TO GOD

In the religious systems of mankind, I sought thee, O God, in vain; in their machine-made dogmas and theologies, I sought thee in vain; in their churches and temples and mosques, I sought thee long, and long in vain; but in the Sacred Books of the World, what have I found? A letter of thy name, O God, I have deciphered in the Védas, another in the Zend-Avesta, another in the Bible, another in the Koran. Ay, even in the Book of the Royal Society and in the Records of the Society for Psychical Research, have I found the diacritical signs which the infant races of this Planet Earth have not yet learned to apply to the consonants of thy name. The lisping infant races of this Earth, when will they learn to pronounce thy name entire? Who shall supply the Vowels which shall unite the Gutturals of the Sacred Books? Who shall point out the dashes which compound the opposite loadstars in the various regions of thy Heaven? On the veil of the eternal mystery are palimpsests of which every race has deciphered a consonant. And through the diacritical marks which the seers and paleologists of the future shall furnish, the various dissonances in thy name shall be reduced, for the sake of the infant races of the Earth, to perfect harmony. KHALID.

CHAPTER I - THE DISENTANGLEMENT OF THE ME

“Why this exaggerated sense of thine importance,” Khalid asks himself in the K. L. MS., “when a little ptomaine in thy cheese can poison the source of thy lofty contemplations? Why this inflated conception of thy Me, when an infusion of poppy seeds might lull it to sleep, even to stupefaction? What avails thy logic when a little of the Mandragora can melt the material universe into golden, unfolding infinities of dreams? Why take thyself so seriously when a leaf of henbane, taken by mistake in thy salad, can destroy thee? But the soul is not dependent on health or disease. The soul is the source of both health and disease. And life, therefore, is either a healthy or a diseased state of the soul.

“One day, when I was rolling these questions in my mind, and working on a reed basket to present to my friend the Hermit as a farewell memento, his serving-monk brings me some dried figs in a blue kerchief and says, ‘My Master greets thee and prays thee come to him.’ I do so the following morning, bringing with me the finished basket, and as I enter the Hermitage court, I find him repairing a stone wall in the vineyard. As he sees me, he hastens to put on his cloak that I might not remark the sack-cloth he wore, and with a pious smile of assurance and thankfulness, welcomes and embraces me, as is his wont. We sit down in the corridor before the chapel door. The odorous vapor of what was still burning in the censer within hung above us. The holy atmosphere mantled the dread silence of the place. And the slow, insinuating smell of incense, like the fumes of gunga, weighed heavy on my eyelids and seemed to brush from my memory the cobwebs of time. A drowsiness possessed me; I felt like one awaking from a dream. I asked for the water jug, which the Hermit hastened to bring. And looking through the door of the chapel, I saw on the altar a burning cresset flickering like the planet Mercury on a December morning. How often did I light such a cresset when a boy, I mused. Yes, I was an acolyte once. I swang the censer and drank deep of the incense fumes as I chanted in Syriac the service. And I remember when I made a mistake one day in reading the Epistle of Paul, the priest, who was of an irascible humour, took me by the ear and made me spell the words I could not pronounce. And the boys in the congregation tittered gleefully. In my mortification was honey for them. Such was my pride, nevertheless, such the joy I felt, when, of all the boys that gathered round the lectern at vespers, I was called upon to read in the sinksar (hagiography) the Life of the Saint of the day.

“I knew then that to steal, for instance, is a sin; and yet, I emptied the box of wafers every morning after mass and shared them with the very boys who laughed at my mistakes. One day, in the purest intention, I offered one of these wafers to my donkey and he would not eat it. I felt insulted, and never after did I pilfer a wafer. Now, as I muse on these sallies of boyish waywardness I am impressed with the idea that the certainty and daring of Ignorance, or might I say Innocence, are great. Indeed, to the pure everything is pure. But strange to relate that as I sat in the corridor of the Hermitage and saw the light flickering on the altar, I hankered for a wafer, and was tempted to go into the chapel and filch one. What prevented me? Alas, knowledge makes sceptics and cowards of us all. And the pursuit of knowledge, according to my Hermit, nay, the noblest pursuit, even the serving of God, ceases to be a virtue the moment we begin to enjoy it.

“‘It is necessary to conquer, not only our instincts,’ he continued, ’but our intellectual and our spiritual passions as well. To force our will in the obedience of a higher will, to leave behind all our mundane desires in the pursuit of the one great desire, herein lies the essence of true virtue. St. Anthony would snatch his hours of devotion from the Devil. Even prayer to him was a struggle, an effort not to feel the joy of it. Yes, we must always disobey our impulses, and resist the tyranny of our desires. When I have a strong desire to pray, I go out into the vineyard and work. When I begin to enjoy my work in the vineyard, I cease to do it well. Therefore, I take up my breviary. Do that which you must not do, when you are suffering, and you will not want to do it again, when you are happy. The other day, one who visited the Hermitage, spoke to me of you, O Khalid. He said you were what is called an anarchist. And after explaining to me what is meant by this I never heard of such a religion before I discovered to my surprise that I, too, am an anarchist. But there is this difference between us: I obey only God and the authority of God, and you obey your instincts and what is called the authority of reason. Yours, O Khalid, is a narrow conception of anarchy. In truth, you should try to be an anarchist like me: subordinate your personality, your will and mind and soul, to a higher will and intelligence, and resist with all your power everything else. Why do you not come to the Hermitage for a few days and make me your confessor?’

“‘I do not confess in private, and I can not sleep within doors.’

“’You do not have to do so; the booth under the almond tree is at your disposal. Come for a spiritual exercise of one week only.’

“’I have been going through such an exercise for a year, and soon I shall leave my cloister in the pines.’

“’What say you? You are leaving our neighbourhood? No, no; remain here, O Khalid. Come, live with me in the Hermitage. Come back to Mother Church; return not to the wicked world. O Khalid, we must inherit the Kingdom of Allah, and we can not do so by being anarchist like the prowlers of the forest. Meditate on the insignificance and evanescence of human life.’

“’But it lies within us, O my Brother, to make it significant and eternal.’

“’Yes, truly, in the bosom of Mother Church. Come back to your Mother come to the Hermitage let us pass this life together.’

“’And what will you do, if in the end you discover that I am in the right?’

“Here he paused a moment, and, casting on me a benignant glance, makes this reply: ‘Then, I will rejoice, rejoice,’ he gasped; ’for we shall both be in the right. You will become an anarchist like me and not against the wretched authorities of the world, but against your real enemies, Instinct and Reason.’

“And thus, now and then, he would salt his argument with a pinch of casuistic wit. Once he was hard set, and, to escape the alternatives of the situation, he condescended to tell me the story of his first and only love.

“‘In my youth,’ said the Hermit, ’I was a shoemaker, and not a little fastidious as a craftsman. In fact, I am, and always have been, an extremist, a purist. I can not tolerate the cobblings of life. Either do your work skilfully, devotedly, earnestly, or do it not. So, as a shoemaker, I succeeded very well. Truth to tell, my work was as good, as neat, as elegant as that of the best craftsman in Beirut. And you know, Beirut is noted for its shoemakers. Yes, I was successful as any of them, and I counted among my customers the bishop of the diocese himself. One day, forgive me, Allah! a young girl, the daughter of a peasant neighbour, comes into the shop to order a pair of shoes. In taking the measure of her foot but I must not linger on these details. A shoemaker can not fail to notice the shape of his customer’s foot. Well, I measured, too, her ankle ah, forgive me, Allah!

“’In brief, when the shoes were finished I spent a whole day in the finishing touches I made her a present of them. And she, in recognition of my favor, made a plush tobacco bag, on which my name was worked in gold threads, and sent it to me, wrapped in a silk handkerchief, with her brother. Now, that is the opening chapter. I will abruptly come to the last, skipping the intermediate parts, for they are too silly, all of them. I will only say that I was as earnest, as sincere, as devoted in this affair of love as I was in my craft. Of a truth, I was mad about both.

“’Now the closing chapter. One day I went to see her we were engaged and found she had gone to the spring for water. I follow her there and find her talking to a young man, a shoemaker like myself. No, he was but a cobbler. On the following day, going again to see her, I find this cobbler there. I remonstrate with her, but in vain. And what is worse, she had sent to him the shoes I made, to be repaired. He was patching my own work! I swallowed my ire and went back to my shop. A week later, to be brief, I went there again, and what I beheld made my body shiver. She, the wench. Forgive me, Allah! had her hands around his neck and her lips yes, her lying lips, on his cheek! No, no; even then I did not utter a word. I could but cry in the depth of my heart. How can woman be so faithless, so treacherous in my heart I cried.

“’It was a terrible shock; and from it I lay in bed for days with chills and fever. Now, when I recovered, I was determined on pursuing a new course of life. No longer would I measure women’s feet. I sold my stock, closed my shop, and entered the monastery. I heard afterwards that she married that young cobbler; emigrated with him to America; deserted him there; returned to her native village; married again, and fled with her second husband to South Africa. Allah be praised! even He appreciates the difference between a shoemaker and a cobbler; and the bad woman He gives to the bad craftsman. That is why I say, Never be a cobbler, whatever you do.

“’But in the monastery draw near, I will speak freely in the monastery, too, there are cobblers and shoemakers. There, too, is much ungodliness, much treachery, much cobbling. Ah me, I must not speak thus. Forgive me, Allah! But I promised to tell you the whole story. Therefore, I will speak freely. After passing some years in the monastery, years of probation and grief they were, I fell sick with a virulent fever. The abbot, seeing that there was little chance of my recovery, would not send for the physician. And so, I languished for weeks, suffering from thirst and burning pains and hunger. I raved and chattered in my delirium. I betrayed myself, too, they told me. The monks my brothers, even during my suffering, made a scandal of the love affair I related. They said that I exposed my wounds and my broken heart before the Virgin, that I sinned in thought and word on my death-bed. Allah forgive them. It may be, however; for I know not what I said and what I did. But when I recovered, I was determined not to remain in the monastery, and not to return to the world. The wicked world, I disentangled myself absolutely from its poisoned meshes. I came to the Hermitage, to this place. And never, since I made my second remove until now, have I known disease, or sorrow, nor treachery, which is worse than both. Allah be praised! One’s people, one’s brothers, one’s lovers and friends, are a hindrance and botheration. We are nothing, nothing: God is everything. God is the only reality. And in God alone is my refuge. That is my story in brief. If I did not like you, I would not have told it, and so freely. Meditate upon it, and on the insignificance and evanescence of human life. The world is a snare, and a bad snare, at that. For it can not hold us long enough in it to learn to like it. It is a cobbler’s snare. The world is full of cobblers, O Khalid. Come away from it; be an ideal craftsman be an extremist be a purist come live with me. Let us join our souls in devotion, and our hearts in love. Come, let us till and cultivate this vineyard together.’

“And taking me by the hand, he shows me a cell furnished with a hair-mat, a masnad (leaning pillow), and a chair. ‘This cell,’ says he, ’was occupied by the Bishop when he came here for a spiritual exercise of three weeks. It shall be yours if you come; it’s the best cell in the Hermitage. Now, let us visit the chapel.’ I go in with him, and as we are coming out, I ask him child-like for a wafer. He brings the box straightway, begs me to take as much as I desire, and placing his hand on my shoulder, encircles me with one of his benignant glances, saying, ‘Allah illumine thy heart, O Khalid.’ ‘Allah hear thy prayer,’ I reply. And we part in tears.”

Here Khalid bursts in ecstasy about the higher spiritual kingdom, and chops a little logic about the I and the not-I, the Reality and the non-Reality. “God,” says the Hermit. “Thought,” says the Idealist, “that is the only Reality.” And what is Thought, and what is God, and what is Matter, and what is Spirit? They are the mysterious vessels of Life, which are always being filled by Love and emptied by Logic. “The external world,” says the Materialist “Does not exist,” says the Idealist. “’Tis immaterial if it does or not,” says the Hermit. And what if the three are wrong? The Universe, knowable and unknowable, will it be affected a whit by it? If the German Professor’s Chair of Logic and Philosophy were set up in the Hermitage, would anything be gained or lost? Let the I deny the stars, and they will nevertheless roll in silence above it. Let the not-I crush this I, this “thinking reed,” and the higher universal I, rising above the stars and flooding the sidereal heavens with light, will warm, remold, and regenerate the world.

“I can conceive of a power,” writes Khalid in that vexing Manuscript, “which can create a beautiful parti-colored sun-flower of the shattered fragments of Idealism, Materialism, and my Hermit’s theology. Why not, if in the New World ” And here, of a sudden, to surprise and bewilder us, he drags in Mrs. Eddy and the Prophet Dowie yoked under the yoke of Whitman. He marks the Key to Scripture with blades from Leaves of Grass , and such fuel as he gathers from both, he lights with an ember borrowed from the chariot to Elijah. And thus, for ten whole pages, beating continually, now in the dark of Metaphysics, now in the dusk of Science; losing himself in the tangled bushes of English Materialism, and German Mysticism, and Arabic Sufism; calling now to Berkeley, now to Hackel; meeting with Spencer here, with Al-Gazzaly there; and endeavoring to extricate himself in the end with some such efforts as “the Natural being Negativity, the Spiritual must be the opposite of that, and both united in God form the Absolute,” etc ., etc . But we shall not give ourselves further pain in laying before the English reader the like heavy and unwieldy lumber. Whoever relishes such stuff, and can digest it, need not apply to Khalid; for, in this case, he is but a poor third-hand caterer. Better go to the Manufacturers direct; they are within reach of every one in this Age of Machinery and Popular Editions. But there are passages here, of which Khalid can say, ‘The Mortar at least is mine.’ And in this Mortar he mixes and titrates with his Neighbour’s Pestle some of his fantasy and insight. Of these we offer a sample:

“I say with psychologists, as the organism, so is the personality. The revelation of the Me is perfect in proportion to the sound state of the Medium. But according to the Arabic proverb, the jar oozes of its contents. If these be of a putridinous mixture, therefore, no matter how sound the jar, the ooze is not going to smell of ambergris and musk. So, it all depends on the contents with which the Potter fills his jugs and pipkins, I assure you. And if the contents are good and the jar is sound, we get such excellence of soul as is rare among mortals. If the contents are excellent and the jar is cracked, the objective influence will then predominate, and putrescence, soon or late, will set in. Now, the Me in the majority of mankind comes to this world in a cracked pipkin, and it oozes out entirely as soon as it liquifies in youth. The pipkin, therefore, goes through life empty and cracked, ever sounding flat and false. While in others the Me is enclosed in a sealed straw-covered flask and can only be awakened by either evaporation or decapitation, in other words, by a spiritual revolution. And in the very few among mortals, it emerges out of the iron calyx of a flower of red-hot steel, or flows from the transparent, odoriferous bosom of a rose of light. In the first we have a Cæsar, an Alexander, a Napoleon; in the second, a Buddha, a Socrates, a Christ.

“But consider that Science, in the course of psychological analysis, speaks of Christ, Napoleon, and Shakespeare, as patients. Such exalted states of the soul, such activity of the mind, such exuberance of spiritual strength, are but the results of the transformation of the Me in the subject, we are told, and this transformation has its roots in the organism. But why, I ask, should there be such a gulf between individuals, such a difference in their Mes , when a difference in the organism is a trifle in comparison? How account for the ebb and flow in the souls, or let us say, in the expression of the individualities, of Mohammad the Prophet, for instance, and Mohammad the camel-herd? And why is it in psychological states that are similar, the consciousness of the one is like a mountain peak, so to speak, and that of the other like a cave?

“A soldier is severely wounded in battle and a change takes place in his nervous organism, by reason of which he loses his organic consciousness; or, to speak in the phraseology of the psychologist, he loses the sense of his own body, of his physical personality. The cause of this change is probably the wound received; but the nature of the change can be explained only by hypotheses, which are become matters of choice and taste and sometimes of personal interest among scientists. Now, when the question is resolved by hypothesis, is not even a layman free to offer one? If I say the Glass is shattered and the Me within is sadly reflected, or in a more tragic instance the light of the Me runs out, would I not be offering thee a solution as dear and tenable as that of the professor of psychology?”

CHAPTER II - THE VOICE OF THE DAWN

Breathless but scathless, we emerge from the mazes of metaphysics and psychology where man and the soul are ever playing hide-and-seek; and where Khalid was pleased to display a little of his killing skill in fencing. To those mazes, we promise the Reader, we shall not return again. In our present sojourn, however, it is necessary to go through the swamps and Jordans as well as the mountains and plains. Otherwise, we would not have lingered a breathing while in the lowlands of mystery. But now we know how far Khalid went in seeking health, and how deep in seeking the Me, which he would disentangle from the meshes of philosophy and anchoretism, and bring back to life, triumphant, loving, joyous, free. And how far he succeeded in this, we shall soon know.

On the morning of his last day in the pines, meanwhile, we behold him in the chariot of Apollo serenading the stars. He no longer would thrust a poker down his windpipe; for he breathes as freely as the mountain bears and chirps as joyously as the swallows. And his lungs? The lungs of the pines are not as sound. And his eyes? Well, he can gaze at the rising sun without adverting the head or squinting or shedding a tear. Now, as a sign of this healthy state of body and mind, and his healthier resolve to return to the world, to live opposite his friend the Hermit on the other antipode of life, and furthermore, as a relief from the exhausting tortuosities of thought in the last Chapter, we give here a piece of description notably symbolical.

“I slept very early last night; the lights in the chapel of the abbey were still flickering, and the monks were chanting the complines. The mellow music of a drizzle seemed to respond sombrely to the melancholy echo of the choir. About midnight the rain beat heavily on the pine roof of the forest, and the thunder must have struck very near, between me and the monks. But rising very early this morning to commune for the last time with the pensive silence of dawn in the pines, I am greeted, as I peep out of my booth, by a knot of ogling stars. But where is the opaque breath of the storm, where are the clouds? None seem to hang on the horizon, and the sky is as limpid and clear as the dawn of a new life. Glorious, this interval between night and dawn. Delicious, the flavour of the forest after a storm. Intoxicating, the odours of the earth, refreshed and satisfied. Divine, the whispers of the morning air, divine!

“But where is the rain, and where are the thunderbolts of last night? The forest and the atmosphere retain but the sweet and scented memories of their storming passion. Such a December morning in these mountain heights is a marvel of enduring freshness and ardour. All round one gets a vivid illusion of Spring. The soft breezes caressing the pines shake from their boughs the only evidence of last night’s storm. And these are more like the dew of Summer than the lees of the copious tears of parting Autumn. A glorious morning, too glorious to be enjoyed by a solitary soul. But near the rivulet yonder stands a fox sniffing the morning air. Welcome, my friend. Welcome to my coffee, too.

“I gather my mulberry sticks, kindle them with a handful of dried pine needles, roast my coffee beans, and grind them while the water boils in the pot. In half an hour I am qualified to go about my business. The cups and coffee utensils I wash and restore to the chest and what else have I to do to-day? Pack up? Allah be praised, I have little packing to do. I would pack up, if I could, a ton of the pine air and the forest perfume, a strip of this limpid sky, and a cluster of those stars. Never at such an hour and in this season of the year did I enjoy such transporting limpidity in the atmosphere and such reassuring expansiveness on the horizon. Why, even the stars, the constellations, and the planets, are all here to enjoy this with me. Not one of them, I think, is absent.

“The mountains are lost in the heavens. They are seeking, as it were, the sisters of the little flowers sleeping at their feet. The moon, resembling a crushed orange, is sinking in the Mediterranean. The outlines of earth and sky all round are vague, indistinct. Were not the sky so clear and the atmosphere so rare, thus affording the planets and the constellations to shed their modicum of light, the dusk of this hour would have deprived the scene of much of its pensive beauty of colour and shade. But there is Pegasus, Andromeda, Aldebaran, not to mention Venus and Jupiter and Saturn, these alone can conquer the right wing of darkness. And there is Mercury, like a lighted cresset shaken by the winds, flapping his violet wings above the Northeastern horizon; and Mars, like a piece of gold held out by the trembling hand of a miser, is sinking in the blue of the sea with Neptune; the Pleiades are stepping on the trail of the blushing moon; the Balance lingers behind to weigh the destinies of the heroes who are to contend with the dawn; while Venus, peeping from her tower over Mt. Sanneen, is sending love vibrations to all. I would tell thee more if I knew. But I swear to thee I never read through the hornbook of the heavens. But if I can not name and locate more of the stars, I can tell thee this about them all: they are the embers of certainty eternally glowing in the ashes of doubt.

“The Eastern horizon is yet lost in the dusk; the false dawn is spreading the figments of its illusion; the trees in the distance seem like rain-clouds; and the amorphous shadows of the monasteries on the mountain heights and hilltops all around, have not yet developed into silhouettes. Everything, except the river in the wadi below, is yet asleep. Not even the swallows are astir. Ah, but my neighbour yonder is; the light in the loophole of his hut sends a struggling ray through the mulberries, and the tintinnabulations of his daughter’s loom are like so many stones thrown into this sleeping pond of silence. The loom-girl in these parts is never too early at her harness and shuttle. I know a family here whose loom and spinning wheel are never idle: the wife works at the loom in the day and her boy at the wheel; while in the night, her husband and his old mother keep up the game. And this hardly secures for them their flour and lentils the year round. But I concern not myself now with questions of economy.

“There, another of my neighbours is awake; and the hinges of his door, shrieking terribly, fiendishly, startle the swallows from their sleep. And here are the muleteers, yodling, as they pass by, their

’Dhome, Dhome, Dhome,
O mother, he is come;
Hide me, hide me quickly,
And say I am not home.’

“Lo, the horizon is disentangling itself from the meshes of darkness. The dust of haze and dusk on the scalloped edges of the mountains, is blown away by the first breath of dawn. The lighter grey of the horizon is mirrored in the clearer blue of the sea. But the darkness seems to gather on the breast of the sloping hills. Conquered on the heights, it retreats into the wadi. Ay, the darkest hour is nearest the dawn.

“Now the light grey is become a lavender; the outlines of earth and sky are become more distinct; the mountain peaks, the dusky veil being rent, are separating themselves from the heaven’s embrace; the trees in the distance no longer seem like rain-clouds; and the silhouettes of the monasteries are casting off the cloak of night. The lavender is melting now into heliotrope, and the heliotrope is bursting here and there in pink; the stars are waning, the constellations are dying out, and the planets are following in their wake. The darkness, too, which has not yet retreated from the wadi, must soon follow; for the front guard of the dawn is near. Behold the shimmer of their steel! And see, in the dust of the retreating darkness, the ochre veins of the lime cliffs are now perceptible. And that huge pillar, which looked like the standard-bearer of Night, is transformed into a belfry; and a monk can be seen peeping through the ogive beneath it. Mt. Sanneen, its black and ochre scales thrown in relief on a coat of grey, is like a huge panther sleeping over the many-throated ravine of Kisrawan. Ah, the pink flower of dawn is bursting in golden glory, thrilling in orange and saffron, flaming with the ardency of love and hope. The dawn! The glow and glamour of the Eastern dawn!...

“The dawn of a new life, of a better, purer, healthier, higher spiritual kingdom. I would have its temples and those of the vast empire of wealth and material well-being, stand side by side. Ay, I would even rear an altar to the Soul in the temple of Materialism, and an altar to Materialism in the temple of the Soul. Each shall have its due, each shall glory in the sacred purity and strength of life; each shall develop and expand, but never at the expense of the other. I will have neither the renunciation which ends in a kind of idiocy dignified with a philosophic or a theologic name, nor the worldliness which ends in bestiality. I am a citizen of two worlds a citizen of the Universe; I owe allegiance to two kingdoms. In my heart are those stars and that sun, and the LIGHT of those stars and that sun.

“Yes, I am equally devoted both to the material and the spiritual. And when the two in me are opposed to each other, conflicting, inimical, obdurate, my attitude towards them is neither that of my friend the Hermit nor that of my European superman. I sit down, shut my eyes, compose myself, and concentrate my mind on the mobility of things. If the clouds are moving, why, I have but to sit down and let them move away. I let my No-will, in this case, dominate my will, and that serves my purpose well. To be sure, every question tormenting us would resolve itself favourably, or at least indifferently, if we did not always rush in, wildly, madly, and arrogate to ourselves such claims of authority and knowledge as would make Olympus shake with laughter. The resignation and passiveness of the spirit should always alternate equitably with the terrible strivings of the will. For the dervish who whirls himself into a foaming ecstasy of devotion and the strenuous American who works himself up to a sweating ecstasy of gain, are the two poles of the same absurdity, the two ends of one evil. Indeed, to my way of thinking, the man on the Stock Exchange and the demagogue on the stump, for instance, are brothers to the blatant corybant.”

CHAPTER III - THE SELF ECSTATIC

To graft the strenuosity of Europe and America upon the ease of the Orient, the materialism of the West upon the spirituality of the East, this to us seems to be the principal aim of Khalid. But often in his wanderings and divagations of thought does he give us fresh proof of the truism that no two opposing elements meet and fuse without both losing their original identity. You may place the bit of contentment in the mouth of ambition, so to speak, and jog along in your sterile course between the vast wheat fields groaning under the thousand-toothed plough and the gardens of delight swooning with devotion and sensuality. But cross ambition with contentment and you get the hinny of indifference or the monster of fatalism. We do not say that indifference at certain passes of life, and certain stages, is not healthy, and fatalism not powerful; but both we believe are factors as potent in commerce and trade as pertinacity and calculation. “But is there not room in the garden of delight for a wheat field?” asks Khalid. “Can we not apply the bow to the telegraph wires of the world and make them the vehicle of music as of stock quotations? Can we not simplify life as we are simplifying the machinery of industry? Can we not consecrate its Temple to the Trinity of Devotion, Art, and Work, or Religion, Romance, and Trade?”

This seems to be the gist of Khalid’s gospel. This, through the labyrinths of doubt and contradiction, is the pinnacle of faith he would reach. And often in this labyrinthic gloom, where a gleam of light from some recess of thought or fancy reveals here a Hermit in his cloister, there an Artist in his studio, below a Nawab in his orgies, above a Broker on the Stock Exchange, we have paused to ask a question about these glaring contrarieties in his life and thought. And always would he make this reply: “I have frequently moved and removed between extremes; I have often worked and slept in opposing camps. So, do not expect from me anything like the consistency with which the majority of mankind solder and shape their life. Deep thought seems often, if not always, inconsistent at the first blush. The intensity and passiveness of the spirit are as natural in their attraction and repulsion as the elements, whose harmony is only patent on the surface. Consistency is superficial, narrow, one-sided. I am both ambitious, therefore, and contented. My ambition is that of the earth, the ever producing and resuscitating earth, doing the will of God, combatting the rasure of time; and my contentment is that of the majestic pines, faring alike in shade and sunshine, in calm and storm, in winter as in spring. Ambition and Contentment are the night and day of my life-journey. The day makes room for the fruits of solacement which the night brings; and the night gives a cup of the cordial of contentment to make good the promise of day to day.

“Ay, while sweating in the tortuous path, I never cease to cherish the feeling in which I was nourished; the West for me means ambition, the East, contentment: my heart is ever in the one, my soul, in the other. And I care not for the freedom which does not free both; I seek not the welfare of the one without the other. But unlike my Phoenician ancestors, the spiritual with me shall not be limited by the natural; it shall go far above it, beyond or below it, saturating, sustaining, purifying what in external nature is but a symbol of the invisible. Nor is my idea of the spiritual developed in opposition to nature, and in a manner inimical to its laws and claims, as in Judaism and Christianity.

“The spiritual and natural are so united, so inextricably entwined around each other, that I can not conceive of them separately, independently. And both in the abstract sense are purportless and ineffectual without Consciousness. They are blind, dumb forces, beautiful, barbaric pageants, careering without aim or design through the immensities of No-where and No-time, if they are not impregnated and nourished with Thought, that is to say, with Consciousness, vitalised and purified. You may impregnate them with philosophy, nourish them with art; they both emanate from them, and remain as skidding clouds, as shining mirages, as wandering dust, until they find their exponent in Man.

“I tell thee then that Man, that is to say Consciousness, vitalised and purified, in other words Thought that alone is real and eternal. And Man is supreme, only when he is the proper exponent of Nature, and spirit, and God: the three divine sources from which he issues, in which he is sustained, and to which he must return. Nature and the spiritual, without this embodied intelligence, this somatic being, called man or angel or ape, are as ermine on a wax figure. The human factor, the exponent intelligence, the intellective and sensuous faculties, these, my Brothers, are whole, sublime, holy, only when, in a state of continuous expansion, the harmony among themselves and the affirmative ties between them and Nature, are perfect and pure. No, the spiritual ought not and can not be free from the sensuous, even the sensual. The true life, the full life, the life, pure, robust, sublime, is that in which all the nobler and higher aspirations of the soul AND THE BODY are given free and unlimited scope, with the view of developing the divine strain in Man, and realising to some extent the romantic as well as the material hopes of the race. God, Nature, Spirit, Passion Passion, Spirit, Nature, God in some such panorama would I paint the life of a highly developed being. Any of these elements lacking, and the life is wanting, defective, impure.

“I have no faith in men who were conceived in a perfunctory manner, on a pragmatical system, so to speak; the wife receiving her husband in bed as she would a tedious guest at an afternoon tea. Only two flames uniting produce a third; but a flame and a name, or a flame and a spunge, produce a hiff and nothing. Oh, that the children of the race are all born phoenix-like in the fire of noble and sacred passion, in the purgatory, as it were, of Love. What a race, what a race we should have. What men, what women! Yes, that is how the children of the earth should be conceived, not on a pragmatical system, in an I-don’t-care-about-the-issue manner. I believe in evoking the spirit, in dreaming a little about the gods of Olympus, and a little, too, about the gods of the abysmal depths, before the bodily communion. And in earnest, O my Brother, let us do this, despite what old Socrates says about the propriety and wisdom of approaching your wife with prudence and gravity....”

And thus, if we did not often halloo, Khalid, like a huntsman pursuing his game, would lose himself in the pathless, lugubrious damp of the forest. If we did not prevent him at times, holding firmly to his coat-tail, he would desperately pursue the ghost of his thoughts even on such precipitous paths to those very depths in which Socrates and Montaigne always felt at home. But he, a feverish, clamorous, obstreperous stripling of a Beduin, what chance has he in extricating his barbaric instincts from such thorny hedges of philosophy? And had he not quoted Socrates in that last paragraph, it would have been expunged. No, we are not utterly lost to the fine sense of propriety of this chaste and demure age. But no matter how etiolated and sickly the thought, it regains its colour and health when it breathes the literary air. Prudery can not but relish the tang of lubricity when flavoured with the classical. Moreover, if Socrates and Montaigne speak freely of these midnight matters, why not Khalid, if he has anything new to say, any good advice to offer. But how good and how new are his views let the Reader judge.

’Tis very well to speak “of evoking the spirit before the bodily communion,” but those who can boast of a deeper experience in such matters will find in Socrates’ dictum, quoted by Montaigne, the very gist of reason and wisdom. Those wise ones were as far-sighted as they were far gone. And moderation, as it was justly said once, is the respiration of the philosopher. But Khalid, though always invoking the distant luminary of transcendentalism for light, can not arrogate to himself this high title. The expansion of all the faculties, and the reduction of the demands of society and the individual to the lowest term; this, as we understand it, is the aim of transcendentalism. And Khalid’s distance from the orbit of this grand luminary seems to vary with his moods; and these vary with the librations and revolutions of the moon. Hallucinated, moonstruck Khalid, your harmonising and affinitative efforts do not always succeed. That is our opinion of the matter. And the Reader, who is no respecter of editors, might quarrel with it, for all we know.

Only by standing firmly in the centre can one preserve the equilibrium of one’s thoughts. But Khalid seldom speaks of equilibrium: he cares not how he fares in falling on either side of the fence, so he knows what lies behind. Howbeit, we can not conceive of how the affinity of the mind and soul with the senses, and the harmony between these and nature, are possible, if not exteriorised in that very superman whom Khalid so much dreads, and on whom he often casts a lingering glance of admiration. So there you are. We must either rise to a higher consciousness on the ruins of a lower one, of no-consciousness, rather, or go on seeming and simulating, aspiring, perspiring, and suffering, until our turn comes. Death denies no one. Meanwhile, Khalid’s rhapsodies on his way back to the city, we shall heed and try to echo.

“On the high road of the universal spirit,” he sings, “the world, the whole world before me, thrilling and radiating, chanting of freedom, faith, hope, health and power, and joy. Back to the City, O Khalid, the City where Truth, and Faith, and Honesty, and Wisdom, are ever suffering, ever struggling, ever triumphing. No, it matters not with me if the spirit of intelligence and power, of freedom and culture, which must go the rounds of the earth, is always dominated by the instinct of self-interest. That must be; that is inevitable. But the instinct of self-interest, O my Brother, goes with the flesh; the body-politic dies; nations rise and fall; and the eternal Spirit, the progenitor of all ideals, passes to better or worse hands, still chastening and strengthening itself in the process.

“The Orient and Occident, the male and female of the Spirit, the two great streams in which the body and soul of man are refreshed, invigorated, purified of both I sing, in both I glory, to both I consecrate my life, for both I shall work and suffer and die. My Brothers, the most highly developed being is neither European nor Oriental; but rather he who partakes of the finer qualities of both the European genius and the Asiatic prophet.

“Give me, ye mighty nations of the West, the material comforts of life; and thou, my East, let me partake of thy spiritual heritage. Give me, America, thy hand; and thou, too, Asia. Thou land of origination, where Light and Spirit first arose, disdain not the gifts which the nations of the West bring thee; and thou land of organisation and power, where Science and Freedom reign supreme, disdain not the bounties of the sunrise.

“If the discoveries and attainments of Science will make the body of man cleaner, healthier, stronger, happier, the inexhaustible Oriental source of romantic and spiritual beauty will never cease to give the soul of man the restfulness and solacement it is ever craving. And remember, Europa, remember, Asia, that foreign culture is as necessary to the spirit of a nation as is foreign commerce to its industries. Elsewise, thy materialism, Europa, or thy spiritualism, Asia, no matter how trenchant and impregnable, no matter how deep the foundation, how broad the superstructure thereof, is vulgar, narrow, mean is nothing, in a word, but parochialism.

“I swear that neither religious nor industrial slavery shall forever hold the world in political servitude. No; the world shall be free of the authority, absolute, blind, tyrannical, of both the Captains of Industry and the High Priests of the Temple. And who shall help to free it? Science alone can not do it; Science and Faith must do it.

“I say with thee, O Goethe, ‘Light, more light!’ I say with thee, O Tolstoi, ‘Love, more love!’ I say with thee, O Ibsen, ’Will, more will!’ Light, Love, and Will the one is as necessary as the other; the one is dangerous without the others. Light, Love, and Will, are the three eternal, vital sources of the higher, truer, purer cosmic life.

“Light, Love, and Will with corals and pearls from their seas would I crown thee, O my City. In these streams would I baptise thy children, O my City. The mind, and the heart, and the soul of man I would baptise in this mountain lake, this high Jordan of Truth, on the flourishing and odoriferous banks of Science and Religion, under the sacred sidr of Reason and Faith.

“Ay, in the Lakes of Light, Love, and Will, I would baptise all mankind. For in this alone is power and glory, O my European Brothers; in this alone is faith and joy, O my Brothers of Asia.

“The Hudson, the Mississippi, the Amazon, the Thames, the Seine, the Rhine, the Danube, the Euphrates, the Ganges every one of these great streams shall be such a Jordan in the future. In every one of them shall flow the confluent Rivers of Light, Love, and Will. In every one of them shall sail the barks of the higher aspirations and hopes of mankind.

“I come now to be baptised, O my City. I come to slake my thirst in thy Jordan. I come to launch my little skiff, to do my little work, to pay my little debt.

“In thy public-squares, O my City, I would raise monuments to Nature; in thy theatres to Poesy and Thought; in thy bazaars to Art; in thy homes, to Health; in thy temples of worship, to universal Goodwill; in thy courts, to Power and Mercy; in thy schools, to Simplicity; in thy hospitals, to Faith; and in thy public-halls to Freedom and Culture. And all these, without Light, Love, and Will, are but hollow affairs, high-sounding inanitiés . Without Light, Love, and Will, even thy Nabobs in the end shall curse thee; and with these, thy hammals under their burdens shall thank the heavens under which thy domes and turrets and minarets arise.”

CHAPTER IV - ON THE OPEN HIGHWAY

And Khalid, packing his few worldly belongings in one of his reed baskets, gives the rest to his neighbours, leaves his booth in the pines to the swallows, and bids the monks and his friend the Hermit farewell. The joy of the wayfaring! Now, where is the jubbah, the black jubbah of coarse wool, which we bought from one of the monks? He wraps himself in it, tightens well his shoe-strings, draws his fur cap over his ears, carries his basket on his back, takes up his staff, lights his cigarette, and resolutely sets forth. The joy of the wayfaring! We accompany him on the open highway, through the rocky wilderness, down to the fertile plains, back to the city. For the account he gives us of his journey enables us to fill up the lacuna in Shakib’s Histoire Intime , before we can have recourse to it again.

“From the cliffs ’neath which the lily blooms,” he muses as he issues out of the forest and reaches the top of the mountain, “to the cliffs round which the eagles flit, what a glorious promontory! What a contrast at this height, in this immensity, between the arid rocky haunts of the mountain bear and eagle and the spreading, vivifying verdure surrounding the haunts of man. On one side are the sylvan valleys, the thick grown ravines, the meandering rivulets, the fertile plains, the silent villages, and on the distant horizon, the sea, rising like a blue wall, standing like a stage scene; on the other, a howling immensity of boulders and prickly shrubs and plants, an arid wilderness the haunt of the eagle, the mountain bear, and the goatherd. One step in this direction, and the entire panorama of verdant hills and valleys is lost to view. Its spreading, riant beauty is hidden behind that little cliff. I penetrate through this forest of rocks, where the brigands, I am told, lie in ambush for the caravans traveling between the valley of the Leontes and the villages of the lowland. But the brigands can not harm a dervish; my penury is my amulet my salvation.

“The horizon, as I proceed, shrinks to a distance of ten minutes’ walk across. And thus, from one circle of rocks to another, I pass through ten of them before I hear again the friendly voice of the rill, and behold again the comforting countenance of the sylvan slopes. I reach a little grove of slender poplars, under the brow of a little hill, from which issues a little limpid stream and runs gurgling through the little ferns and bushes down the heath. I swing from the road and follow this gentle rill; I can not find a better companion now. But the wanton lures me to a village far from the road on the other side of the gorge. Now, I must either retrace my steps to get to it by a long detour, or cross the gorge, descending to the deep bottom and ascending in a tangled and tortuous path to reach the main road on the breast of the opposite escarpment. Here is a short-cut which is long and weary. It lures me as the stream; it cheats me with a name. And when I am again on the open road, I look back with a sigh of relief on the dangers I had passed. I can forgive the luring rill, which still smiles to me innocently from afar, but not the deluding, ensnaring ravine. The muleteer who saw me struggling through the tangled bushes up the pathless, hopeless steep, assures me that my mother is a pious woman, else I would have slipped and gone into an hundred pieces among the rocks below. ‘Her prayers have saved thee,’ quoth he; ’thank thy God.’

“And walking together a pace, he points to the dizzy precipice around which I climbed and adds: ’Thou seest that rock? I hallooed to thee when thou wert creeping around it, but thou didst not hear me. From that same rock a woodman fell last week, and, falling, looked like a potted bird. He must have died before he reached the ground. His bones are scattered among those rocks. Thank thy God and thy mother. Her prayers have saved thee.’

“My dear mother, how long since I saw thee, how long since I thought of thee. My loving mother, even the rough, rude spirit of a muleteer can see in the unseen the beauty and benevolence of such devotion as thine. The words of this dusky son of the road, coming as through the trumpet of revelation to rebuke me, sink deep in my heart and draw tears from mine eyes. For art thou not ever praying for thy grievous son, and for his salvation? How many beads each night dost thou tell, how many hours dost thou prostrate thyself before the Virgin, sobbing, obsecrating, beating thy breast? And all for one, who until now, ever since he left Baalbek, did not think on thee. Let me kiss thee, O my Brother, for thy mild rebuke. Let me kiss thee for reminding me of my mother. No, I can not further with thee; I am waygone; I must sit me a spell beneath this pine and weep. O Khalid, wretched that thou art, can the primitive soul of this muleteer be better than thine? Can there be a sounder intuitiveness, a healthier sense of love, a grander sympathy, beneath that striped aba, than there is within thy cloak? Wilt thou not beat thy cheeks in ignominy and shame, when a stranger thinks of thy mother, and reverently, ere thou dost? No matter how low in the spiritual circles she might be, no matter how high thou risest, her prayer and her love are always with thee. If she can not rise to thee on the ladder of reason, she can soar on the wings of affection. Yea, I prostrate myself beneath this pine, bury my forehead in its dust, thanking Allah for my mother. Oh, I am waygone, but joyous. The muleteer hath illumined thee, O Khalid.

“There, the snow birds are passing by, flitting to the lowland. The sky is overcast; there is a lull in the wind. Hark, I hear the piping of the shepherd and the tinkling bell of the wether. Yonder is his flock; and there sits he on a rock blowing his doleful reed. I am almost slain with thirst. I go to him, and cheerfully does he milk for me. I do not think Rebekah was kinder and sweeter in Abraham’s servant’s eyes than was this wight in mine. ‘Where dost thou sleep?’ I ask, ‘Under this rock,’ he replies. And he shows me into the cave beneath it, which is furnished with a goat-skin, a masnad, and a little altar for the picture of the Virgin. Before this picture is an oil lamp, ever burning, I am told. ‘And this altar,’ quoth the shepherd, ’was my mother’s. When she died she bequeathed it to me. I carry it with me in the wilderness, and keep the oil burning in her memory.’ Saying which he took to weeping. Even the shepherd, O Khalid, is sent to rebuke thee. I thank him, and resume my march.

“At eventide, descending from one hilltop to another, I reach a village of no mean size. It occupies a broad deep steep, in which the walnut and poplar relieve the monotony of the mulberries. I hate the mulberry, which is so suggestive of worms; and I hate worms, and though they be of the silk-making kind. I hate them the more, because the Lebanon peasant seems to live for the silk-worms, which he tends and cultivates better than he does his children.

“When I stood on the top of the steep, the village glittering with a thousand lights lay beneath like a strip of the sidereal sky. It made me feel I was above the clouds, even above the stars. The gabled houses overtopping each other, spreading in clusters and half-circles, form here an aigrette, as it were, on the sylvan head of the mountain, there a necklace on its breast, below a cestus brilliant with an hundred lights. I descend into the village and stop before the first house I reach. The door is wide open; and the little girl who sees me enter runs in fright to tell her mother. Straightway, the woman and her son, a comely and lusty youth, come out in a where-is-the-brigand manner, and, as they see me, stand abashed, amazed. The young man who wore a robe - de - chambre and Turkish slippers worked in gold, returns my salaam courteously and invites me up to the divan. There is a spark of intelligence in his eyes, and an alien affectation in his speech. I foresaw that he had been in America. He does not ask me the conventional questions about my religious persuasion; but after his inquiries of whence and whither, he offers me an Egyptian cigarette, and goes in to order the coffee. It did not occur to him that I was his guest for the night.

“Ah me, I no longer know how to recline on a cushion, and a rug under my feet seems like a sheet of ice. But with my dust and mud I seem like Diogenes trampling upon Plato’s pride. I survey the hall, which breathes of rural culture and well-being, and in which is more evidence of what I foresaw. On the wall hung various photographs and oil prints, among which I noticed those of the King and Queen of England, that of Theodore Roosevelt, a framed cartoon by an American artist, an autographed copy of an English Duke’s, and a large photograph of a banquet of one of the political Clubs of New York. On the table were a few Arabic magazines, a post-card album, and a gramophone! Yes, mine host was more than once in the United States. And knowing that I, too, had been there, he is anxious to display somewhat of his broken English. His father, he tells me, speaks English even as good as he does, having been a dragoman for forty years.

“After supper, he orders me a narghilah, and winds for my entertainment that horrible instrument of torture.” Khalid did not seem to mind it; but he was anxious about the sacred peace of the hills, sleeping in the bosom of night. My Name is Billy Muggins, I Wish I Had a Pal Like You, Tickle Me, Timothy, and such like ragtime horrors come all the way from America to violate the antique grandeur and beauty of the Lebanon hills. That is what worried Khalid. And he excuses himself, saying, “I am waygone from the day’s wayfaring.” The instrument of torture is stopped, therefore, and he is shown into a room where a mattress is spread for him on the floor.

“In the morning,” he continues, “mine host accompanies me through the populous village, which is noted for its industries. Of all the Lebanon towns, this is, indeed, the busiest; its looms, its potteries, and its bell foundries, are never idle. And the people cultivate little of the silk worm; they are mostly artisans. American cotton they spin, and dye, and weave into substantial cloth; Belgian iron they melt and cast into bells; and from their native soil they dig the clay which they mould into earthenware. The tintinnabulations of the loom can be heard in other parts of the Lebanons; but no where else can the vintner buy a dolium for his vine, or the housewife, a pipkin for her oil, or the priest, a bell for his church. The sound of these foundries’ anvils, translated into a wild, thrilling, far-reaching music, can be heard in every belfry and bell-cote of Syria.

“We descend to the potteries below, not on the carriage road which serpentines through the village, and which is its only street, but sheer down a steep path, between the noise of the loom and spinning wheel and the stench of the dyeing establishments. And here is the real potter and his clay, not the symbol thereof. And here is the pottery which is illustrated in the Bible. For in the world to-day, if we except the unglazed tinajas of the Pueblo Indians, nothing, above ground at least, can be more ancient and primitive. Such a pitcher, I muse, did Rebekah carry to the well; with such a Jar on her shoulder did Hagar wander in the wilderness; and in such vessels did the widow, by Elijah’s miracle, multiply her jug of oil.

“The one silk-reeling factory of the village, I did not care to visit; for truly I can not tolerate the smell of asphyxiated larvas and boiling cocoons. ‘But the proprietor,’ quoth mine host, ’is very honourable, and of a fine wit.’ As honourable as a sweater can be, I thought. No, no; these manufacturers are all of a piece. I know personally one of them, who is a Scrooge, and of the vilest. I watched him one day buying cocoons from the peasants. He does not trust any of his employees at the scales; they do not know how to press their hand over the weights in the pan. Ay, that little pressure of his chubby hand on the weights makes a difference in his favour of more than ten per cent. of what he buys. That little pressure of his hand is five or six piasters out of the peasant’s pocket, who, with five or six piasters, remember, can satisfy his hunger on bread and olives and pulverised thyme, for five or six days. So, we visit not the cocoon-man, about whom the priest of his private chapel he prays at home like the Lebanon Amirs of old, this khawaja tells me many edifying things. Of these, I give out the most curious and least injurious. As the sheikh (squire) of the town, he is generous; as the operator of a silk-reeling factory, he is grasping, niggardly, mean. For, to misgovern well, one must open his purse as often as he forces the purses of others. He was passing by in his carriage this great khawaja, when we were coming out of the pottery. And of a truth, his paunch and double chin and ruddy cheeks seemed to illustrate what the priest told me about his usurious propensities.

“What a contrast between him and the swarthy, leathery, hungry-looking potters. I can not think that Nature has aught to do with these naked inequalities. I can not believe that, to produce one roseate complexion, she must etiolate a thousand. I can not see how, in drinking from the same gushing spring, and breathing the same mountain air, and basking in the same ardent sun, the khawaja gets a double chin and the peasant a double curse. But his collops and his ruddiness are due to the fact that he misgoverns as well as his Pasha and his Sultan. He battens, even like a Tammany chief, on political jobbery, on extortion, on usury. His tree is better manured, so to speak; manured by the widows and tended by the orphans of his little kingdom. In a word, this great khawaja is what I call a political coprophagist. Hence, his suspicious growth, his lustre and lustiness.

“But he is not the only example in the village of this superabundance of health; the priests are many more. For I must not fail to mention that, in addition to its potteries and founderies, the town is blessed with a dozen churches. Every family, a sort of tribe, has its church and priests; and consequently, its feuds with all the others. It is a marvel how the people, in the lethal soot and smoke of strife and dissension, can work and produce anything. Farewell, ye swarthy people! Farewell, O village of bells and potteries! Were it not for the khawaja who misgoverns thee, and the priests who sow their iniquity in thee, thou shouldst have been an ideal town. I look back, as I descend into the wadi, and behold, thou art as beautiful in the day as thou art in the night. Thy pink gables under a December sky seem not as garish as they do in summer. And the sylvan slopes, clustered with thy white-stone homes, peeping here through the mulberries, standing there under the walnuts and poplars, rising yonder in a group like a mottled pyramid, this most picturesque slope, whereon thou art ever beating the anvil, turning the wheel, throwing the shuttle, moulding the clay, and weltering withal in the mud of strife and dissension, this beautiful slope seems, nevertheless, from this distance, like an altar raised to Nature. I look not upon thee more; farewell.

“I descend in the wadi to the River Lykos of the ancients; and crossing the stone-bridge, an hour’s ascent brings me to one of the villages of Kisrawan. On the grey horizon yonder, is the limed bronze Statue of Mary the Virgin, rising on its sable pedestal, and looking, from this distance, like a candle in a bronze candle-stick. That Statue, fifty years hence, the people of the Lebanons will rebaptise as the Statue of Liberty. Masonry, even to-day, raises around it her mace. But whether these sacred mountains will be happier and more prosperous under its regime, I can not say. The Masons and the Patriarch of the Maronites are certainly more certain. Only this I know, that between the devil and the deep sea, Mary the Virgin shall hold her own. For though the name be changed, and the alm-box thrown into the sea, she shall ever be worshipped by the people. The Statue of the Holy Virgin of Liberty it will be called, and the Jesuits and priests can go a-begging. Meanwhile, the Patriarch will issue his allocutions , and the Jesuits, their pamphlets, against rationalism, atheism, masonry, and other supposed enemies of their Blessed Virgin, and point them out as enemies of Abd’ul-Hamid. ’Tis curious how the Sultan of the Ottomans can serve the cause of the Virgin!

“I visit the Statue for the love of my mother, and mounting to the top of the pedestal, I look up and behold my mother before me. The spectre of her, standing before the monument, looks down upon me, reproachfully, piteously, affectionately. I sit down at the feet of the Virgin Mary and bury my face in my hands and weep. I love what thou lovest, O my mother, but I can see no more what thou seest. For thy love, O my mother, these kisses and tears. For thy love, I stand here like a child, and look up to this inanimate figure as I did when I was an acolyte. My intellect, O my mother, I would drown in my tears, and thy faith I would stifle with my kisses. Only thus is reconciliation possible.

“Leaving this throne of modern mythology, I cross many wadis, descend and ascend many hills, pass through many villages, until I reach, at Ghina and Masshnaka, the tomb of the mythology of the ancients. At Ghina are ruins and monuments, of which Time has spared enough to engage the interest of archaeologists. Let the Peres Jesuit, Bourquenoud and Roz, make boast of their discoveries and scholarship; I can only boast of the fact that the ceremonialisms of worship are the same to-day as they were in the days of my Phoenician ancestors. Which, indeed, speaks well for THEM. This tablet, representing an armed figure and a bear, commemorates, it is said, the death of Tammuz. And the figure of the weeping woman near it is probably that of Ashtaroth. Other figures there are; but nothing short of the scholarship of Bourquenoud and Roz can unveil their marble mystery.

“At Masshnaka, overlooking the River Adonis, are ruins of an ancient temple in which can still be seen a few Corinthian columns. This, too, we are told, was consecrated to Tammuz; and in this valley the women of Byblus bemoaned every year the fate of their god. Isis and Osiris, Tammuz and Ashtaroth, Venus and Adonis, these, I believe, are one and the same. Their myth borrowed from the Phoenicians, the Egyptians, and the Romans, from either of the two. But the Venus of Rome is cheerful, joyous, that of the Phoenicians is sad and sorrowful. Even mythology triumphs in its evolution.

“Here, where my forebears deliquesced in sensuality, devotion, and grief, where the ardency of the women of Byblus flamed on the altar of Tammuz, on this knoll, whose trees and herbiage are fed perchance with their dust, I build my athafa (little kitchen), Arab-like, and cook my noonday meal. On the three stones, forming two right angles, I place my skillet, kindle under it a fire, pour into it a little sweet oil, and fry the few eggs I purchased in the village. I abominate the idea of frying eggs in water as the Americans do. I had as lief fry them in vinegar or syrup, where neither olive oil nor goat-butter is obtainable. But to fry eggs in water? O the barbarity of it! Why not, my friend, take them boiled and drink a little hot water after them? This savours of originality, at least, and is just as insipid, if not more. Withal, they who boil cabbage, and heap it in a plate over a slice of corn-beef, and call it a dish, can break a few boiled eggs in a cup of hot water and call them fried. Be this as it may. The Americans will be solesistically simple even in their kitchen.

“Now, my skillet of eggs being ready, I draw out of my basket a cake of cheese, a few olives, an onion, and three paper-like loaves, rather leaves, of bread, and fall to. With what relish, I need not say. But let it be recorded here, that under the karob tree, on the bank of the River Adonis, in the shadow of the great wall surrounding the ruins of the temple of Tammuz, I Khalid, in the thirty-fourth year of the reign of Abd’ul-Hamid, gave a banquet to the gods who, however, were content in being present and applauding the devouring skill of the peptic host and toast-master. Even serene Majesty at Yieldiz would give away, I think, an hundred of its sealed dishes for such a skillet of eggs in such an enchanted scene. But for it, alas! such wild and simple joy is a sealed book. Poor Serene Majesty! Now, having gone through the fruit course and is not the olive a fruit? I fill my jug at the River to make my coffee. And here I ask, In what Hotel Cecil or Waldorf or Savoy, or in what Arab tent in the desert, can one get a better cup of coffee than this, which Khalid makes for himself? The gods be praised, before and after. Ay, even in washing my pots and dishes I praise the good gods.

“And having done this, I light my cigarette, lug my basket on my back, and again set forth. In three hours, on my way to Byblus, I reach a hamlet situated in a deep narrow wadi, closed on all sides by huge mountain walls. The most sequestered, the most dreary place, I have yet seen. Here, though unwilling, the dusk of the December day having set in, I lay down the staff of wayfare. And as I enter the little village, I am greeted by the bleat of sheep and the low of the kine. The first villager I meet is an aged woman, who stands in her door before which is a pomegranate tree, telling her beads. She returns my salaam graciously, and invites me, saying, ’Be kind to tarry overnight.’ But can one be kinder than such an hostess? Seeing that I laid down my burden, she calls to her daughter to light the seraj (naphtha lamp) and bring some water for the stranger. ’Methinks thou wouldst wash thy feet,’ quoth she. Indeed, that is as essential and refreshing, after a day’s walk, as washing one’s face. I sit me down, therefore, under the pomegranate, take off my shoes and stockings, and the little girl, a winsome, dark-eyed, quick-witted lass, pours to me from the pitcher. I try to take it from her; but she would not, she said, be deprived of the pleasure of serving the stranger. Having done, I put on my stockings, and, leaving my shoes and basket near the door, enter a beit (one-room house) meagrely but neatly furnished. The usual straw mats are spread on the winter side, behind the door; in the corner is a little linen-covered divan with trimming of beautiful hand-made lace, the work of the little girl; and nearby are a few square cushions on the floor and a crude chair. The seraj, giving out more smoke and smell than light, is placed on a little shelf attached to the central pillar of the beit. Near the door is a bench for the water jars, and in the other corner are the mattresses and quilts, and the earthen tub containing the round leaves of bread. Of these consist the furniture and provision of mine hostess.

“Her son, a youth of not more than two score years, returns from his day’s labour a while after I had arrived. And as he stands in the door, his pick-axe and spade on his shoulder, his sister runs to meet him, and whispers somewhat about the stranger. Sitting on the threshold, he takes off his spats of cloth and his clouted shoes, while she gets the pitcher of water. After having washed, he enters, salaams graciously, and squats on the floor. The mother then brings a wicker tray on which is set the supper, consisting of only bread and olives. ‘Thou wilt overlook our penury,’ she falters out; ’here be all we have.’ In truth, my hostess is of the poorest of the Lebanon peasants; even her sweet-oil pipkin and her jars of lentils and beans, are empty. She lays the tray before her son and invites me to partake of the repast. I go to my basket, bring forth the few onions and the two cakes of cheese I had left, lay them with an apology on the tray the mother, abashed, protests and we sit down cross-legged in a circle to supper. When we rise, the little girl lights a little fire, and they enjoy the cup of coffee I make for them. And the mother, in taking hers, tells me naively, and with a sigh, that it is five years now since she had had a cup of coffee. Indeed, she had seen better days. And ’tis sorrow, forestalling Time, which furrows her cheeks and robs her black eyes of their lustre and spark.

“She had once cattle, and a beit of her own, and rugs, too, and jars full of provision. But now she is a tenant. And her husband, ever since he emigrated to America, did not send a single piaster or even write a letter. From necessity she becomes a prey of usurers; for those Lebanon Moths, of which we saw a specimen in the village of bells and potteries, fall mostly in the wardrobe of women. They are locusts rather, who visit only the wheat fields of the poor. Her home was mortgaged to one such, and failing to meet her obligation, the mortgage is closed and he takes possession. Soon after she is evicted, her son, the first-born, a youth of much promise, dies.

“‘He could read and write, my son,’ quoth she, sobbing; ’of a sharp wit he was, and very assiduous in his studies. Once he accompanied the priest of the village on a visit to the Patriarch, and read there a eulogium of his own composition, for which he received a silver medal. The Patriarch then sent him to a Seminary; he was to become a priest, my son. He wrote a beautiful hand both Arabic and French; he was of a fine wit, sharp, quick, brilliant. Ah, me, but those who are of such minds never live!’

“She then tells me how they lost their last head of cattle. An excellent sheep it was; which one night they forgot outside; and the wolf, visiting the village, sees it tied to the mulberry, howls for joy, and carries it off. And thus Death robs the poor woman of her son; America, of her husband; the Shylock of the village, of her home; and the wolf, of her last head of cattle. And this were enough to age even a Spartan woman. Late in the evening, after she had related at length of her sorrows, three mattresses all she had are laid on the straw mat near each other, and the little girl had to sleep with her mother.

“Early in the morning I bid them farewell, and pass on my way to Amsheet, where Henriette Renan, the sister of Ernest, is buried. An hour’s walk, and the incarcerated wadi and its folk lie concealed behind. I breathe again the open air of the mountain expanse; I behold again the emerald stretch of water on the horizon, where the baggalas and saics, from this distance, seem like doves basking in the morning sun. I cross the last rill, mount the last hilltop on my journey, and lo, at the foot of the gently sloping heath are the orchards and palms of Amsheet. Further below is Jbail, or ancient Byblus, looking like a clutter of cliffs on the shore. Farewell to the mountain heights, and the arid wilderness! Welcome the fertile plains, and hopeful strands. In half an hour I reach the immense building the first or the last of the village, according to your direction which, from the top of the hill, I thought to be a fortress. A huge structure this, still a-building, and of an architecture altogether different from the conventional Lebanon type. No plain square affair, with three pointed arches in the façade, and a gable of pink tiles; but here are quoins, oriels , embrasures , segmental arches, and other luxuries of architecture. Out of place in these wilds, altogether out of place. Hard by are two primitive flat-roofed beits, standing grimly there as a rebuke to the extravagant tendencies of the age. I go there in the hope of buying some cheese and eggs, and behold a lady of severe beauty smoking a narghilah and giving orders to a servant. She returns my salaam seated in her chair, and tells me in an injured air, after I had made known to her my desire, that eggs and cheese are sold in the stores.

“‘You may come in for breakfast,’ she adds; and clapping for the servant, orders him to lay the table for me. I enter the beit, which is partitioned into a kitchen, a dining-room, and a parlour. On the table is spread the usual breakfast of a Lebanonese of affluence: namely, cheese, honey, fig-jam, and green olives. The servant, who is curious to know my name, my religion, my destination, and so forth, tells me afterwards that Madame is the wife of the kaiemkam, and the castle, which is building, is their new home.

“Coming out, I thank Madame, and ask her about the grave of Renan’s sister. She pauses amazed, blows her narghilah smoke in my face, surveys me from top to toe, and puts to me those same questions with which I was tormented by her servant. Indeed, I had answered ten of hers, before I got this answer to mine: ’The sister of whom, thou sayst? That Frenchman who came here in the sixties for antiquities? Yes; his sister died and was buried here, but no Christian remembers her for good. She must have been a bad one like her brother, who was an infidel, they say, and did not know or fear God. What wouldst thou see there? Art like the idiot Franje (Europeans) who come here and carry away from around the grave some stones and dust? Go thou with him (this to the servant) and show him the vault of the Toubeiyahs, where she was buried.’ This, in a supercilious air, while she drew from the narghilah the smoke, which I could not relish.

“We come to the cemetery near the church in the centre of the town. The vault where Henriette was laid, a plain, plastered square cell, is not far from an oak which in the morning envelopes it with its shadow; and directly across are palms, whose shades at sundown, make a vain effort to kiss its dust. No grass, no flowers around; but much of the dust of neglect. And of this I take up a handful, like ’the idiot Franje’; but instead of carrying it away, I press therein my lips and leave my planted kisses near the vault. When the mothers and the sisters of these sacred hills, O Henriette, can see the flowers of these kisses in thy dust, when they can appreciate the sacred purity of thy spirit and devotion, what mothers then we shall have, and what sisters!

“I pass through the village descending on the carriage road to Jbail, or Byblus. In these diggings the shrewd antiquary digs for those precious tear-bottles of my ancestors. And everywhere one turns are tombs in which the archaeologist finds somewhat to noise abroad. His, indeed, is a scholarship which is essentially necrophagous. For consider, what would become of it, if a necropolis, for instance, did not yield somewhat of nourishment, a limb, a torso, a palimpsest, or even an earthen lamp, a potsherd, or a coin? I rail not at these scholarly grave-diggers because I can not interest myself in their work; that were unwise and unfair. But truly, I abominate this business of ‘cashing,’ as it were, the ruins and remains, the ashes and dust, of our ancestors. Archaeology for archaeology’s sake is pardonable; archaeology for the sake of writing a book is intolerable; and archaeology for lucre is abominable.

“At Jbail I visited the citadel, said to be of Phoenician origin, which is occupied by the mudir of the District. Entering the gate, near which is a chapel consecrated to Our Lady of that name, where litigants, when they can not prove their claims, are made to swear to them, we pass through a court between rows of Persian lilac trees, into a dark, stivy arcade on both sides of which are dark, stivy cells used as stables. Reaching the citadel proper, we mount a high stairway to the loft occupied by the mudir. This, too, is partitioned, but with cotton sheeting, into various apartments.

“The zabtie, in zouave uniform, at the door, would have me wait standing in the corridor outside; for his Excellency is at dinner. And Excellency, as affable as his zabtie, hearing the parley without, growls behind the scene and orders me gruffly to go to the court. ‘This is not the place to make a complaint,’ he adds. But the stranger at thy door, O gracious Excellency, complains not against any one in this world; and if he did, assure thee, he would not complain to the authorities of this world. This, or some such plainness of distemper, the zouave communicates to his superior behind the cotton sheeting, who presently comes out, his anger somewhat abated, and, taking me for a monk my jubbah is responsible for the deception invites me to the sitting-room in the enormous loophole of the citadel. He himself was beginning to complain of the litigants who pester him at his home, and apologise for his ill humour, when suddenly, disabused on seeing my trousers beneath my jubbah, he subjects me to the usual cross-examination. I could not refrain from thinking that, not being of the cowled gentry, he regretted having honoured me with an apology.

“But after knowing somewhat of the pilgrim stranger, especially that he had been in America, Excellency tempers the severity of his expression and evinces an agreeable curiosity. He would know many things of that distant country; especially about a Gold-Mining Syndicate, or Gold-Mining Fake, in which he invested a few hundred pounds of his fortune. And I make reply, ’I know nothing about Gold Mines and Syndicates, Excellency: but methinks if there be gold in such schemes, the grubbing, grabbing Americans would not let it come to Syria.’ ‘Indeed, so,’ he murmurs, musing; ‘indeed, so.’ And clapping for the serving-zabtie the mudirs and kaiemkams of the Lebanon make these zabties, whose duty is to serve papers, serve, too, in their homes he orders for me a cup of coffee. And further complaining to me, he curses America for robbing the country of its men and labourers. ’We can no more find tenants for our estates, despite the fact that they get more of the income than we do. The shreek (partner), or tenant, is rightly called so. For the owner of an estate that yields fifty pounds, for instance, barely gets half of it; while the shreek, he who tills and cultivates the land, gets away with the other half, sniffing and grumbling withal. Of a truth, land-tenants are not so well-off anywhere. And if the land but yields a considerable portion, any one with a few grains of the energy of those Americans, would prefer to be a shreek than a real-estate owner.’ Thus, his Excellency, complaining of the times, regretting his losses, cursing America and its Gold Mines; and having done, drops the narghilah tube from his hand and dozes on the divan.

“I muse meanwhile on Time, who sees in a citadel of the ancient Phoenicians, after many thousand years, that same propensity for gold, that same instinct for trade. The Phoenicians worked gold mines in Thrace, and the Syrians, their descendants, are working gold mines in America. But are we as daring, as independent, as honest? I am not certain, however, if those Phoenicians had anything to do with bubbles. My friend Sanchuniathon writes nothing on the subject. History records not a single instance of a gold-mine bubble in Thrace, or a silver ditto in Africa. Apart from this, have we, the descendants of those honest Phoenicians, any of their inventive skill and bold initiative? They taught other nations the art of ship-building; we can not as much as learn from other nations the art of building a gig. They transmitted to the people of the West a knowledge of mathematics, weights, and measures; we can not as much as weigh or measure the little good Europe is transmitting to us. They always fought bravely against their conquerors, always gave evidence of their love of independence; and we dare not raise a finger or whisper a word against the red Tyrant by whom we are degraded and enslaved. We are content in paying tribute to a criminal Government for pressing upon our necks the yoke and fettering hopelessly our minds and souls and my brave Phoenicians, ah, how bravely they thought and fought. What daring deeds they accomplished! what mysteries of art and science they unveiled!

“On these shores they hammered at the door of invention, and, entering, showed the world how glass is made; how colours are extracted from pigments; how to measure, and count, and communicate human thought. The swarthy sons of the eternal billows, how shy they were of the mountains, how enamoured of the sea! For the mountains, it was truly said, divide nations, and the seas connect them. And my Phoenicians, mind you, were for connection always. Everywhere, they lived on the shores, and ever were they ready to set sail.

“In this mammoth loophole, measuring about ten yards in length, this the thickness of the wall I muse of another people skilled in the art of building. But between the helots who built the pyramids and the freemen who built this massive citadel, what a contrast! The Egyptian mind could only invent fables; the Phoenician was the vehicle of commerce and the useful arts. The Egyptians would protect their dead from the tyranny of Time; the Phoenicians would protect themselves, the living, from the invading enemy: those based their lives on the vagaries of the future; these built it on the solid rock of the present....”

But we have had enough of Khalid’s gush about the Phoenicians, and we confess we can not further walk with him on this journey. So, we leave his Excellency the mudir snoring on the divan, groaning under the incubus of the Gold Mine Fake, bemoaning his losses in America; pass the zabtie in zouave uniform, who is likewise snoring on the door-step; and, hurrying down the stairway and out through the stivy arcade, we say farewell to Our Lady of the Gate, and get into one of the carriages which ply the shore between Junie and Jbail. We reach Junie about sundown, and Allah be praised! Even this toy of a train brings us, in thirty minutes, to Beirut.

CHAPTER V - UNION AND PROGRESS

Had not Khalid in his retirement touched his philosophic raptures with a little local colouring, had he not given an account of his tramping tour in the Lebanons, the hiatus in Shakib’s Histoire Intime could not have been bridged. It would have remained, much to our vexation and sorrow, somewhat like the ravine in which Khalid almost lost his life. But now we return, after a year’s absence, to our Scribe, who at this time in Baalbek is soldering and hammering out rhymes in praise of Niazi and Enver, Abd’ul-Hamid and the Dastur (Constitution).

“When Khalid, after his cousin’s marriage, suddenly disappeared from Baalbek,” writes he, “I felt that something had struck me violently on the brow, and everything around me was dark. I could not withhold my tears: I wept like a child, even like Khalid’s mother. I remember he would often speak of suicide in those days. And on the evening of that fatal day we spent many hours discussing the question. ‘Why is not one free to kill himself,’ he finally asked, ’if one is free to become a Jesuit?’ But I did not believe he was in earnest. Alas, he was. For on the morning of the following day, I went up to his tent on the roof and found nothing of Khalid’s belongings but a pamphlet on the subject, ‘Is Suicide a Sin?’ and right under the title the monosyllable LA (no) and his signature. The frightfulness of his intention stood like a spectre before me. I clapped one hand upon the other and wept. I made inquiries in the city and in the neighbouring places, but to no purpose. Oh, that dreadful, dismal day, when everywhither I went something seemed to whisper in my heart, ‘Khalid is no more.’ It was the first time in my life that I felt the pangs of separation, the sting of death and sorrow. The days and months passed, heartlessly confirming my conjecture, my belief.

“One evening, when the last glimmer of hope passed away, I sat down and composed a threnody in his memory. And I sent it to one of the newspapers of Beirut, in the hope that Khalid, if he still lived, might chance to see it. It was published and quoted by other journals here and in Egypt, who, in their eulogies, spoke of Khalid as the young Baalbekian philosopher and poet. One of these newspapers, whose editor is a dear friend of mine, and of comely ancient virtue, did not mention, from a subtle sense of tender regard for my feelings, the fact that Khalid committed suicide. ‘He died,’ the Notice said, ’of a sudden and violent defluxion of rheums, which baffled the physician and resisted his skill and physic.’ Another journal, whose editor’s religion is of the Jesuitical pattern, spoke of him as a miserable God-abandoned wretch who was not entitled to the right of Christian burial; and fulminated at its contemporaries for eulogising the youthful infidel and moaning his death, thus spreading and justifying his evil example.

“And so, the days passed, and the months, and Khalid was still dead. In the summer of this year, when the Constitution was proclaimed, and the country was rioting in the saturnalia of Freedom and Equality, my sorrow was keener, deeper than ever. Not I alone, but the cities and the deserts of Syria and Arabia, missed my loving friend. How gloriously he would have filled the tribune of the day, I sadly mused.... O Khalid, I can never forgive this crime of thine against the sacred rites of Friendship. Such heartlessness, such inexorable cruelty, I have never before observed in thee. No matter how much thou hast profited by thy retirement to the mountains, no matter how much thy solitude hath given thee of health and power and wisdom, thy cruel remissness can not altogether be drowned in my rejoicing. To forget those who love thee above everything else in the world, thy mother, thy cousin, thine affectionate brother ”

And our Scribe goes on, blubbering like a good Syrian his complaint and joy, gushing now in verse, now in what is worse, in rhymed prose, until he reaches the point which is to us of import. Khalid, in the winter of the first year of the Dastur (Constitution) writes to him many letters from Beirut, of which he gives us not less than fifty! And of these, the following, if not the most piquant and interesting, are the most indispensable to our History.

Letter I (As numbered in the Original)

My loving Brother Shakib:

To whom, if not to you, before all, should I send the first word of peace, the first sign of the resurrection? To my mother? To my cousin Najma? Well, yes. But if I write to them, my letters will be brought to you to be read and answered. So I write now direct, hoping that you will convey to them these tidings of joy. ’Tis more than a year now since I slinked out of Baalbek, leaving you in the dark about me. Surely, I deserve the chastisement of your bitterest thoughts. But what could I do? Such is the rigour of the sort of life I lived that any communication with the outside world, especially with friends and lovers, would have marred it. So, I had to be silent as the pines in which I put up, until I became as healthy as the swallows, my companions there. When we meet, I shall recount to you the many curious incidents of my solitude and my journey in the sacred hills of Lebanon. To these auspicious mountains, my Brother, I am indebted for the health and joy and wisdom that are now mine; and yours, too, if you consider.

Strange, is it not, that throughout my journey, and I have passed in many villages, nothing heard I of this great political upheaval in the Empire. Probably the people of the Lebanons cherish not the Revolution. There is so much in common, I find, between them and the Celtic races, who always in such instances have been more royalists than the king. And I think Mt. Lebanon is going to be the Vendée of the Turks.

I have been in Beirut but a few days. And truly, I could not believe my eyes, when in the Place de la Concorde (I hope the Turks are not going to follow in the steps of the French Revolutionists in all things), I could not believe my eyes, when, in this muddy Square, on the holy Stump of Liberty, I beheld my old friend the Spouter dispensing to the turbaned and tarboushed crowd, among which were cameleers and muleteers with their camels and mules, of the blessing of that triple political abracadabra of the France of more than a century passed. Liberty, Fraternity, Equality! it’s a shame that the show has been running for six months now and I did not know it. I begin by applauding the Spouters of Concord Square, the donkey that I am. But how, with my cursed impulsiveness, can I always keep on the sidewalk of reason? I, who have suckled of the milk of freedom and broke the bottle, too, on my Nurse’s head, I am not to blame, if from sheer joy, I cheer those who are crowning her on a dung-hill with wreaths of stable straw. It’s better, billah, than breaking the bottle on her head, is it not? And so, let the Spouters spout. And let the sheikh and the priest and the rabbi embrace on that very Stump and make up. Live the Era of Concord and peace and love! Live the Dastur! Hurrah for the Union and Progress Heroes! Come down to Beirut and do some shouting with your fellow citizens.

Letter V

No; I do not approve of your idea of associating with that young Mohammedan editor. You know what is said about the tiger and its spots. Besides, I had another offer from a Christian oldtimer; but you might as well ask me to become a Jesuit as to became a Journalist. I wrote last week a political article, in which I criticised Majesty’s Address to the Parliament, and mauled those oleaginous, palavering, mealy-mouthed Representatives, who would not dare point out the lies in it. They hear the Chief Clerk read of “the efforts made by the Government during the past thirty years in the interest of education,” and applaud; while at the Royal Banquet they jostle and hustle each other to kiss the edge of Majesty’s frock-coat. The abject slaves!

The article was much quoted and commented upon; I was flouted by many, defended by a few, these asked: “Was the Government of Abd’ul-Hamid, committing all its crimes in the interest of education, were we being trained by the Censorship and the Bosphorus Terror for the Dastur?” “But the person of Majesty, the sacredness of the Khalifate,” cried the others. And a certain one, in the course of his attack, denies the existence of Khalid, who died, said he, a year ago. And what matters it if a dead man can stir a whole city and blow into the nostrils of its walking spectres a breath of life?

I spoke last night in one of the music halls and gave the Mohammedans a piece of my mind. The poor Christians! they feared the Government in the old regime; they cower before the boatmen in this. For the boatmen of Beirut have not lost their prestige and power. They are a sort of commune and are yet supreme. Yes, they are always riding the whirlwind and directing the storm. And who dares say a word against them? Every one of them, in his swagger and bluster, is an Abd’ul-Hamid. Alas, everything is yet in a chaotic state. The boatman’s shriek can silence the Press and make the Spouters tremble.

I am to lecture in the Public Hall of one of the Colleges here on the “Moral Revolution.” Believe me, I would not utter a word or write a line if I were not impelled to it. And just as soon as some one comes to the front to champion in this land spiritual and moral freedom, I’ll go “way back and sit down.” For why should I then give myself the trouble? And the applause of the multitude, mind you, brings me not a single olive.

Letter XXII

I had made up my mind to go to Cairo, and I was coming up to say farewell to you and mother. For I like not Beirut, where one in winter must go about in top-boots, and in a dust-coat in summer. I wonder what Rousseau, who called Paris the city of mud, would have said of this? Besides, a city ruled by boatmen is not a city for gentlemen to live in. So, I made up my mind to get out of it, and quickly. But yesterday morning, before I had taken my coffee, some one knocked at my door. I open, and lo, a policeman in shabby uniform, makes inquiry about Khalid. What have I done, I thought, to deserve this visit? And before I had time to imagine the worst, he delivers a card from the Deputy to Syria of the Union and Progress Society of Salonique. I am desired in this to come at my earliest convenience to the Club to meet this gentleman. There, I am received by an Army Officer and a certain Ahmed Bey. And after the coffee and the formalities of civility are over, I am asked to accompany them on a tour to the principal cities of upper Syria to Damascus, Homs, Hama, and Aleppo. The young Army Officer is to speechify in Turkish, I, in Arabic, and Ahmed Bey, who is as oleaginous as a Turk could be, will take up, I think, the collection. Seeing in this a chance to spread the Idea among our people, I accept, and in a fortnight we shall be in Damascus. You must come there, for I am burning to meet and embrace you.

Letter XXV

Whom do you think I met yesterday? Why, nothing gave me greater pleasure ever since I have been here than this: I was crossing the Square on my way to the Club, when some one plucking at my jubbah angrily greets me. I look back, and behold our dear old Im-Hanna, who has just returned from New York. She stood there waving her hand wildly and rating me for not returning her salaam. “You know no one any more, O Khalid,” she said plaintively; “I call to you three times and you look not, hear not. No matter, O Khalid.” Thereupon, she embraces me as fondly as my mother. “And why,” she inquired, “do you wear this black jubbah? Are you now a monk? Were it not for that long hair and that cap of yours, I would not have known you. Let me see, isn’t that the cap I bought you in New York?” And she takes it off my head to examine it. “Yes, that’s it. How good of you to keep it. Well, how are you now? Do you cough any more? Are you still crazy about books? I don’t think so, for you have rosy cheeks now.” And sobbing for joy, she embraces me again and again.

She is neatly dressed, wears a silk fiche, and is as alert as ever. In the afternoon, I visit her at the Hotel, and she asks me to accompany her to the Bank, where she cashes three bills of exchange for three hundred pounds each! I ask her what she is going to do with all this money, and she tells me that she is going to build a little home for her grandson and send him to the College of the Americans here.

“And is there like America in all the world?” she exclaims. “Ah, my heart for America!” And on asking her why she did not remain there: “Fear not; just as soon as I build my house and place my son in the College I am going back to New York. What, O Khalid, will you return with me?” She then takes some gold pieces in her hand, and lowering her voice: “May be you need some money; take, take these.” Dear old Im-Hanna, I would not refuse her favour, and I would not accept one such. What was I to do? Coming through the Jewellers’ bazaar I hit upon an idea, and with the money she slipped into my pocket, I bought a gold watch in one of the stores and charged her to present it to her grandson. “Say it is from his brother, your other grandson Khalid.” She protests, scolds, and finally takes the watch, saying, “Well, nothing is changed in you: still the same crazy Khalid.”

To-morrow she is coming to see my room, and to cook for me a
dish of mojadderah ! Ah, the old days in the cellar!

In the thirtieth Letter, one of considerable length, dated March, is an exceedingly titillating divagation on the gulma (oustraation of animals), called forth, we are told, “by the rut of the d d cats in the yard.” Poor Khalid can not sleep. One night he jumps out of bed and chases them away with his skillet, saying, “Why don’t I make such a row, ye wantons?” They come again the following night, and Khalid on the following morning moves to a Hotel which, by good or ill chance, is adjacent to the lupanars of the city. His window opens on another yard in which other cats, alas! of the human species this time are caterwauling, harrowing the soul of him and the night. He makes a second remove, but finds himself disturbed this time by the rut of a certain roebuck within. Nature, O Khalid, will not be cheated, no more than she will be abused, without retaliating soon or late. True, you got out of many ruts heretofore; but this you can not get out of except you go deeper into it. Your anecdotes from Ad-Damiry and your quotations from Montaigne shall not help you. And your allusions to March-cats and March-Khalids are too pitiful to be humorous. Indeed, were not the tang of lubricity in this Letter too strong, we would have given in full the confession it contains.

We now come to the last of this Series, in which Khalid speaks of a certain American lady, a Mrs. Goodfree, or Gotfry, who is a votary of Ebbas Effendi, the Pope of Babism at Heifa. Mrs. Gotfry may not be a Babist in the strict sense of the word; but she is a votary and worshipper of the Bab. To her the personal element in a creed is of more importance than the ism. Hence, her pilgrimage every year to Heifa. She comes with presents and gold; and Ebbas Effendi, who is not impervious to the influence of other gods than his own, permits her into the sanctuary, where she shares with him the light of divine revelation and returns to the States, as the Priestess of the Cult, to bless and console the Faithful. Khalid was dining with Ahmed Bey at the Grand Hotel but here is a portion of the Letter.

By a devilish mischance she occupied the seat opposite to mine. And in this trap of Iblis was decoy enough for a poor mouse like me. It is an age since I beheld such an Oriental gem in an American setting; or such a strange Southern beauty in an exotic frame. For one would think her from the South, or further down from Mexico. Nay, of Andalusian, and consequently of Arabian, origin she must be. Her hair and her eyes are of the richest jet; her glance, voluptuous, mysterious; her complexion, neither white nor olive, but partakes of both, a gauze-like shade of heliotrope, as it were, over a pink and straw surface, if you can imagine that; and her expression, a play between devotion and diabolism now a question mark to love, now an exclamation to sorrow, and at times a dash between both. By what mysterious medium of romance and adventure did America produce such a beauty, I can not tell. Perhaps she, too, can not. If you saw her, O Shakib, you’d do nothing for months but dedicate odes to her eyes, to the deep, dark infinity of their luring, devouring beauty, which seem to drop honey and poison from every arched hair of their fulsome lashes. Withal, another devilish mischance, she was dressed in black and wore a white silk ruffle, like myself. And her age? Well, she can not have passed her sixth lustrum. And really, as the Novelist would say in his Novel, she looks ten years younger.... To say we were attracted to each other were presumptuous: but I was taken.... Near her sat a Syrian gentleman of my acquaintance, with whom she was conversing when we entered. That is the lady whose beauty, when she was sitting, I described to you: but when she got up to leave the table, alas, and ay me , and all the other expressions of regret and sorrow. That such a beautiful face should be denied a corresponding beauty of figure. And what is more pitiable about her, she is lame in the right leg. Poor dear Misfortune, I wish it were in my power to add an inch of my limb to hers.

And Khalid goes on limping, drooling, alassing, to the end. After dinner he is introduced to his “poor dear Misfortune” by his Syrian friend. But being with Ahmed Bey he can not remain this evening. On the following day, however, he is invited to lunch; and on the terrace facing the sea, they pass the afternoon discussing various subjects. Mrs. Gotfry is surprised how a Syrian of Khalid’s mind can not see the beauties of Babism, or Buhaism, as it is now called, and the lofty spirituality of the Bab. But she forgives him his lack of faith, gives him her card, and invites him to her home, if he ever returns to the United States.

Now, maugre the fact that, in a postscript to this Letter, Khalid closes with these words, “And what have I to do with priests and priestesses?” we can not but harbour a suspicion that his “Union and Progress” tour is bound to have more than a political significance. By ill or good hap those words are beginning to assume a double meaning; and maugre all efforts to the contrary, the days must soon unfold the twofold tendency and result of the “Union and Progress” ideas of Khalid.

CHAPTER VI - REVOLUTIONS WITHIN AND WITHOUT

“Even Carlyle can be longwinded and short-sighted on occasions. ’Once in destroying the False,’ says he, ‘there was a certain inspiration.’ And always there is, to be sure, my Master. For the world is not Europe, and the final decision on Who Is and What Is To Rule, was not delivered by the French Revolution. The Orient, the land of origination and prophecy, must yet solve for itself this eternal problem of the Old and New, the False and True. And whether by Revolutions, Speculations, or Constitutions, ancient Revelation will be purged and restored to its original pristine purity: the superannuated lumber that accumulated around it during centuries of apathy, fatalism, and sloth, must go: the dust and mould and cobwebs of the Temple will be swept away. Indeed, ’a war must be eternally waged on evils eternally renewed.’ The genius of destruction has done its work, you say, O my esteemed Master? and there is nothing more to destroy? The gods might say this of other worlds than ours. In Europe, as in Asia, there is to be considered and remembered: if this mass of things we call humanity and civilisation were as healthy as the eternal powers would have them, the healthiest of the race would not be constantly studying and dissecting our social and political ills.

“In a certain sense, we are healthier to-day than the Europeans; but our health is that of the slave and not the master: it is of more benefit to others than it is to ourselves. We are doomed to be the drudges of neurasthenic, psychopathic, egoistic masters, if we do not open our minds to the light of science and truth. ’Every age has its Book,’ says the Prophet. But every book, if it aspires to be a guide to life, must contain of the eternal truth what was in the one that preceded it. We can not afford to let aught of this die. Leave the principal original altar in the Temple, and destroy all the others. Light on that altar the torch of science, which the better mind and cleaner hand of Europe are transmitting to us, and place your foot upon its false and unspeakable divinities. The gods of wealth, of egoism, of alcohol, of fornication, we must not acknowledge; nay, we must resist unto death their malign influence and power. But alas, what are we doing to-day? Instead of looking up to the pure and lofty souls of Europe for guidance, we welter in the mud with the lowest and most degenerate. We are beginning to know and appreciate English whiskey, but not English freedom; we know the French grisettes , but not the French sages; we guzzle German beer, but of German wisdom we taste not a drop.

“O my Brothers, let us cease rejoicing in the Dastur; for at heart we know no freedom, nor truth, nor order. We elect our representatives to Parliament, but not unlike the Europeans; we borrow from France what the deeper and higher mind of France no longer believes; we imitate England in what England has long since discarded; but our Books of Revelation, which made France and Germany and England what they are, and in which is the divine essence of truth and right and freedom, we do not rightly understand. A thousand falsehoods are cluttered around the truth to conceal it from us. I call you back, O my Brothers, to the good old virtues of our ancestors. Without these the Revolution will miscarry and our Dastur will not be worth a date-stone. Our ancestors, they never bowed their proud neck to tyranny, whether represented in an autocrat or in a body of autocrats; they never betrayed their friends; they never soiled their fingers with the coin of usury; they never sacrificed their manhood to fashion; they never endangered in the cafes and lupanars their health and reason. The Mosque and the Church, notwithstanding the ignorance and bigotry they foster, are still better than lunatic asylums. And Europe can not have enough of these to-day.

“Continence, purity of heart, fidelity, simplicity, a sense of true manhood, magnanimity of spirit, a healthiness of body and mind, these are the beautiful ancient virtues. These are the supreme truths of the Books of Revelation: in these consists the lofty spirituality of the Orient. But through what thick, obscene growths we must pass to-day, through what cactus hedges and thistle-fields we must penetrate, before we rise again to those heights.

“‘There can be no Revolution without a Reformation,’ says a German philosopher. And truly so. For the fetters which bind us can not be shaken off, before the conscience is emancipated. A political revolution must always be preceded by a spiritual one, that it might have some enduring effect. Otherwise, things will revert to their previous state of rottenness as sure as Allah lives. But mind you, I do not say, Cut down the hedges; mow the thistle-fields; uproot the obscene plants; no: I only ask you to go through them, and out of them, to return no more. Sell your little estate there, if you have one; sell it at any price: give it away and let the dead bury their dead. Cease to work in those thorny fields, and God and nature will do the rest.

“I am for a reformation by emigration. And quietly, peacefully, this can be done. Nor fire, nor sword bring I: only this I say: Will and do; resolve and act upon your resolution. The emigration of the mind before the revolution of the state, my Brothers. The soul must be free, and the mind, before one has a right to be a member of a free Government, before one can justly enjoy his rights and perform his duties as a subject. But a voting slave, O my Brothers, is the pitifulest spectacle under the sun. And remember that neither the Dastur, nor the Unionists, nor the Press, can give you this spiritual freedom, if you do not awake and emigrate. Come up to the highlands: here is a patrimony for each of you; here are vineyards to cultivate. Leave the thistle-fields and marshes behind; regret nothing. Come out of the superstitions of the sheikhs and ulema; of the barren mazes of the sufis; of the deadly swamps of theolougues and priests: emigrate! Every one of us should be a Niazi in this moral struggle, an Enver in this spiritual revolution. A little will-power, a little heroism, added to those virtues I have named, the solid virtues of our ancestors, and the Orient will no longer be an object of scorn and gain to commercial Europe. We shall then stand on an equal footing with the Europeans. Ay, with the legacy of science which we shall learn to invest, and with our spirituality divested of its cobwebs, and purified, we shall stand even higher than the Americans and Europeans.”

On the following day Damascus was simmering with excitement Damascus, the stronghold of the ulema the learned fanatics whom Khalid has lightly pinched. But they scarcely felt it; they could not believe it. Now, the gentry of Islam, the sheikhs and ulema, would hear this lack-beard dervish, as he was called. But they disdain to stand with the rabble in the Midan or congregate with the Mutafarnejin (Europeanised) in the public Halls. Nowhere but at the Mosque, therefore, can they hear what this Khalid has to say. This was accordingly decided upon, and, being approved by all parties concerned, the Mufti, the Valí , the Deputies of the Holy Society and the speaker, a day was set for the great address at the great Mosque of Omaiyah.

Meanwhile, the blatant Officer, the wheedling Politician, and the lack-beard Dervish, are feasted by the personages and functionaries of Damascus. The Valí , the Mufti, Abdallah Pasha, he who owns more than two score villages and has more than five thousand braves at his beck and call, these, and others of less standing, vie with each other in honouring the distinguished visitors. And after the banqueting, while Ahmed Bey retires to a private room with his host to discuss the political situation, Khalid, to escape the torturing curiosity of the bores and quidnuncs of the evening, goes out to the open court, and under an orange tree, around the gurgling fountain, breathes again of quietude and peace. Nay, breathes deeply of the heavy perfume of the white jasmines of his country, while musing of the scarlet salvias of a distant land.

And what if the salvia , as by a miracle, blossoms on the jasmine? What if the former stifles the latter? Indeed, one can escape boredom, but not love. One can flee the quidnuncs of the salon, but not the questioning perplexity of one’s heart. A truce now to ambiguities.

’Tis high time that we give a brief account of what took place after Khalid took leave of Mrs. Gotfry. Many “devilish mischances” have since then conspired against Khalid’s peace of mind. For when they were leaving Beirut, only a few minutes before the train started, Mrs. Gotfry, who was also going to Damascus, steps into the same carriage, which he and his companions occupied: mischance first. Arriving in Damascus they both stay at the same Hotel: mischance second. At table this time he occupies the seat next to hers, and once, rising simultaneously, their limbs touch: mischance third. And the last and worst, when he retires to his room, he finds that her own is in the same side-hall opposite to his. Now, who could have ordered it thus, of all the earthly powers? And who can say what so many mischances might not produce? True, a thousand thistles do not make a rose; but with destiny this logic does not hold. For every new mischance makes us forget the one preceding; and the last and worst is bound to be the harbinger of good fortune. Yes, every people, we imagine, has its aphorisms on the subject: Distress is the key of relief, says the Arabic proverb; The strait leads to the plain, says the Chinese; The darkest hour is nearest the dawn, says the English.

But we must not make any stipulations with time, or trust in aphorisms. We do not know what Mrs. Gotfry’s ideas are on the subject. Nor can we say how she felt in the face of these strange coincidences. In her religious heart, might there not be some shadow of an ancient superstition, some mystical, instinctive strain, in which the preternatural is resolved? That is a question which neither our Scribe nor his Master will help us to answer. And we, having been faithful so far in the discharge of our editorial duty, can not at this juncture afford to fabricate.

We know, however, that the Priestess of Buhaism and the beardless, long-haired Dervish have many a conversation together: in the train, in the Hotel, in the parks and groves of Damascus, they tap their hearts and minds, and drink of each other’s wine of thought and fancy.

“I first mistook you for a Mohammedan,” she said to him once; and he assured her that she was not mistaken.

“Then, you are not a Christian?”

“I am a Christian, too.”

And he relates of the Buha when he was on trial in Rhodes. “Of what religion are you,” asks the Judge. “I am neither a Camel-driver nor a Carpenter,” replies the Buha, alluding thereby to Mohammad and Christ. “If you ask me the same question,” Khalid continues “but I see you are uncomfortable.” And he takes up the cushion which had fallen behind the divan, and places it under her arm. He then lights a cigarette and holds it up to her inquiringly. Yes? He, therefore, lights another for himself, and continues. “If you ask me the same question that was asked the Buha, I would not hesitate in saying that I am both a Camel-driver and Carpenter. I might also be a Buhaist in a certain sense. I renounce falsehood, whatsoever be the guise it assumes; and I embrace truth, wheresoever I find it. Indeed, every religion is good and true, if it serves the high purpose of its founder. And they are false, all of them, when they serve the low purpose of their high priests. Take the lowest of the Arab tribes, for instance, and you will find in their truculent spirit a strain of faith sublime, though it is only evinced at times. The Beduins, rovers and raveners, manslayers and thieves, are in their house of moe-hair the kindest hosts, the noblest and most generous of men. They receive the wayfarer, though he be an enemy, and he eats and drinks and sleeps with them under the same root, in the assurance of Allah. If a religion makes a savage so good, so kind, it has well served its purpose. As for me, I admire the grand passion in both the Camel-driver and the Carpenter: the barbaric grandeur, the magnanimity and fidelity of the Arab as well as the sublime spirituality, the divine beauty, of the Nazarene, I deeply reverence. And in one sense, the one is the complement of the other: the two combined are my ideal of a Divinity.”

And now we descend from the chariot of the empyrean where we are riding with gods and apostles, and enter into one drawn by mortal coursers. We go out for a drive, and alight from the carriage in the poplar grove, to meander in its shades, along its streams. But digressing from one path into another, we enter unaware the eternal vista of love. There, on a boulder washed by the murmuring current, in the shade of the silver-tufted poplars, Khalid and Mrs. Gotfry sit down for a rest.

“Everything in life must always resolve itself into love,” said Khalid, as he stood on the rock holding out his hand to his friend. “Love is the divine solvent. Love is the splendour of God.”

Mrs. Gotfry paused at the last words. She was startled by this image. Love, the splendour of God? Why, the Bab, the Buha, is the splendour of God. Buha mean splendour. The Buha, therefore, is love. Love is the new religion. It is the old religion, the eternal religion, the only religion. How came he by this, this young Syrian? Would he rival the Buha? Rise above him? They are of kindred races their ancestors, too, may be mine. Love the splendour of God God the splendour of Love. Have I been all along fooling myself? Did I not know my own heart?

These, and more such, passed through Mrs. Gotfry’s mind, as shuttles through a loom, while Khalid was helping her up to her seat on the boulder, which is washed by the murmuring current.

“If life were such a rock under our feet,” said he, pressing his lips upon her hand, “the divine currents around it will melt it, soon or late, into love.”

They light cigarettes. A fresh breeze is blowing from the city. It is following them with the perfume of its gardens. The falling leaves are whispering in the grove to the swaying boughs. The narcissus is nodding to the myrtle across the way. And the bulbuls are pouring their golden splendour of song. Khalid speaks.

“Beauty either detains, repels, or enchants. The first is purely external, linear; the second is an imitation of the first, its artistic artificial ideal, so to speak; and the third” He is silent. His eyes, gazing into hers, take up the cue.

Mrs. Gotfry turns from him exhausted. She looks into the water.

“See the rose-beds in the stream; see the lovely pebbles dancing around them.”

“I can see everything in your eyes, which are like limpid lakes shaded with weeping-willows. I can even hear bulbuls singing in your brows. Turn not from me your eyes. They reflect the pearls of your soul and the flowers of your body, even as those crystal waters reflect the pebbles and rose-beds beneath.”

“Did you not say that love is the splendour of God?”

“Yes.”

“Then, why look for it in my eyes?”

“And why look for it in the heart of the heavens, in the depths of the sea in the infinities of everything that is beautiful and terrible in the breath of that little flower, in the song of the bulbul, in the whispers of your silken lashes, in ”

“Shut your eyes, Khalid; be more spiritual.”

“With my eyes open I see but one face; with my eyes closed I see a million faces: they are all yours. And they are loving, and sweet, and kind. But I am content with one, with the carnate symbol of them, with you, and though you be cold and cruel. The divine splendour is here, and here and here ”

“Why, your ardour is exhausting.”

But on their way back to the Hotel, Khalid gives her this from Swedenborg: “‘Do you love me’ means ’do you see the same truth that I see?’”

There is no use. Khalid is impossible.

CHAPTER VII - A DREAM OF EMPIRE

“I’m not starving for pleasure,” Khalid once said to Shakib; “nor for the light free love of an exquisite caprice. Those little flowers that bloom and wither in the blush of dawn are for the little butterflies. The love that endures, give me that. And it must be of the deepest divine strain, as deep and divine as maternal love. Man is of Eternity, not of Time; and love, the highest attribute of man, must be likewise. With me it must endure throughout all worlds and immensities; else I would not raise a finger for it. Pleasure, Shakib, is for the child within us; sexual joy, for the animal; love, for the god. That is why I say when you set your seal to the contract, be sure it is of the kind which all the gods of all the future worlds will raise to their lips in reverence.”

But Khalid’s child-spirit, not to say childishness, is not, as he would have us believe, a thing of the past. Nor are the animal and the god within him always agreed as to what is and what is not a love divine and eternal. In New York, to be sure, he often brushed his wings against those flowerets that “bloom and wither in the blush of dawn.” And he was not a little pleased to find that the dust which gathers on the wings adds a charm to the colouring of life. But how false and trivial it was, after all. The gold dust and the dust of the road, could they withstand a drop of rain? A love dust-deep, as it were, close to the earth; too mean and pitiful to be carried by the storm over terrible abysses to glorious heights. A love, in a word, without pain, that is to say impure. In Baalbek, on the other hand, he drank deep of the pain, but not of the joy, of love. He and his cousin Najma had just lit in the shrine of Venus the candles of the altar of the Virgin, when a villainous hand that of Jesuitry, issuing from the darkness, clapped over them the snuffer and carried his Happiness off. Here was a love divine, the promised bliss of which was snatched away from him.

And now in Damascus, he feels, for the first time, the exquisite pain and joy of a love which he can not yet fathom; a love, which like the storm, is carrying him over terrible abysses to unknown heights. The bitter sting of a Nay he never felt so keenly before. The sleep-stifling torture and joy of suspense he did not fully experience until now. But if he can not sleep, he will work. He has but a few days to prepare his address. He can not be too careful of what he says, and how he says it. To speak at the great Mosque of Omaiyah is a great privilege. A word uttered there will reach the furthermost parts of the Mohammedan world. Moreover, all the ulema and all the heavy-turbaned fanatics will be there.

But he can not even work. On the table before him is a pile of newspapers from all parts of Syria and Egypt even from India and all simmering, as it were, with Khalid’s name, and Khalidism, and Khalid scandals. He is hailed by some, assailed by others; glorified and vilified in tawdry rhyme and ponderous prose by Christians and Mohammedans alike. “Our new Muhdi,” wrote an Egyptian wit (one of those pallid prosers we once met in the hasheesh dens, no doubt), “our new Muhdi has added to his hareem an American beauty with an Oriental leg.”

What he meant by this only the hasheesh smokers know. “An instrument in the hands of some American speculators, who would build sky-scrapers on the ruins of our mosques,” wrote another. “A lever with which England is undermining Al-Islam,” cried a voice in India. “A base one in the service of some European coalition, who, under the pretext of preaching the spiritualities, is undoing the work of the Revolution. The gibbet is for ordinary traitors; for him the stake,” etc ., etc .

On the other hand, he is hailed as the expected one, the true leader, the real emancipator, “who has in him the soul of the East and the mind of the West, the builder of a great Asiatic Empire.” Of course, the foolish Damascene editor who wrote this had to flee the country the following day. But Khalid’s eyes lingered on that line. He read it and reread it over and over again forward and backward, too. He juggled, so to speak, with its words.

How often people put us, though unwittingly, on the path we are seeking, he thought. How often does a chance word uttered by a stranger reveal to us our deepest aims and purposes.

Before him was ink and paper. He took up the pen. But after scrawling and scribbling for ten minutes, the sheet was filled with circles and arabesques , and the one single word Dowla (Empire).

He could not think: he could only dream. The soul of the East The mind of the West the builder of a great Empire. The triumph of the Idea, the realisation of a great dream: the rise of a great race who has fallen on evil days; the renaissance of Arabia; the reclaiming of her land; the resuscitation of her glory; and why not? especially if backed with American millions and the love of a great woman. He is enraptured. He can neither sleep nor think: he can but dream. He puts on his jubbah, refills his cigarette box, and walks out of his room. He paces up and down the hall, crowning his dream with wreaths of smoke. But the dim lights seemed to be ogling each other and smiling, as he passed. The clocks seemed to be casting pebbles at him. The silence horrified him. He pauses before a door. He knocks knocks again.

The occupant of that room was not yet asleep. In fact, she, too, could not sleep. The clock in the hall outside had just struck one, and she was yet reading. After inquiring who it was that knocked, she puts on a kimono and opens the door. She is surprised.

“Anything the matter with you?”

“No; but I can not sleep.”

“That is amusing. And do you take me for a soporific? If you think you can sleep here, stretch yourself on the couch and try.” Saying which, she laughed and hurried back to her bed.

“I did not come to sleep.”

“What then? How lovely of you to wake me up so early. No, no; don’t apologise. For truly, I too, could not sleep. You see, I was still reading. Sit on the couch there and talk to me. Of course, you may smoke. No, I prefer to sit in bed.”

Khalid lights another cigarette and sits down. On the table before him are some antique colour prints which Mrs. Gotfry had bought in the Bazaar. These one can only get in Damascus. And strange coincidence! they represented some of the heroes of Arabia Antar, Ali, Saladin, Harun ar-Rashid done in gorgeous colouring, and in that deliciously ludicrous angular style which is neither Arabic nor Egyptian, but a combination perhaps of both. Khalid reads the poetry under each of them and translates it into English. Mrs. Gotfry is charmed. Khalid is lost in thought. He lays the picture of Saladin on the table, lights another cigarette, looks intently upon his friend, his face beaming with his dream.

“Jamilah.” It was the first time he called her by her first name an Arabic name which, as a Bahaist she had adopted. And she was neither surprised nor displeased.

“We need another Saladin to-day, a Saladin of the Idea, who will wage a crusade, not against Christianity or Mohammedanism, but against those Tataric usurpers who are now toadying to both.”

“Whom do you mean?”

“I mean the Turks. They were given a last chance to rise; they tried and failed. They can not rise. They are demoralised; they have no stamina, no character; no inborn love for truth and art; no instinctive or acquired sense of right and justice. Whiskey and debauch and high-sounding inanitiés about fraternity and equality can not regenerate an Empire. The Turk must go: he will go. But out in those deserts is a race which is always young, a race that never withers; a strong, healthy, keen-eyed, quick-witted race; a fighting, fanatical race; a race that gave Europe a civilisation, that gave the world a religion; a race with a past as glorious as Rome’s; and with a future, too, if we had an Ali or a Saladin. But He who made those heroes will make others like them, better, too. He may have made one already, and that one may be wandering now in the desert. Now think what can be done in Arabia, think what the Arabs can accomplish, if American arms and an up-to-date Koran are spread broadcast among them. With my words and your love and influence, with our powers united, we can build an Arab Empire, we can resuscitate the Arab Empire of the past. Abd’ul-Wahhab, you know, is the Luther of Arabia; and Wahhabism is not dead. It is only slumbering in Nejd. We will wake it; arm it; infuse into it the living spirit of the Idea. We will begin by building a plant for the manufacture of arms on the shore of the Euphrates, and a University in Yaman. The Turk must go at least out of Arabia. And the Turk in Europe, Europe will look after. No; the Arab will never be virtually conquered. Nominally, maybe. And I doubt if any of the European Powers can do it. Why? Chiefly because Arabia has a Prophet. She produced one and she will produce more. Cannons can destroy Empires; but only the living voice, the inspired voice can build them.”

Mrs. Gotfry is silent. In Khalid’s vagaries is a big idea, which she can not wholly grasp. And she is moreover devoted to another cause the light of the world the splendour of God Buhaism. But why not spread it in Arabia as in America? She will talk to Ebbas Effendi about Khalid. He is young, eloquent, rising to power. And with her love, and influence superadded, what might he not do? what might he not accomplish? These ideas flashed through her mind, while Khalid was pacing up and down the room, which was already filled with smoke. She is absorbed in thought. Khalid comes near her bed, bends over her, and buries his face in her wealth of black hair.

Mrs. Gotfry is startled as from a dream.

“I can not see all that you see.”

“Then you do not love me.”

“Why do you say that? Here, now go sit down. Oh, I am suffocating. The smoke is so thick in the room I can scarcely see you. And it is so late. No, no. Give me time to think on the subject. Now, come.”

And Mrs. Gotfry opens the door and the window to let out Khalid and his smoke.

“Go, Khalid, and try to sleep. And if you can not sleep, try to write. And if you can not write, read. And if you can neither read nor write nor sleep, why, then, put on your shoes and go out for a walk. Good night. There. Good night. But don’t forget, we must visit Sheikh Taleb to-morrow.”

The astute Mrs. Gotfry might have added, And if you do not feel like walking, take a dip in the River Barada. But in her words, to be sure, were a douche cold enough for Khalid. Now, to be just and comprehensive in our History we must record here that she, too, did not, and could not sleep that night. The thought that Khalid would make a good apostle of Buhaism and incidentally a good companion, insinuated itself between the lines on every page of the book she was trying to read.

On the following day they visit Sheikh Taleb, who is introduced to us by Shakib in these words:

“A Muslem, like Socrates, who educates not by lesson, but by going about his business. He seldom deigns to write; and yet, his words are quoted by every writer of the day, and on every subject sacred and profane. His good is truly magnetic. He is a man who lives after his own mind and in his own robes; an Arab who prays after no Imam, but directly to Allah and his Apostle; a scholar who has more dryasdust knowledge on his finger ends than all the ulema of Cairo and Damascus; a philosopher who would not give an orange peel for the opinion of the world; an ascetic who flees celebrity as he would the plague; a sage who does not disdain to be a pedagogue; an eccentric withal to amuse even a Diogenes: this is the noted Sheikh Taleb of Damascus, whom Mrs. Gotfry once met at Ebbas Effendy’s in Akka, and whom she was desirous of meeting again. When we first went to visit him, this charming lady and Khalid and I, we had to knock at the door until his neighbour peered from one of the windows above and told us that the Sheikh is asleep, and that if we would see him, we must come in the evening. I learned afterwards that he, reversing the habitual practice of mankind, works at night and sleeps during the day.

“We return in the evening. And the Sheikh, with a lamp in his hand, peers through a small square opening in the door to see who is knocking. He knew neither Khalid nor myself; but Mrs. Gotfry ’Eigh!’ he mused. And as he beheld her face in the lamplight he exclaimed ‘Marhaba (welcome)! Marhaba!’ and hastened to unbolt the door. We are shown through a dark, narrow hall, into a small court, up to his study. Which is a three-walled room a sort of stage opening on the court, and innocent of a divan or a settle or a chair. While he and Mrs. Gotfry were exchanging greetings in Persian, I was wondering why in Damascus, the city of seven rivers and of poetry and song, should there be a court guilty like this one of a dry and dilapidated fountain. I learned afterwards, however, that the Sheikh can not tolerate the noise of the water; and so, suffering from thirst and neglect, the fountain goes to ruin.

“On the stage, which is the study, is a clutter of old books and pamphlets; in the corner is the usual straw mat, a cushion, and a sort of stool on which are ink and paper. This he clears, places the cushion upon it, and offers to Mrs. Gotfry; he himself sits down on the mat; and we are invited to arrange for ourselves some books. Indeed, the Sheikh is right; most of these tomes are good for nothing else.

“Mrs. Gotfry introduces us.

“‘Ah, but thou art young and short of stature,’ said he to Khalid; ‘that is ominous. Verily, there is danger in thy path.’

“‘But he will embrace Buhaism,’ put in Mrs. Gotfry.

“’That might save him. Buhaism is the old torch, relighted after many centuries, by Allah.’

“Meanwhile Khalid was thinking of second-hand Jerry of the second-hand book-shop of New York. The Sheikh reminded him of his old friend.

“And I was holding in my hand a book on which I chanced while arranging my seat. It was Debrett’s Baronetage, Knightage, and Companionage. How did such a book find its way into the Sheikh’s rubbish, I wondered. But birds of a feather, thought I.

“‘That book was sent to me,’ said he, ’by a merchant friend, who found it in the Bazaar. They send me all kinds of books, these simple of heart. They think I can read in all languages and discourse on all subjects. Allah forgive them.’

“And when I tell him, in reply to his inquiry, that the book treats of Titles, Orders, and Degrees of Precedence, he utters a sharp whew, and with a quick gesture of weariness and disgust, tells me to take it. ‘I have my head full of our own ansab ( pedigrees ),’ he adds, ’and I have no more respect for a green turban (the colour of the Muslem nobility) than I have for this one,’ pointing to his, which is white.

“Mrs. Gotfry then asks the Sheikh what he thinks of Wahhabism.

“’It is Islam in its pristine purity; it is the Islam of the first great Khalifs. “Mohammed is dead; but Allah lives,” said Abu Bekr to the people on the death of the Prophet. And Wahhabism is a direct telegraph wire between mortal man and his God.

“’But why should these Wahhabis of Nejd be the most fanatical, when their doctrines are the most pure?’ asked Khalid.

“’In thy question is the answer to it. They are fanatical because of their purity of doctrine, and withal because they live in Nejd. If there were a Wahhabi sect in Barr’ush-Sham (Syria), it would not be thus, assure thee.’

“And expressing his liking for Khalid, he advises him to be careful of his utterances in Damascus, if he believes in self-preservation. ’I am old,’ he continues; ’and the ulema do not think my flesh is good for sacrifice. But thou art young, and plump a tender yearling ah, be careful sheikh Khalid. Then, I do not talk to the people direct. I talk to them through holy men and dervishes. The people do not believe in a philosopher; but the holy man, and though he attack the most sacred precepts of the Faith, they will believe. And Damascus is the very hive of turbans, green and otherwise. So guard thee, my child.’

“Mrs. Gotfry then asks for a minute’s privacy with the Sheikh. And before he withdraws with her to the court, he searches through a heap of mouldy tomes, draws from beneath them a few yellow pamphlets on the Comparative Study of the Semetic Alphabets and on The Rights of the Khalifate such is the scope of his learning and dusting these on his knee, presents them to us, saying, ‘Judge us not severely.’

“This does not mean that he cares much if we do or not. But in our country, in the Orient, even a Diogenes does not disdain to handle the coin of affability. We are always meekly asked, even by the most supercilious, to overlook shortcomings, and condone.

“I could not in passing out, however, overlook the string of orange peels which hung on a pole in the court. Nor am I sensible of an indecorum if I give out that the Sheikh lives on oranges, and preserves the peels for kindling the fire. And this, his only article of food, he buys at wholesale, like his robes and undergarments. For he never changes or washes anything. A robe is worn continually, worn out in the run, and discarded. He no more believes in the efficacy of soap than in the efficacy of a good reputation. ’The good opinion of men,’ he says, ’does not wash our hearts and minds. And if these be clean, all’s clean.’

“That is why, I think, he struck once with his staff a journalist for inserting in his paper a laudatory notice on the Sheikh’s system of living and thinking and speaking of him as ’a deep ocean of learning and wisdom.’ Even in travelling he carries nothing with him but his staff, that he might the quicker flee, or put to flight, the vulgar curious. He puts on a few extra robes, when he is going on a journey, and in time, becoming threadbare, sheds them off as the serpent its skin....”

And we pity our Scribe if he ever goes back to Damascus after this, and the good Sheikh chances upon him.

CHAPTER VIII - ADUMBRATIONS

“In the morning of the eventful day,” it is set forth in the Histoire Intime , “I was in Khalid’s room writing a letter, when Ahmed Bey comes in to confer with him. They remain together for some while during which I could hear Khalid growl and Ahmed Bey gently whispering, ’But the Dastur, the Unionists, Mother Society,’ this being the burden of his song. When he leaves, Khalid, with a scowl on his brow, paces up and down the room, saying, ’They would treat me like a school boy; they would have me speak by rule, and according to their own dictation. They even espy my words and actions as if I were an enemy of the Constitution. No; let them find another. The servile spouters in the land are as plenty as summer flies. After I deliver my address to-day, Shakib, we will take the first train for Baalbek. I want to see my mother. No, billah! I can not go any further with these Turks. Why, read this.’ And he hands me the memorandum, or outline of the speech given to him by Ahmed Bey.”

And this, we learn, is a litany of praises, beginning with Abd’ul-Hamid and ending with the ulema of Damascus; which litany the Society Deputies would place in the mouth of Khalid for the good of all concerned. Ay, for his good, too, if he but knew. If he but looked behind him, he would have yielded a whit, this Khalid. The deep chasm between him and the Deputy, however, justifies the conduct of each on his side: the lack of gumption in the one and the lack of depth in the other render impossible any sort of understanding between them. While we recommend, therefore, the prudence of the oleaginous Ahmed, we can not with justice condemn the perversity of our fretful Khalid. For he who makes loud boast of spiritual freedom, is, nevertheless, a slave of the Idea. And slavery in some shape or shade will clutch at the heart of the most powerful and most developed of mortals. Poor Khalid! if Truth commands thee to destroy the memorandum of Ahmed Bey, Wisdom suggests that thou destroy, too, thine address. And Wisdom in the person of Sheikh Taleb now knocks at thy door.

The Sheikh is come to admonish Khalid, not to return his visit. For at this hour of the day he should have been a-bed; but his esteem for Mrs. Gotfry, billah, his love, too, for her friend Khalid, and his desire to avert a possible danger, banish sleep from his eyes.

“My spirit is perturbed about thee,” thus further, “and I can not feel at ease until I have given my friendly counsel. Thou art free to follow it or not to follow it. But for the sake of this beard Sheikh Khalid, do not speak at the Mosque to-day. I know the people of this City: they are ignorant, obtuse, fanatical, blind. ’God hath sealed up their hearts and their hearing.’ They will not hear thee; they can not understand thee. I know them better than thou: I have lived amongst them for forty years. And what talk have we wasted. They will not hear; they can not see. It’s a dog’s tail, Sheikh Khalid. And what Allah hath twisted, man can not straighten. So, let it be. Let them wallow in their ignorance. Or, if thou wilt help them, talk not to them direct. Use the medium of the holy man, like myself. This is my advice to thee. For thine own sake and for the sake of that good woman, thy friend and mine, I give it. Now, I can go and sleep. Salaam.”

And the grey beard of Sheikh Taleb and his sharp blue eyes were animated, as he spoke, agitated like his spirit. What he has heard abroad and what he suspects, are shadowed forth in his friendly counsel. Let Khalid reflect upon it. Our Scribe, at least, is persuaded that Sheikh Taleb spoke as a friend. And he, too, suspects that something is brewing abroad. He would have Khalid hearken, therefore, to the Sheikh.

But Khalid in silence ponders the matter. And at table, even Mrs. Gotfry can not induce him to speak. She has just returned from the bazaar; she could hardly make her way through the choked arcade leading to the Mosque; the crowd is immense and tumultuous; and a company of the Dragoons is gone forth to open the way and maintain order. “But I don’t think they are going to succeed,” she added. Silently, impassively, Khalid hears this. And after going through the second course, eating as if he were dreaming, he gets up and leaves the table. Mrs. Gotfry, somewhat concerned, orders her last course, takes her thimble-full of coffee at a gulp, and, leaving likewise, hurries upstairs and calls Khalid, who was pacing up and down the hall, into her room.

“What is the matter with you?”

“Nothing, nothing,” murmured Khalid absent-mindedly.

“That’s not true. Everything belies your words. Why, your actions, your expression, your silence oppresses me. I know what is disturbing you. And I would prevail upon you, if I could, to give up this afternoon’s business. Don’t go; don’t speak. I have a premonition that things are not going to end well. Why, even my dragoman says that the Mohammedan mob is intent upon some evil business. Be advised. And since you are going to break with your associates, why not do so now. The quicker the better. Come, make up your mind. And we’ll not wait for the morning train. We’ll leave for Baalbek in a special carriage this afternoon. What say you?”

Just then the brass band in front of the Hotel struck up the Dastur march in honour of the Sheikhs who come to escort the Unionist Deputies and the speaker to the Mosque.

“I have made up my mind. I have given my word.”

And being called, Mrs. Gotfry, though loath to let him go, presses his hand and wishes him good speed.

And here we are in the carriage on the right of the green-turbaned Sheikh. We look disdainfully on the troops, the brass band, and the crowd of nondescripts that are leading the procession. We cross the bridge, pass the Town-Hall, and, winding a narrow street groaning with an electric tramway, we come to the grand arcade in which the multitudes on both sides are pressed against the walls and into the stalls by the bullying Dragoons. We drive through until we reach the arch, where some Khalif of the Omayiahs used to take the air. And descending from the carriage, we walk a few paces between two rows of book-shops, and here we are in the court of the grand Mosque Omayiah.

We elbow our way through the pressing, distressing multitudes, following Ahmed Bey into the Mosque, while the Army Officer mounts a platform in the court and dispenses to the crowd there of his Turkish blatherskite. We stand in the Mosque near the heavy tapestried square which is said to be the sarcophagus of St. John. Already a Sheikh is in the pulpit preaching on the excellences of liberty, chopping out definitions of equality, and quoting from Al-Hadith to prove that all men are Allah’s children and that the most favoured in Allah’s sight is he who is most loving to his brother man. He then winds up with an encomium on the heroes of the day, curses vehemently the reactionaries and those who curse them not (the Mosque resounds with “Curse the reactionists, curse them all!"), tramples beneath his heel every spy and informer of the New Era, invokes the great Allah and his Apostle to watch over the patriots and friends of the Ottoman nation, to visit with grievous punishment its enemies, and descends.

The silence of expectation ensues. The Mosque is crowded; and the press of turbans is such that if a pea were dropt from above it would not reach the floor. From the pulpit the great Mohammedan audience, with its red fezes, its green and white turbans, seemed to Khalid like a verdant field overgrown with daisies and poppies. “It is the beginning of Arabia’s Spring, the resuscitation of the glory of Islam,” and so forth; thus opening with a flourish of flattery like the spouting tricksters whom he so harshly judges. And what shall we say of him? It were not fair quickly to condemn, to cry him down at the start. Perhaps he was thus inspired by the august assembly; perhaps he quailed and thought it wise to follow thus far the advice of his friends. “It was neither this nor that,” say our Scribe. “For as he stood in the tribune, the picture of the field of daisies and poppies suggested the picture of Spring. A speaker is not always responsible for the frolics of his fancy. Indeed, an audience of some five thousand souls, all intent upon this opaque, mysterious Entity in the tribune, is bound to reach the very heart of it; for think what five thousand rays focussed on a sensitive plate can do.” Thus our Scribe, apologetically.

But after the first contact and the vibrations of enthusiasm and flattery that followed, Khalid regains his equilibrium and reason, and strikes into his favourite theme. He begins by arraigning the utilitarian spirit of Europe, the rank materialism which is invading our very temples of worship. God, Truth, Virtue, with them, is no longer esteemed for its own worth, but for what it can yield of the necessities and luxuries of life. And with these cynical materialistic abominations they would be supreme even in the East; they would extinguish with their dominating spirit of trade every noble virtue of the soul. And yet, they make presumption of introducing civilisation by benevolent assimilation, rather dissimulation. For even an Englishman in our country, for instance, is unlike himself in his own. The American, too, who is loud-lunged about democracy and shirt-sleeve diplomacy, wheedles and truckles as good as the wiliest of our pashas. And further he exclaims:

“Not to Christian Europe as represented by the State, therefore, or by the industrial powers of wealth, or by the alluring charms of decadence in art and literature, or by missionary and educational institutions, would I have you turn for light and guidance. No: from these plagues of civilisation protect us, Allah! No: let us have nothing to do with that practical Christianity which is become a sort of divine key to Colonisation; a mint, as it were, which continually replenishes the treasuries of Christendom. Let us have nothing to do with their propagandas for the propagation of supreme Fakes. No, no. Not this Europe, O my Brothers, should we take for our model or emulate: not the Europe which is being dereligionised by Material Science; disorganised by Communion and Anarchy; befuddled by Alcoholism; enervated by Debauch. To another Europe indeed, would I direct you a Europe, high, noble, healthy, pure, and withal progressive. To the deep and inexhaustible sources of genius there, of reason and wisdom and truth, would I have you advert the mind. The divine idealism of German philosophy, the lofty purity of true French art, the strength and sterling worth of English freedom, these we should try to emulate; these we should introduce into the gorgeous besottedness of Oriental life, and literature, and religion....”

And thus, until he reaches the heart of his subject; while the field of daisies and poppies before him gently sways as under a soft morning breeze; nods, as it were, its approbation.

“Truly,” he continues, “religion is purely a work of the heart, the human heart, and the heart of the world as well. For have not the three monotheistic religions been born in this very heart of the world, in Arabia, Syria, and Palestine? And are not our Books of Revelation the truest guides of life hitherto known to man? How then are we to keep this Heart pure, to free it, in other words, from the plagues I have named? And how, on the other hand, are we to strengthen it, to quicken its sluggish blood? In a word, how are we to attain to the pinnacle of health, and religion, and freedom, of power, and love, and light? By political revolutions, and insurrections, and Dasturs? By blindly adopting the triple political tradition of France, which after many years of terror and bloodshed, only gave Europe a new Yoke, a new Tyranny, a new grinding Machine? No, my Brothers; not by political nomenclature, not by political revolutions alone, shall the nations be emancipated.”

Whereupon Ahmed Bey begins to knit his brows; Shakib shakes his head, biting his nether lip; and here and there in the audience is heard a murmur about retrogression and reaction. Khalid proceeds with his allegory of the Muleteer and the Pack-Mule.

“See, the panel of the Mule is changed; the load, too; and a few short-cuts are made in the rocky winding road of statecraft and tyranny. Ah, the stolid, patient, drudging Mule always exults in a new Panel, which, indeed, seems necessary every decade, or so. For the old one, when, from a sense of economy, or from negligence or stupidity, is kept on for a length of time, makes the back sore, and the Mule becomes kickish and resty. Hence, the plasters of conservative homeopathists, the operations suggested by political leeches, the radical cures of social quacks, and such like. But the Mule continues to kick against the pricks; and the wise Muleteer, these days, when he has not the price of a new Panel, or knows not how to make one, sells him to the first bidder. And the new owner thereupon washes the sores and wounds, applies to them a salve of the patent kind, buys his Mule a new Panel, and makes him do the work. That is what I understand by a political revolution.... And are the Ottoman people free to-day? Who in all Syria and Arabia dare openly criticise the new Owner of the Mule?

“Ours in a sense is a theocratic Government. And only by reforming the religion on which it is based, is political reform in any way possible and enduring.” And here he argues that the so-called Reformation of Islam, of which Jelal ud-Din el-Afghani and Mohammed Abdu are the protagonists, is false. It is based on theological juggling and traditional sophisms. Their Al-Gazzali, whom they so much prize and quote, is like the St. Augustine of the Christians: each of these theologians finds in his own Book of Revelation a divine criterion for measuring and judging all human knowledge. No; a scientific truth can not be measured by a Koranic epigram: the Koran, a divine guide to life; a work of the heart should not attempt to judge a work of the mind or should be judged by it.

“But I would brush the cobwebs of interpretation and sophism from this Work of the heart,” he cries; “every spider’s web in the Mosque, I would sweep away. The garments of your religion, I would have you clean, O my Brothers. Ay, even the threadbare adventitious wrappages, I would throw away. From the religiosity and cant of to-day I call you back to the religion pure of the heart....”

But the Field of poppies and daisies begins to sway as under a gale. It is swelling violently, tumultuously.

“I would free al - Islam ,” he continues, “from its degrading customs, its stupefying traditions, its enslaving superstitions, its imbruting cants.”

Here several voices in the audience order the speaker to stop. “Innovation! Infidelity!” they cry.

“The yearly pestiferous consequences of the Haji” But Khalid no longer can be heard. On all sides zealotry raises and shakes a protesting hand; on all sides it shrieks, objurgating, threatening. Here it asks, “We would like to know if the speaker be a Wahhabi.” From another part of the Mosque comes the reply: “Ay, he is a Wahhabi.” And the voice of the speaker thundering above the storm: “Only in Wahhabism pure and simple is the reformation of al - Islam possible."... Finis.

Zealotry is set by the ear; the hornet’s nest is stirred. Your field of poppies and daisies, O Khalid, is miraculously transformed into a pit of furious grey spectres and howling red spirits. And still you wait in the tribune until the storm subside? Fool, fool! Art now in a civilised assembly? Hast thou no eyes to see, no ears to hear?

“Reactionist! Infidel! Innovator! Wahhabi! Slay him! Kill him!” Are these likely to subside the while thou wait? By the tomb of St. John there, get thee down, and quickly. Bravo, Shakib! He rushes to the tribune, drags him down by the jubbah, and, with the help of another friend, hustles him out of the Mosque. But the thirst for blood pursues them. And Khalid receives in the court outside a stiletto-thrust in the back and a slash in the forehead above the brow down to the ear. Which, indeed, we consider a part of his good fortune. Like the muleteer of his Lebanon tour, we attribute his escape with two wounds to the prayers of his good mother. For he is now in the carriage with Shakib, the blood streaming down his back and over his face. With difficulty the driver makes his way through the crowds, issues out of the arcade, and crack the whip! Quickly to the Hotel.

The multitudes behind us, both inside and outside the Mosque, are violently divided; for the real reactionists of Damascus, those who are hostile to the Constitution and the statochratic Government, are always watching for an opportunity to give the match to the dry sedges of sedition. And so, the liberals, who are also the friends of Khalid, and the fanatical mobs of the ulema, will have it out among themselves. They call each other reactionists, plotters, conspirators; and thereupon the bludgeons and poniards are brandished; the pistols here and there are fired; the Dragoons hasten to the scene of battle but we are not writing now the History of the Ottoman Revolution. We leave them to have it out among themselves as best they can, and accompany our Khalid to the Hotel.

Here the good Mrs. Gotfry washes the blood from his face, and Shakib, after helping him to bed, hastens to call the surgeon, who, having come straightway, sews and dresses the wounds and assures us that they are not dangerous. In the evening a number of Sheikhs of an enlightened and generous strain, come to inquire about him. They tell us that one of the assailants of Khalid, a noted brigand, and ten of the reactionists, are now in prison. The Society Deputies, however, do not seem much concerned about their wounded friend. Yes, they are concerned, but in another direction and on weightier matters. For the telegraph wires on the following day were kept busy. And in the afternoon of the second day after the event, the man who helped Shakib to save Khalid from the mob, comes to save Khalid’s life. The Superintendent of the Telegraph himself is here to inform us that Khalid was accused to the Military Tribunal as a reactionist, and a cablegram, in which he is summoned there, is just received.

“Had I delivered this to the Valí ,” he continues, “you would have been now in the hands of the police, and to-morrow on your way to Constantinople. But I shall not deliver it until you are safe out of the City. And you must fly or abscond to-day, because I can not delay the message until to-morrow.”

Now Khalid and Shakib and Mrs. Gotfry take counsel together. The one train for Baalbek leaves in the morning; the carriage road is ruined from disuse; and only on horseback can we fly. So, Mrs. Gotfry orders her dragoman to hire horses for three, nay, for four, since we must have an extra guide with us, and a muleteer for the baggage.

And here Shakib interposes a suggestion: “They must not come to the Hotel. Be with them on the road, near the first bridge, about the first hour of night.”

At the office of the Hotel the dragoman leaves word that they are leaving for a friend’s house on account of their patient.

And after dinner Mrs. Gotfry and Khalid set forth afoot, accompanied by Shakib. In five minutes they reach the first bridge; the dragoman and the guide, with their horses and lanterns, are there waiting. Shakib helps Khalid to his horse and bids them farewell. He will leave for Baalbek by the first train, and be there ahead of them.

And now, Reader, were we really romancing, we should here dilate of the lovely ride in the lovely moonlight on the lovely road to Baalbek. But truth to tell, the road is damnable, the welkin starless, the night pitch-black, and our poor Dreamer is suffering from his wounds.

CHAPTER IX - THE STONING AND FLIGHT

“And whence the subtle thrill of joy in suffering for the Truth,” asks Khalid. “Whence the light that flows from the wounds of martyrs? Whence the rapture that triumphs over their pain? In the thick of night, through the alcoves of the mountains, over their barren peaks, down through the wadi of oblivion, silently they pass. And they dream. They dream of appearance in disappearance; of triumph in surrender; of sunrises in the sunset.

“A mighty tidal wave leaves high upon the beach a mark which later on becomes the general level of the ocean. And so do the great thinkers of the world, the poets and seers, the wise and strong and self-denying, the proclaimers of the Religion of Man. And I am but a scrub-oak in this forest of giants, my Brothers. A scrub-oak which you might cut down, but not uproot. Lop off my branches; apply the axe to my trunk; make of my timber charcoal for the censers of your temples of worship; but the roots of me are deep, deep in the soil, beyond the reach of mortal hands. They are even spreading under your tottering palaces and temples....

“I dream of the awakening of the East; of puissant Orient nations rising to glorify the Idea, to build temples to the Universal Spirit to Art, and Love, and Truth, and Faith. What if I am lost in the alcoves of the hills, if I vanish forever in the night? The sun that sets must rise. It is rising and lighting up the dark and distant continents even when setting. Think of that, ye who gloat over the sinking of my mortal self.

“No; an idea is never too early annunciated. The good seed will grow among the rocks, and though the heavens withhold from it the sunshine and rain. It is because I will it, nay, because a higher Will than mine wills it, that the spirit of Khalid shall yet flow among your pilgrim caravans, through the fertile deserts of Arabia, down to the fountain-head of Faith, to Mecca and Medina,” et ceter a.

This, perhaps the last of the rhapsodies of Khalid’s, the Reader considering the circumstances under which it was written, will no doubt condone. Further, however, in the K. L. MS. we can not now proceed. Certainly the Author is not wanting in the sort of courage which is loud-lunged behind the writing table; his sufficiency of spirit is remarkable, unutterable. But we would he knew that the strong do not exult in their strength, nor the wise in their wisdom. For to fly and philosophize were one thing, and to philosophize in prison were another. Khalid this time does not follow closely in the way of the Masters. But he would have done so, if we can believe Shakib in this, had not Mrs. Gotfry persuaded him to the contrary. He would have stood in the Turkish Areopagus at Constantinople, defended himself somewhat Socratic before his judges, and hung out his tung on a rickety gibbet in the neighborhood of St. Sophia. But Mrs. Gotfry spoiled his great chance. She cheated him of the glory of dying for a noble cause.

“The Turks are not worth the sacrifice,” Shakib heard her say, when Khalid ejaculated somewhat about martyrdom. And when she offered to accompany him, the flight did not seem shameful in his eyes. Nay, it became necessary; and under the circumstances it was, indeed, cowardice not to fly. For is it not as noble to surrender one’s self to Love as to the Turks or any other earthly despotism? Gladly, heroically, he adventures forth, therefore, and philosophizes on the way about the light that flows from the wounds of persecution. But we regret that this celestial stream is not unmixed; it is accompanied by blood and pus; by distention and fever, and other inward and outward sores.

In this grievous state, somewhat like Don Quixote after the Battle of the Mill, our Khalid enters Baalbek. If the reader likes the comparison between the two Knights at this juncture, he must work it out for himself. We can not be so uncharitable as that; especially that our Knight is a compatriot, and is now, after our weary journeyings together, become our friend. Our poor grievous friend who must submit again to the surgeon’s knife.

Mrs. Gotfry would not let him go to his mother, for she herself would nurse him. So, the doctor is called to the Hotel. And after opening, disinfecting, and dressing the wounds, he orders his patient to keep in bed for some days. They will then visit the ruins and resume their journeying to Egypt. Khalid no longer would live in Syria, in a country forever doomed to be under the Turkish yoke, faring, nay, misfaring alike in the New Era as in the Old.

Now, his mother, tottering with age and sorrow, comes to the Hotel, and begs him in a flood of tears to come home; for his father is now with the Jesuits of Beirut and seldom comes to Baalbek. And his cousin Najma, with a babe on her arm and a tale of woe in her eyes, comes also to invite her cousin Khalid to her house.

She is alone; her father died some months ago; her husband, after the dethronement of Abd’ul-Hamid, being implicated in the reaction-movement, fled the country; and his relatives, to add to her affliction, would deprive her of her child. She is alone; and sick in the lungs. She coughs, too, the same sharp, dry, malignant cough that once plagued Khalid. Ay, the same disease which he buried in the pine forest of Mt. Lebanon, he beholds the ghost of it now, more terrible and heart-rending than anything he has yet seen or experienced. The disease which he conquered is come back in the person of his cousin Najma to conquer him. And who can assure Khalid that it did not steal into her breast along with his kisses? And yet, he is not the only one in Baalbek who returned from America with phthisis. O, but that thought is horrifying. Impossible he can not believe it.

But whether it be from you or from another, O Khalid, there is the ghost of it beckoning to you. Look at it. Are those the cheeks, those the eyes, this the body which a year ago was a model of rural charm and beauty and health? Is this the compensation of love? Is there anything like it dreamt of in your philosophy? There she is, who once in the ruined Temple of Venus mixed the pomegranate flower of her cheeks with the saffron of thy sickly lips. Wasted and dejected broken in body and spirit, she sits by your bedside nursing her baby and coughing all the while. And that fixed expression of sadness, so habitual among the Arab women who carry their punks and their children on their backs and go a-begging, it seems as if it were an hundred autumns old, this sadness. But right there, only a year ago, the crimson poppies dallied with the laughing breeze; the melting rubies dilated of health and joy.

And now, deploring, imploring, she asks: “Will you not come to me, O Khalid? Will you not let me nurse you? Come; and your mother, too, will live with us. I am so lonesome, so miserable. And at night the boys cast stones at my door. My husband’s relatives put them to it because I would not give them the child. And they circulate all kinds of calumnies about me too.”

Khalid promises to come, and assures her that she will not long remain alone. “And Allah willing,” he adds, “you will recover and be happy again.”

She rises to go, when Mrs. Gotfry enters the room. Khalid introduces his cousin as his dead bride. “What do you mean?” she inquires. He promises to explain. Meanwhile, she goes to her room, brings some sweetmeats in a round box inlaid with mother-of-pearl for Khalid’s guests. And taking the babe in her arms, she fondles and kisses it, and gives its mother some advice about suckling. “Not whenever the child cries, but only at stated times,” she repeats.

So much about Khalid’s mother and cousin. A few days after, when he is able to leave his room, he goes to see them. His cousin Najma he would take with him to Cairo. He would not leave her behind, a prey to the cruelty of loneliness and disease. He tells her this. She is overjoyed. She is ready to go whenever he says. To-morrow? Please Allah, yes. But

Please Allah, ill-luck is following. For on his way back to the Hotel, a knot of boys, lying in wait in one of the side streets, cast stones at him. He looks back, and a missile whizzes above his head, another hits him in the forehead almost undoing the doctor’s work. Alas, that wound! Will it ever heal? Khalid takes shelter in one of the shops; a cameleer rates the boys and chases them away. The stoning was repeated the following day, and the cause of it, Shakib tells us, is patent. For when it became known in Baalbek that Khalid, the excommunicated one, is living in the Hotel, and with an American woman! the old prejudices against him were aroused, the old enemies were astirring. The priests held up their hands in horror; the women wagged their long tongues in the puddle of scandal; and the most fanatical shrieked out, execrating, vituperating, threatening even the respectable Shakib, who persists in befriending this muleteer’s son. Excommunicated, he now comes with this Americaniyah (American woman) to corrupt the community. Horrible! We will even go farther than this boy’s play of stoning. We present petitions to the kaiemkam demanding the expulsion of this Khalid from the Hotel, from the City.

From other quarters, however, come heavier charges against Khalid. The Government of Damascus has not been idle ever since the seditious lack-beard Sheikh disappeared. The telegraph wires, in all the principal cities of Syria, are vibrating with inquiries about him, with orders for his arrest. One such the kaiemkam of Baalbek had just received when the petition of the “Guardians of the Morals of the Community” was presented to him. To this, the kaiemkam, in a perfunctory manner, applies his seal, and assures his petitioners that it will promptly be turned over to the proper official. But Turk as Turks go, he “places it under the cushion,” when they leave. Which expression, translated into English means, he quashes it.

Now, by good chance, this is the same kaiemkam who sent Khalid a year ago to prison, maugre the efforts and importunities and other inducements of Shakib. And this time, he will do him and his friend a good turn. He was thinking of the many misfortunes of this Khalid, and nursing a little pity for him, when Shakib entered to offer a written complaint against a few of the more noted instigators of the assailants of his friend. His Excellency puts this in his pocket and withdraws with Shakib into another room. A few minutes after, Shakib was hurrying to the Hotel to confer with his brother Khalid and Mrs. Gotfry.

“I saw the Order with these very eyes,” said Shakib, almost poking his two forefingers into them. “The kaiemkam showed it to me.”

Hence, the secret preparations inside the Hotel and out of it for a second remove, for a final flight. Shakib packs up; Najma is all ready. And Khalid cuts his hair, doffs his jubbah, and appears again in the ordinary attire of civilised mortals. For how else can he get out of Beirut and the telegraph wires throughout Syria are flowing with orders for his arrest? In a hat and frock-coat, therefore (furnished by Shakib), he enters into the carriage with Mrs. Gotfry about two hours after midnight; and, with their whole retinue, make for Riak, and thence by train for Beirut. Here Shakib obtains passports for himself and Najma, and together with Mrs. Gotfry and her dragoman, they board in the afternoon the Austrian Liner for Port-Said; while, in the evening, walking at the side of one of the boatmen, Khalid, passportless, stealthily passes through the port, and rejoins his friends.

CHAPTER X - THE DESERT

We remember seeing once a lithographic print representing a Christmas legend of the Middle Ages, in which a detachment of the Heavenly Host big, ugly, wild-looking angels are pursuing, with sword and pike, a group of terror-stricken little devils. The idea in the picture produced such an impression that one wished to see the helpless, pitiful imps in heaven and the armed winged furies, their pursuers, in the other place. Now, as we go through the many pages of Shakib’s, in which he dilates of the mischances, the persécutions , and the flights of Khalid, and of which we have given an abstract, very brief but comprehensive, in the preceding Chapters, we are struck with the similarity in one sense between his Dastur-legend, so to speak, and that of the Middle Ages to which we have alluded. The devils in both pictures are distressing, pitiful; while the winged persecutors are horribly muscular, and withal atrociously armed.

Indeed, this legend of the Turkish angels of Fraternity and Equality, pursuing the Turkish little devils of reaction, so called, is most killing. But we can not see how the descendants of Yakut and Seljuk Khan, whether pursuers or pursued, whether Dastur winged furies they be, or Hamidian devils, are going to hold their own in face of the fell Dragon which soon or late must overtake them. That heavy, slow-going, slow-thinking Monster and it makes little difference whether he comes from the North or from the West will wait until the contending parties exhaust their strength and then but this is not our subject. We would that this pursuing business cease on all sides, and that everybody of all parties concerned pursue rather, and destroy, the big strong devil within them. Thus sayeth the preacher. And thus, for once, we, too. For does not every one of these furious angels of Equality, whether in Constantinople, in Berlin, in Paris, in London, or in New York, sit on his wings and reveal his horns when he rises to power? We are tired of wings that are really nothing but horns, misshaped and misplaced.

Look at our French-swearing, whiskey-drinking Tataric angels of the Dastur! Indeed, we rejoice that our poor little Devil is now beyond the reach of their dripping steel and rickety second-hand gibbets. And yet, not very far; for if the British Government consent or blink, Khalid and many real reactionists whom Cairo harbours, would have to seek an asylum elsewhere. And the third flight might not be as successful as the others. But none such is necessary. On the sands of the Libyan desert, not far from Cairo and within wind of Helwan, they pitch their tents. And Mrs. Gotfry is staying at Al-Hayat, which is a stone’s throw from their evening fire. She would have Khalid live there too, but he refuses. He will live with his cousin and Shakib for a while. He is captivated, we are told, by that little cherub of a babe. But this does not prevent him from visiting his friend the Buhaist Priestess every day and dining often with her at the Hotel.

She, too, not infrequently comes to the camp. Indeed, finding the solitude agreeable she has a tent pitched near theirs. And as a relief from the noise and bustle of tourists and the fatiguing formalities of Hotel life, she repairs thither for a few days every week.

Now, in this austere delicacy of the desert, where allwhere is the softness of pure sand, Khalid is perfectly happy. Never did he seem so careless, our Scribe asserts, and so jovial and child-like in his joys. Far from the noise and strife of politics, far from the bewildering tangle of thought, far from the vain hopes and dreams and ambitions of life, he lives each day as if it were the last of the world. Here are joys manifold for a weary and persecuted spirit: the joy of having your dearest friend and comrade with you; the joy of nursing and helping to restore to health and happiness the woman dearest to your heart; the joy of a Love budding in beauty and profusion; and this, the rarest and sublimest for Khalid the joy of worshipping at the cradle of fondling, caressing, and bringing up one of the brightest, sweetest, loveliest of babes.

Najib is his name it were cruel to neutralise such a prodigy and he is just learning to walk and lisp. Khalid teaches him the first step and the first monosyllable, receiving in return the first kiss which his infant lips could voice. With what joy Najib makes his first ten steps! With what zest would he practise on the soft sands, laughing as he falls, and rising to try again. And thus, does he quickly, wonderfully develop, unfolding in the little circle of his caressers in his mother’s lap, in Shakib’s arms, on Khalid’s back, on Mrs. Gotfry’s knee the irresistible charm of his precocious spirit.

In two months of desert life, Najib could run on the sands and sit down when tired to rest; in two months he could imitate in voice and gesture whatever he heard or saw: the donkey’s bray, and with a tilt of the head like him; the cry of the cock; the shrill whistle of the train; and the howling of donkey boys. His keen sense of discrimination in sounds is incredible. And one day, seeing a Mohammedan spreading his rug to pray, he begins to kneel and kiss the ground in imitation of him. He even went into the tent and brought Khalid’s jubbah to spread it on the sand likewise for that purpose. So sensitive to outside impressions is this child that he quickly responds to the least suggestion and with the least effort. Early in the morning, when the chill of night is still on the sands, he toddles into Khalid’s tent cooing and warbling his joy. A walking jasmine flower, a singing ray of sunshine, Khalid calls him. And the mother, on seeing her child thus develop, begins to recuperate. In this little garden of happiness, her hope begins to blossom.

But Khalid would like to know why Najib, on coming into his tent in the morning and seeing him naked, always pointed with his little finger and with questioning smile, to what protruded under the navel. The like questions Khalid puts with the ease and freedom of a child. And writes full pages about them, too, in which he only succeeds in bamboozling himself and us. For how can we account for everything a child does? Even the psychologist with his reflex-action theory does not solve the whole problem. But Khalid would like to know and perhaps not so innocently does he dwell upon this subject as upon others he would like to know the significance of Najib’s pointed finger and smile. It may be only an accident, Khalid. “But an accident,” says he, “occurring again and again in the same manner under stated conditions ceases to be such.” And might not the child, who is such an early and keen observer, have previously seen his mother in native buff, and was surprised to see that appendage in you, Khalid?

Even at Al-Hayat Najib is become popular. Khalid often comes here carrying him on his back. And how ready is the child to salaam everybody, and with both hands, as he stands on the veranda steps. “Surely,” says Khalid, “there is a deeper understanding between man and child than between man and man. For who but a child dare act so freely among these polyglots of ceremony in this little world of frills and frocks and feathers? Who but a child dare approach without an introduction any one of these solemn-looking tourists? Here then is the divine source of the sweetest and purest joy. Here is that one touch of Nature which makes the whole world kin. For the child, and though he be of the lowest desert tribe, standing on the veranda of a fashionable Hotel, can warm and sweeten with the divine flame that is in him, the hearts of these sour-seeming, stiff-looking tourists who are from all corners of the earth. Is not this a miracle? My professor of psychology will say, ‘Nay.’ But what makes the heart leap in that grave and portly gentleman, who might be from Finland or Iceland, for all I know, when Najib’s hand is raised to him in salutation? What makes that stately and sombre-looking dame open her arms, when Najib plucks a flower and, after smelling it, presents it to her? What makes that reticent, meditative, hard-favoured ancient, who is I believe a psychologist, what makes him so interested in observing Najib when he stands near the piano pointing anxiously to the keyboard? For the child enjoys not every kind of music: play a march or a melody and he will keep time, listing joyously from side to side and waving his hand in an arch like a maestro; play something insipid or chaotic and he will stand there impassive as a statue.”

And “the reticent hard-favoured ancient,” who turns out to be an American professor of some ology, explains to Khalid why lively music moves children, while soft and subtle tones do not. But Khalid is not open to argument on the subject. He prefers to believe that children, especially when so keenly sensitive as his prodigy, understand as much, if not more, about music as the average operagoer of to-day. But that is not saying much. The professor furthermore, while admitting the extreme precocity of Najib’s mind, tries to simplify by scientific analysis what to Khalid and other laymen seemed wonderful, almost miraculous. Here, too, Khalid botches the arguments of the learned gentleman in his effort to give us a summary of them, and tells us in the end that never after, so long as that professor was there, did he ever visit Al-Hayat.

He prefers to frolic and philosophise with his prodigy on the sands. He goes on all four around the tent, carrying Najib on his back; he digs a little ditch in the sand and teaches him how to lie therein. Following the precept of the Greek philosophers, he would show him even so early how to die. And Najib lies in the sand-grave, folds his hands on his breast and closes his eyes. Rising therefrom, Khalid would teach him how to dance like a dervish, and Najib whirls and whirls until he falls again in that grave.

When Mrs. Gotfry came that day, Khalid asked the child to show her how to dance and die, and Najib begins to whirl like a dervish until he falls in the grave; thereupon he folds his arms, closes his eyes, and smiles a pathetic smile. This by far is the masterpiece of all his feats. And one evening, when he was repeating this strange and weird antic, which in Khalid’s strange mind might be made to symbolise something stranger than both, he saw, as he lay in the grave, a star in the sky. It was the first time he saw a star; and he jumped out of his sand-grave exulting in the discovery he had made. He runs to his mother and points the star to her....

And thus did Khalid spend his halcyon months in the desert. Here was an arcadia, perfect but brief. For his delight in infant worship, and in the new Love which was budding in beauty and profusion, and in tending his sick cousin who was recovering her health, and in the walks around the ruins in the desert with his dearest comrade and friend, these, alas, were joys of too pure a nature to endure.