the other to Iblis. But not being quite ready himself for either of these winged Furies, he keeps to his cellar. He would tarry here a while, if but to carry out a resolution he has made. True, Khalid very seldom resolves upon anything; but when he does make a resolution, he is even willing to be carried off by the effort to carry it out. And now, he would solve this problem of earning a living in the great city by honest means. For in the city, at least, success well deserves the compliments which those who fail bestow upon it. What Montaigne said of greatness, therefore, Khalid must have said of success. If we can not attain it, let us denounce it. And in what terms does he this, O merciful Allah! We translate a portion of the apostrophe in the K. L. MS., and not the bitterest, by any means.

“O Success,” the infuriated failure exclaims, “how like the Gorgon of the Arabian Nights thou art! For does not every one whom thou favorest undergo a pitiful transformation even from the first bedding with thee? Does not everything suffer from thy look, thy touch, thy breath? The rose loses its perfume, the grape-vine its clusters, the bulbul its wings, the dawn its light and glamour. O Success, our lords of power to-day are thy slaves, thy helots, our kings of wealth. Every one grinds for thee, every one for thee lives and dies.... Thy palaces of silver and gold are reared on the souls of men. Thy throne is mortised with their bones, cemented with their blood. Thou ravenous Gorgon, on what bankruptcies thou art fed, on what failures, on what sorrows! The railroads sweeping across the continents and the steamers ploughing through the seas, are laden with sacrifices to thee. Ay, and millions of innocent children are torn from their homes and from their schools to be offered to thee at the sacrificial-stone of the Factories and Mills. The cultured, too, and the wise, are counted among thy slaves. Even the righteous surrender themselves to thee and are willing to undergo that hideous transformation. O Success, what an infernal litany thy votaries and high-priests are chanting to thee.... Thou ruthless Gorgon, what crimes thou art committing, and what crimes are being committed in thy name!”

From which it is evident that Khalid does not wish for success. Khalid is satisfied if he can maintain his hold on the few spare feet he has in the cellar, and continue to replenish his little store of lentils and olive oil. For he would as lief be a victim of success, he assures us, as to forego his mojadderah . And still having this, which he considers a luxury, he is willing to turn his hand at anything, if he can but preserve inviolate the integrity of his soul and the freedom of his mind. These are a few of the pet terms of Khalid. And in as much as he can continue to repeat them to himself, he is supremely content. He can be a menial, if while cringing before his superiors, he were permitted to chew on his pet illusions. A few days before he burned his peddling-box, he had read Epictetus. And the thought that such a great soul maintained its purity, its integrity, even in bonds, encouraged and consoled him. “How can they hurt me,” he asks, “if spiritually I am far from them, far above them? They can do no more than place gilt buttons on my coat and give me a cap to replace this slouch. Therefore, I will serve. I will be a slave, even like Epictetus.”

And here we must interpose a little of our skepticism, if but to gratify an habitual craving in us. We do not doubt that Khalid’s self-sufficiency is remarkable; that his courage on paper is quite above the common; that the grit and stay he shows are wonderful; that his lofty aspirations, so indomitable in their onwardness, are great: but we only ask, having thus fortified his soul, how is he to fortify his stomach? He is going to work, to be a menial, to earn a living by honest means? Ah, Khalid, Khalid! Did you not often bestow a furtive glance on some one else’s checkbook? Did you not even exercise therein your skill in calculation? If the bank, where Shakib deposits his little saving, failed, would you be so indomitable, so dogged in your resolution? Would you not soften a trifle, loosen a whit, if only for the sake of your blood-circulation?

Indeed, Shakib has become a patron to Khalid. Shakib the poet, who himself should have a patron, is always ready to share his last dollar with his loving, though cantankerous friend. And this, in spite of all the disagreeable features of a friendship which in the Syrian Colony was become proverbial. But Khalid now takes up the newspapers and scans the Want Columns for hours. The result being a clerkship in a lawyer’s office. Nay, an apprenticeship; for the legal profession, it seems, had for a while engaged his serious thoughts.

And this of all the professions is the one on which he would graft his scion of lofty morality? Surely, there be plenty of fuel for a conflagration in a lawyer’s office. Such rows of half-calf tomes, such piles of legal documents, all designed to combat dishonesty and fraud, “and all immersed in them, and nourished and maintained by them.” In what a sorry condition will your Morality issue out of these bogs! A lawyer’s clerk, we are informed, can not maintain his hold on his clerkship, if he does not learn to blink. That is why Khalid is not long in serving papers, copying summonses, and searching title-deeds. In this lawyer’s office he develops traits altogether foreign to his nature. He even becomes a quidnunc, prying now and then into the personal affairs of his superiors. Ay, and he dares once to suggest to his employer a new method of dealing with the criminals among his clients. Withal, Khalid is slow, slower than the law itself. If he goes out to serve a summons he does not return for a day. If he is sent to search title-deeds, he does not show up in the office for a week. And often he would lose himself in the Park surrounding the Register’s Office, pondering on his theory of immanent morality. He would sit down on one of those benches, which are the anchors of loafers of another type, his batch of papers beside him, and watch the mad crowds coming and going, running, as it were, between two fires. These puckered people are the living, moving chambers of sleeping souls.

Khalid was always glad to come to this Register’s Office. For though the searching of title-deeds be a mortal process, the loafing margin of the working hour could be extended imperceptibly, and without hazarding his or his employer’s interest. The following piece of speculative fantasy and insight must have been thought out when he should have been searching title-deeds.

“This Register’s Office,” it is written in the K. L. MS., “is the very bulwark of Society. It is the foundation on which the Trust Companies, the Courts, and the Prisons are reared. Your codes are blind without the miraculous torches which this Office can light. Your judges can not propound the ’laur’ I beg your pardon, the law without the aid of these musty, smelling, dilapidated tomes. Ay, these are the very constables of the realm, and without them there can be no realm, no legislators, and no judges. Strong, club-bearing constables, these Liebers, standing on the boundary lines, keeping peace between brothers and neighbours.

“Here, in these Liebers is an authority which never fails, never dies an authority which willy-nilly we obey and in which we place unbounded trust. In any one of these Registers is a potentiality which can always worst the quibbles and quiddities of lawyers and ward off the miserable technicalities of the law. Any of them, when called upon, can go into court and dictate to the litigants and the attorneys, the jury and the judge. They are the deceased witnesses come to life. And without them, the judges are helpless, the marshals and sheriffs too. Ay, and what without them would be the state of our real-estate interests? Abolish your constabulary force, and your police force, and with these muniments of power, these dumb but far-seeing agents of authority and intelligence, you could still maintain peace and order. But burn you this Register’s Office, and before the last Lieber turn to ashes, ere the last flame of the conflagration die out, you will have to call forth, not only your fire squads, but your police force and even your soldiery, to extinguish other fires different in nature, but more devouring and as many of them as there are boundary lines in the land.”

And we now come to the gist of the matter.

“What wealth of moral truth,” he continues, “do we find in these greasy, musty pages. When one deeds a piece of property, he deeds with it something more valuable, more enduring. He deeds with it an undying human intelligence which goes down to posterity, saying, Respect my will; believe in me; and convey this respect and this belief to your offspring. Ay, the immortal soul breathes in a deed as in a great book. And the implicit trust we place in a musty parchment, is the mystic outcome of the blind faith, or rather the far-seeing faith which our ancestors had in the morality and intelligence of coming generations. For what avails their deeds if they are not respected?... We are indebted to our forbears, therefore, not for the miserable piece of property they bequeath us, but for the confidence and trust, the faith and hope they had in our innate or immanent morality and intelligence. The will of the dead is law for the living.”

Are we then to look upon Khalid as having come out of that Office with soiled fingers only? Or has the young philosopher abated in his clerkship the intensity of his moral views? Has he not assisted his employer in the legal game of quieting titles? Has he not acquired a little of the delusive plausibilities of lawyers? Shakib throws no light on these questions. We only know that the clerkship or rather apprenticeship was only held for a season. Indeed, Khalid must have recoiled from the practice. Or in his recklessness, not to say obtrusion, he must have been outrageous enough to express in the office of the honourable attorney, or in the neighbourhood thereof, his views about pettifogging and such like, that the said honourable attorney was under the painful necessity of asking him to stay home. Nay, the young Syrian was discharged. Or to put it in a term adequate to the manner in which this was done, he was “fired.” Now, Khalid betakes him back to his cellar, and thrumming his lute-strings, lights up the oppressive gloom with Arabic song and music.

CHAPTER VIII - WITH THE Hurís

From the house of law the dervish Khalid wends his way to that of science, and from the house of science he passes on to that of metaphysics. His staff in hand, his wallet hung on his shoulder, his silver cigarette case in his pocket, patient, confident, content, he makes his way from one place to another. Unlike his brother dervishes, he is clean and proud of it, too. He knocks at this or that door, makes his wish known to the servant or the mistress, takes the crumbs given him, and not infrequently gives his prod to the dogs. In the vestibule of one of the houses of spiritism, he tarries a spell and parleys with the servant. The Mistress, a fair-looking, fair-spoken dame of seven lustrums or more, issues suddenly from her studio, in a curiously designed black velvet dressing-gown; she is drawn to the door by the accent of the foreigner’s speech and the peculiar cadence of his voice. They meet: and magnetic currents from his dark eyes and her eyes of blue, flow and fuse. They speak: and the lady asks the stranger if he would not serve instead of begging. And he protests, “I am a Dervish at the door of Allah.” “And I am a Spirit in Allah’s house,” she rejoins. They enter: and the parley in the vestibule is followed by a tete-a-tete in the parlour and another in the dining-room. They agree: and the stranger is made a member of the Spiritual Household, which now consists of her and him, the Medium and the Dervish.

Now, this fair-spoken dame, who dotes on the occult and exotic, delights in the aroma of Khalid’s cigarettes and Khalid’s fancy. And that he might feel at ease, she begins by assuring him that they have met and communed many times ere now, that they have been friends under a preceding and long vanished embodiment. Which vagary Khalid seems to countenance by referring to the infinite power of Allah, in the compass of which nothing is impossible. And with these mystical circumlocutions of ceremony, they plunge into an intimacy which is bordered by the metaphysical on one side, and the physical on the other. For though the Medium is at the threshold of her climacteric, Khalid afterwards tells Shakib that there be something in her eyes and limbs which always seem to be waxing young. And of a truth, the American woman, of all others, knows best how to preserve her beauty from the ravages of sorrow and the years. That is why, we presume, in calling him, “child,” she does not permit him to call her, “mother.” Indeed, the Medium and the Dervish often jest, and somewhiles mix the frivolous with the mysterious.

We would still follow our Scribe here, were it not that his pruriency often reaches the edge. He speaks of “the liaison ” with all the rude simplicity and frankness of the Arabian Nights. And though, as the Mohammedans say, “To the pure everything is pure,” and again, “Who quotes a heresy is not guilty of it”; nevertheless, we do not feel warranted in rending the veil of the reader’s prudery, no matter how transparent it might be. We believe, however, that the pruriency of Orientals , like the prudery of Occidentals , is in fact only an appearance. On both sides there is a display of what might be called verbal virtue and verbal vice. And on both sides, the exaggerations are configured in a harmless pose. Be this as it may, we at least, shall withhold from Shakib’s lasciviousness the English dress it seeks at our hand.

We note, however, that Khalid now visits him in the cellar only when he craves a dish of mojadderah ; that he and the Medium are absorbed in the contemplation of the Unseen, though not, perhaps, of the Impalpable; that they gallivant in the Parks, attend Bohemian dinners, and frequent the Don’t Worry Circles of Metaphysical Societies; that they make long expeditions together to the Platonic North-pole and back to the torrid regions of Swinburne; and that together they perform their zikr and drink at the same fountain of ecstasy and devotion. Withal, the Dervish, who now wears his hair long and grows his finger nails like a Brahmin, is beginning to have some manners.

The Medium, nevertheless, withholds from him the secret of her art. If he desires, he can attend the séances like every other stranger. Once Khalid, who would not leave anything unprobed, insisted, importuned; he could not see any reason for her conduct. Why should they not work together in Tiptology, as in Physiology and Metaphysics? And one morning, dervish-like, he wraps himself in his aba , and, calling upon Allah to witness, takes a rose from the vase on the table, angrily plucks its petals, and strews them on the carpet. Which portentous sign the Medium understands and hastens to minister her palliatives.

“No, Child, you shall not go,” she begs and supplicates; “listen to me, are we not together all the time? Why not leave me alone then with the spirits? One day you shall know all, believe me. Come, sit here,” stroking her palm on her lap, “and listen. I shall give up this tiptology business very soon; you and I shall overturn the table. Yes, Child, I am on the point of succumbing under an awful something. So, don’t ask me about the spooks any more. Promise not to torment me thus any more. And one day we shall travel together in the Orient; we shall visit the ruins of vanished kingdoms and creeds. Ah, to be in Palmyra with you! Do you know, Child, I am destined to be a Beduin queen. The throne of Zenobia is mine, and yours too, if you will be good. We shall resuscitate the glory of the kingdom of the desert.”

To all of which Khalid acquiesces by referring as is his wont to the infinite wisdom of Allah, in whose all-seeing eye nothing is impossible.

And thus, apparently satisfied, he takes the cigarette which she had lighted for him, and lights for her another from his own. But the smoke of two cigarettes dispels not the threatening cloud; it only conceals it from view. For they dine together at a Bohemian Club that evening, where Khalid meets a woman of rare charms. And she invites him to her studio. The Medium, who is at first indifferent, finally warns her callow child. “That woman is a writer,” she explains, “and writers are always in search of what they call ‘copy.’ She in particular is a huntress of male curiosities, originales , whom she takes into her favour and ultimately surrenders them to the reading public. So be careful.” But Khalid hearkens not. For the writer, whom he afterwards calls a flighter, since she, too, “like the van of the brewer only skims the surface of things,” is, in fact, younger than the Medium. Ay, this woman is even beautiful to behold, at least. So the Dervish, a captive of her charms, knocks at the door of her studio one evening and enters. Ah, this then is a studio! “I am destined to know everything, and to see everything,” he says to himself, smiling in his heart.

The charming hostess, in a Japanese kimono receives him somewhat orientally, offering him the divan, which he occupies alone for a spell. He is then laden with a huge scrap-book containing press notices and reviews of her many novels. These, he is asked to go through while she prepares the tea. Which is a mortal task for the Dervish in the presence of the Enchantress. Alas, the tea is long in the making, and when the scrap-book is laid aside, she reinforces him with a lot of magazines adorned with stories of the short and long and middling size, from her fertile pen. “These are beautiful,” says he, in glancing over a few pages, “but no matter how you try, you can not with your pen surpass your own beauty. The charm of your literary style can not hold a candle to the charm of your permit me to read your hand.” And laying down the magazine, he takes up her hand and presses it to his lips. In like manner, he tries to read somewhat in the face, but the Enchantress protests and smiles. In which case the smile renders the protest null and void.

Henceforth, the situation shall be trying even to the Dervish who can eat live coals. He oscillates for some while between the Medium and the Enchantress, but finds the effort rather straining. The first climax, however, is reached, and our Scribe thinks it too sad for words. He himself sheds a few rheums with the fair-looking, fair-spoken Dame, and dedicates to her a few rhymes. Her magnanimity, he tells us, is unexampled, and her fatalism pathetic. For when Khalid severs himself from the Spiritual Household, she kisses him thrice, saying, “Go, Child; Allah brought you to me, and Allah will bring you again.” Khalid refers, as usual, to the infinite wisdom of the Almighty, and, taking his handkerchief from his pocket, wipes the tears that fell from her eyes over his. He passes out of the vestibule, silent and sad, musing on the time he first stood there as a beggar.

Now, the horizon of the Enchantress is unobstructed. Khalid is there alone; and her free love can freely pass on from him to another. And such messages they exchange! Such evaporations of the insipidities of free love! Khalid again takes up with Shakib, from whom he does not conceal anything. The epistles are read by both, and sometimes replied to by both! And she, in an effort to seem Oriental, calls the Dervish, “My Syrian Rose,” “My Desert Flower,” “My Beduin Boy,” et cetera, always closing her message with either a strip of Syrian sky or a camel load of the narcissus. Ah, but not thus will the play close. True, Khalid alone adorns her studio for a time, or rather adores in it; he alone accompanies her to Bohemia. But the Dervish, who was always going wrong in Bohemia, always at the door of the Devil, ventures one night to escort another woman to her studio. Ah, those studios! The Enchantress on hearing of the crime lights the fire under her cauldron. “Double, double, toil and trouble!” She then goes to the telephone g-r-r-r-r you swine you Phoenician murex she hangs up the receiver, and stirs the cauldron. “Double, double, toil and trouble!” But the Dervish writes her an extraordinary letter, in which we suspect the pen of our Scribe, and from which we can but transcribe the following:

“You found in me a vacant heart,” he pleads, “and you occupied it. The divan therein is yours, yours alone. Nor shall I ever permit a chance caller, an intruder, to exasperate you.... My breast is a stronghold in which you are well fortified. How then can any one disturb you?... How can I turn from myself against myself? Somewhat of you, the best of you, circulates with my blood; you are my breath of life. How can I then overcome you? How can I turn to another for the sustenance which you alone can give?... If I be thirst personified, you are the living, flowing brook, the everlasting fountain. O for a drink ”

And here follows a hectic uprush about pearly breasts, and honey-sources, and musk-scented arbours, closing with “Your Beduin Boy shall come to-night.”

Notwithstanding which, the Enchantress abandons the Syrian Dwelling: she no longer fancies the vacant Divan of which Khalid speaks. Fortress or no fortress, she gives up occupation and withdraws from the foreigner her favour. Not only that; but the fire is crackling under the cauldron, and the typewriter begins to click. Ay, these modern witches can make even a typewriter dance around the fire and join in the chorus. “Double, double, toil and trouble, Fire burn, and cauldron bubble!” and the performance was transformed from the studio to the magazine supplement of one of the Sunday newspapers. There, the Dervish is thrown into the cauldron along with the magic herbs. Bubble bubble. The fire-eating Dervish, how can he now swallow this double-tongued flame of hate and love? The Enchantress had wrought her spell, had ministered her poison. Now, where can he find an antidote, who can teach him a healing formula? Bruno D’Ast was once bewitched by a sorceress, and by causing her to be burned he was immediately cured. Ah, that Khalid could do this! Like an ordinary pamphlet he would consign the Enchantress to the flames, and her scrap-books and novels to boot. He does well, however, to return to his benevolent friend, the Medium. The spell can be counteracted by another, though less potent. Ay, even witchcraft has its homeopathic remedies.

And the Medium, Shakib tells us, is delighted to welcome back her prodigal child. She opens to him her arms, and her heart; she slays the fatted calf. “I knew that Allah will bring you back to me,” she ejaculates; “my prevision is seldom wrong.” And kissing her hand, Khalid falters, “Forgiveness is for the sinner, and the good are for forgiveness.” Whereupon, they plunge again into the Unseen, and thence to Bohemia. The aftermath, however, does not come up to the expectations of the good Medium. For the rigmarole of the Enchantress about the Dervish in New York had already done its evil work. And double double wherever the Dervish goes. Especially in Bohemia, where many of its daughters set their caps for him.

And here, he is neither shy nor slow nor visionary. Nor shall his theory of immanent morality trouble him for the while. Reality is met with reality on solid, though sometimes slippery, ground. His animalism, long leashed and starved, is eager for prey. His Phoenician passion is awake. And fortunately, Khalid finds himself in Bohemia where the poison and the antidote are frequently offered together. Here the spell of one sorceress can straightway be offset by that of her sister. And we have our Scribe’s word for it, that the Dervish went as far and as deep with the hurís , as the doctors eventually would permit him. That is why, we believe, in commenting upon his adventures there, he often quotes the couplet,

“In my sublunar paradise
There’s plenty of honey and plenty of flies.”

The flies in his cup, however, can not be detected with the naked eye. They are microbes rather microbes which even the physicians can not manage with satisfaction. For it must be acknowledged that Khalid’s immanent morality and intellectualism suffered an interregnum with the hurís . Reckless, thoughtless, heartless, he plunges headlong again. It is said in Al-Hadith that he who guards himself against the three cardinal evils, namely, of the tongue ( laklaka ), of the stomach ( kabkaba ), and of the sex ( zabzaba ), will have guarded himself against all evil. But Khalid reads not in the Hadith of the Prophet. And that he became audacious, edacious, and loquacious, is evident from such wit and flippancy as he here likes to display. “Some women,” says he, “might be likened to whiskey, others to seltzer water; and many are those who, like myself, care neither for the soda or the whiskey straight. A ‘high-ball’ I will have.”

Nay, he even takes to punch; for in his cup of amour there is a subtle and multifarious mixture. With him, he himself avows, one woman complemented another. What the svelte brunette, for instance, lacked, the steatopygous blonde amply supplied. Delicacy and intensity, effervescence and depth, these he would have in a woman, or a hareem, as in anything else. But these excellences, though found in a hareem, will not fuse, as in a poem or a picture. Even thy bones, thou scented high-lacquered Dervish, are likely to melt away before they melt into one.

It is written in the K. L. MS. that women either bore, or inspire, or excite. “The first and the last are to be met with anywhere; but the second? Ah, well you have heard the story of Diogenes. So take up your lamp and come along. But remember, when you do meet the woman that inspires, you will begin to yearn for the woman that excites.”

And here, the hospitality of the Dervish does not belie his Arab blood. In Bohemia, the bonfire of his heart was never extinguished, and the wayfarers stopping before his tent, be they of those who bored, or excited, or inspired, were welcome guests for at least three days and nights. And in this he follows the rule of hospitality among his people.