CHAPTER I

* * * * *

Transcriber's Note regarding the illustrations

"The Book of Khalid" contains illustrations drawn by Khalil

Gibran, the other early Arab-American writer (author of "The

Prophet"), that are well-known and exceptional. There are no

captions in the original book, and are very difficult to describe

in words. Their locations in the text have been marked with the

text '[Illustration]'. The reader is encouraged to view these

illustrations in the HTML version of this ebook.

* * * * *

THE BOOK OF KHALID

THE

BOOK OF KHALID

BY

AMEEN RIHANI

[Illustration]

NEW YORK

DODD, MEAD AND COMPANY

1911

COPYRIGHT, 1911

BY DODD, MEAD & COMPANY

_Published, October_, 1911

CONTENTS

BOOK THE FIRST

IN THE EXCHANGE

CHAPTER PAGE

AL-FATIHAH v

TO MAN 3

I PROBING THE TRIVIAL 5

II THE CITY OF BAAL 14

III VIA DOLOROSA 25

IV ON THE WHARF OF ENCHANTMENT 34

V THE CELLAR OF THE SOUL 46

VI THE SUMMER AFTERNOON OF A SHAM 58

VII IN THE TWILIGHT OF AN IDEA 70

VIII WITH THE HURIS 83

BOOK THE SECOND

IN THE TEMPLE

TO NATURE 97

I THE DOWRY OF DEMOCRACY 99

II SUBTRANSCENDENTAL 115

III THE FALSE DAWN 125

IV THE LAST STAR 130

V PRIESTO-PARENTAL 143

VI FLOUNCES AND RUFFLES 154

VII THE HOWDAJ OF FALSEHOOD 167

VIII THE KAABA OF SOLITUDE 181

IX SIGNS OF THE HERMIT 192

X THE VINEYARD IN THE KAABA 202

BOOK THE THIRD

IN KULMAKAN

TO GOD 217

I THE DISENTANGLEMENT OF THE ME 219

II THE VOICE OF THE DAWN 231

III THE SELF ECSTATIC 239

IV ON THE OPEN HIGHWAY 249

V UNION AND PROGRESS 274

VI REVOLUTIONS WITHIN AND WITHOUT 287

VII A DREAM OF EMPIRE 298

VIII ADUMBRATIONS 311

IX THE STONING AND FLIGHT 325

X THE DESERT 333

AL-KHATIMAH 341

AL-FATIHAH

In the Khedivial Library of Cairo, among the Papyri of the Scribe of

Amen-Ra and the beautifully illuminated copies of the Korân, the

modern Arabic Manuscript which forms the subject of this Book, was

found. The present Editor was attracted to it by the dedication and

the rough drawings on the cover; which, indeed, are as curious, if not

as mystical, as ancient Egyptian symbols. One of these is supposed to

represent a New York Skyscraper in the shape of a Pyramid, the other

is a dancing group under which is written: "The Stockbrokers and the

Dervishes." And around these symbols, in Arabic circlewise, these

words:--"_And this is my Book, the Book of Khalid, which I dedicate to

my Brother Man, my Mother Nature, and my Maker God._"

Needless to say we asked at once the Custodian of the Library to give

us access to this Book of Khalid, and after examining it, we hired an

amanuensis to make a copy for us. Which copy we subsequently used as

the warp of our material; the woof we shall speak of in the following

chapter. No, there is nothing in this Work which we can call ours,

except it be the Loom. But the weaving, we assure the Reader, was a

mortal process; for the material is of such a mixture that here and

there the raw silk of Syria is often spun with the cotton and wool of

America. In other words, the Author dips his antique pen in a modern

inkstand, and when the ink runs thick, he mixes it with a slabbering

of slang. But we started to write an Introduction, not a Criticism.

And lest we end by writing neither, we give here what is more to the

point than anything we can say: namely, Al-Fatihah, or the Opening

Word of Khalid himself.

With supreme indifference to the classic Arabic proem, he begins by

saying that his Book is neither a Memoir nor an Autobiography, neither

a Journal nor a Confession.

"Orientals," says he, "seldom adventure into that region of fancy and

fabrication so alluring to European and American writers; for, like

the eyes of huris, our vanity is soft and demure. This then is a book

of travels in an impalpable country, an enchanted country, from which

we have all risen, and towards which we are still rising. It is, as it

were, the chart and history of one little kingdom of the Soul,--the

Soul of a philosopher, poet and criminal. I am all three, I swear, for

I have lived both the wild and the social life. And I have thirsted in

the desert, and I have thirsted in the city: the springs of the former

were dry; the water in the latter was frozen in the pipes. That is

why, to save my life, I had to be an incendiary at times, and at

others a footpad. And whether on the streets of knowledge, or in the

open courts of love, or in the parks of freedom, or in the cellars and

garrets of thought and devotion, the only _saki_ that would give me a

drink without the asking was he who called himself Patience....

"And so, the Book of Khalid was written. It is the only one I wrote in

this world, having made, as I said, a brief sojourn in its civilised

parts. I leave it now where I wrote it, and I hope to write other

books in other worlds. Now understand, Allah keep and guide thee, I do

not leave it here merely as a certificate of birth or death. I do not

raise it up as an epitaph, a trade-sign, or any other emblem of

vainglory or lucre; but truly as a propylon through which my race and

those above and below my race, are invited to pass to that higher

Temple of mind and spirit. For we are all tourists, in a certain

sense, and this world is the most ancient of monuments. We go through

life as those pugreed-solar-hatted-Europeans go through Egypt. We are

pestered and plagued with guides and dragomans of every rank and

shade;--social and political guides, moral and religious dragomans: a

Tolstoy here, an Ibsen there, a Spencer above, a Nietzche below. And

there thou art left in perpetual confusion and despair. Where wilt

thou go? Whom wilt thou follow?

"Or wilt thou tarry to see the work of redemption accomplished? For

Society must be redeemed, and many are the redeemers. The Cross,

however, is out of fashion, and so is the Dona Dulcinea motive.

Howbeit, what an array of Masters and Knights have we, and what a

variety! The work can be done, and speedily, if we could but choose.

Wagner can do it with music; Bakunin, with dynamite; Karl Marx, with

the levelling rod; Haeckel, with an injection of protoplasmic logic;

the Pope, with a pinch of salt and chrism; and the Packer-Kings of

America, with pork and beef. What wilt thou have? Whom wilt thou

employ? Many are the applicants, many are the guides. But if they are

all going the way of Juhannam, the Beef-packer I would choose. For

verily, a gobbet of beef on the way were better than canned

protoplasmic logic or bottled salt and chrism....

"No; travel not on a Cook's ticket; avoid the guides. Take up thy

staff and foot it slowly and leisurely; tarry wherever thy heart

would tarry. There is no need of hurrying, O my Brother, whether

eternal Juhannam or eternal Jannat await us yonder. Come; if thou

hast not a staff, I have two. And what I have in my Scrip I will

share with thee. But turn thy back to the guides; for verily we see

more of them than of the ruins and monuments. Verily, we get more

of the Dragomans than of the Show. Why then continue to move and

remove at their command?--Take thy guidebook in hand and I will

tell thee what is in it.

"No; the time will come, I tell thee, when every one will be his own

guide and dragoman. The time will come when it will not be necessary

to write books for others, or to legislate for others, or to make

religions for others: the time will come when every one will write his

own Book in the Life he lives, and that Book will be his code and his

creed;--that Life-Book will be the palace and cathedral of his Soul in

all the Worlds."

BOOK THE FIRST

IN THE EXCHANGE

[Illustration]

TO MAN

_No matter how good thou art, O my Brother, or how bad thou art, no

matter how high or how low in the scale of being thou art, I still

would believe in thee, and have faith in thee, and love thee. For do I

not know what clings to thee, and what beckons to thee? The claws of

the one and the wings of the other, have I not felt and seen? Look up,

therefore, and behold this World-Temple, which, to us, shall be a

resting-place, and not a goal. On the border-line of the Orient and

Occident it is built, on the mountain-heights overlooking both. No

false gods are worshipped in it,--no philosophic, theologic, or

anthropomorphic gods. Yea, and the god of the priests and prophets is

buried beneath the Fountain, which is the altar of the Temple, and

from which flows the eternal spirit of our Maker--our Maker who

blinketh when the Claws are deep in our flesh, and smileth when the

Wings spring from our Wounds. Verily, we are the children of the God

of Humour, and the Fountain in His Temple is ever flowing. Tarry, and

refresh thyself, O my Brother, tarry, and refresh thyself._

KHALID.

CHAPTER I

PROBING THE TRIVIAL

The most important in the history of nations and individuals was once

the most trivial, and vice versa. The plebeian, who is called to-day

the man-in-the-street, can never see and understand the significance

of the hidden seed of things, which in time must develop or die. A

garter dropt in the ballroom of Royalty gives birth to an Order of

Knighthood; a movement to reform the spelling of the English language,

initiated by one of the presidents of a great Republic, becomes

eventually an object of ridicule. Only two instances to illustrate our

point, which is applicable also to time-honoured truths and

moralities. But no matter how important or trivial these, he who would

give utterance to them must do so in cap and bells, if he would be

heard nowadays. Indeed, the play is always the thing; the frivolous is

the most essential, if only as a disguise.--For look you, are we not

too prosperous to consider seriously your ponderous preachment? And

when you bring it to us in book form, do you expect us to take it into

our homes and take you into our hearts to boot?--Which argument is

convincing even to the man in the barn.

But the Author of the Khedivial Library Manuscript can make his

Genius dance the dance of the seven veils, if you but knew. It is

to be regretted, however, that he has not mastered the most subtle

of arts, the art of writing about one's self. He seldom brushes

his wings against the dust or lingers among the humble flowers close

to the dust: he does not follow the masters in their entertaining

trivialities and fatuities. We remember that even Gibbon interrupts

the turgid flow of his spirit to tell us in his Autobiography that he

really could, and often did, enjoy a game of cards in the evening. And

Rousseau, in a suppurative passion, whispers to us in his Confessions

that he even kissed the linen of Madame de Warens' bed when he was

alone in her room. And Spencer devotes whole pages in his dull and

ponderous history of himself to narrate the all-important narration

of his constant indisposition,--to assure us that his ill health more

than once threatened the mighty task he had in hand. These, to be

sure, are most important revelations. But Khalid here misses his cue.

Inspiration does not seem to come to him in firefly-fashion.

He would have done well, indeed, had he studied the method of the

professional writers of Memoirs, especially those of France. For might

he not then have discoursed delectably on The Romance of my Stick Pin,

The Tragedy of my Sombrero, The Scandal of my Red Flannel, The

Conquest of my Silk Socks, The Adventures of my Tuxedo, and such like?

But Khalid is modest only in the things that pertain to the outward

self. He wrote of other Romances and other Tragedies. And when his

Genius is not dancing the dance of the seven veils, she is either

flirting with the monks of the Lebanon hills or setting fire to

something in New York. But this is not altogether satisfactory to the

present Editor, who, unlike the Author of the Khedivial Library MS.,

must keep the reader in mind. 'Tis very well to endeavour to unfold a

few of the mysteries of one's palingenesis, but why conceal from us

his origin? For is it not important, is it not the fashion at least,

that one writing his own history should first expatiate on the humble

origin of his ancestors and the distant obscure source of his genius?

And having done this, should he not then tell us how he behaved in his

boyhood; whether or not he made anklets of his mother's dough for his

little sister; whether he did not kindle the fire with his father's

Korân; whether he did not walk under the rainbow and try to reach the

end of it on the hill-top; and whether he did not write verse when he

was but five years of age. About these essentialities Khalid is

silent. We only know from him that he is a descendant of the brave

sea-daring Phoenicians--a title which might be claimed with justice

even by the aborigines of Yucatan--and that he was born in the city of

Baalbek, in the shadow of the great Heliopolis, a little way from the

mountain-road to the Cedars of Lebanon. All else in this direction is

obscure.

And the K. L. MS. which we kept under our pillow for thirteen days

and nights, was beginning to worry us. After all, might it not be

a literary hoax, we thought, and might not this Khalid be a myth. And

yet, he does not seem to have sought any material or worldly good

from the writing of his Book. Why, then, should he resort to

deception? Still, we doubted. And one evening we were detained by

the sandomancer, or sand-diviner, who was sitting cross-legged on the

sidewalk in front of the mosque. "I know your mind," said he,

before we had made up our mind to consult him. And mumbling his

"abracadabra" over the sand spread on a cloth before him, he took up

his bamboo-stick and wrote therein--Khalid! This was amazing. "And I

know more," said he. But after scouring the heaven, he shook his head

regretfully and wrote in the sand the name of one of the hasheesh-dens

of Cairo. "Go thither; and come to see me again to-morrow evening."

Saying which, he folded his sand-book of magic, pocketed his fee,

and walked away.

In that hasheesh-den,--the reekiest, dingiest of the row in the Red

Quarter,--where the etiolated intellectualities of Cairo flock after

midnight, the name of Khalid evokes much resounding wit, and sarcasm,

and laughter.

"You mean the new Muhdi," said one, offering us his chobok of

hasheesh; "smoke to his health and prosperity. Ha, ha, ha."

And the chorus of laughter, which is part and parcel of a hasheesh

jag, was tremendous. Every one thereupon had something to say on the

subject. The contagion could not be checked. And Khalid was called

"the dervish of science" by one; "the rope-dancer of nature" by

another.

"Our Prophet lived in a cave in the wilderness of New York for five

years," remarked a third.

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

"The Young Turks can not catch him now."

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

"Wait till his new phthisic-stricken wife dies."

"Whom will our Prophet marry, if among all the virgins of Egypt we can

not find a consumptive for him?"

"And when he pulls down the pyramids to build American Skyscrapers

with their stones, where shall we bury then our Muhdi?"

All of which, although mystifying to us, and depressing, was none the

less reassuring. For Khalid, it seems, is not a myth. No; we can even

see him, we are told, and touch him, and hear him speak.

"Shakib the poet, his most intimate friend and disciple, will bring

you into the sacred presence."

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

ha!"

And this Shakib was then suspended and stoned. But their humour, like

the odor and smoke of gunjah, (hasheesh) was become stifling. So, we

lay our chobok down; and, thanking them for the entertainment, we

struggle through the rolling reek and fling to the open air.

In the grill-room of the Mena House we meet the poet Shakib, who was

then drawing his inspiration from a glass of whiskey and soda. Nay, he

was drowning his sorrows therein, for his Master, alas! has

mysteriously disappeared.

"I have not seen him for ten days," said the Poet; "and I know not

where he is.--If I did? Ah, my friend, you would not then see me here.

Indeed, I should be with him, and though he be in the trap of the

Young Turks." And some real tears flowed down the cheeks of the Poet,

as he spoke.

The Mena House, a charming little Branch of Civilisation at the gate

of the desert, stands, like man himself, in the shadow of two terrible

immensities, the Sphinx and the Pyramid, the Origin and the End. And

in the grill-room, over a glass of whiskey and soda, we presume to

solve in few words the eternal mystery. But that is not what we came

for. And to avoid the bewildering depths into which we were led, we

suggested a stroll on the sands. Here the Poet waxed more eloquent,

and shed more tears.

"This is our favourite haunt," said he; "here is where we ramble, here

is where we loaf. And Khalid once said to me, 'In loafing here, I work

as hard as did the masons and hod-carriers who laboured on these

pyramids.' And I believe him. For is not a book greater than a

pyramid? Is not a mosque or a palace better than a tomb? An object is

great in proportion to its power of resistance to time and the

elements. That is why we think the pyramids are great. But see, the

desert is greater than the pyramids, and the sea is greater than the

desert, and the heavens are greater than the sea. And yet, there is

not in all these that immortal intelligence, that living, palpitating

soul, which you find in a great book. A man who conceives and writes a

great book, my friend, has done more work than all the helots that

laboured on these pyramidal futilities. That is why I find no

exaggeration in Khalid's words. For when he loafs, he does so in good

earnest. Not like the camel-driver there or the camel, but after the

manner of the great thinkers and mystics: like Al-Fared and

Jelal'ud-Deen Rumy, like Socrates and St. Francis of Assisi, Khalid

loafs. For can you escape being reproached for idleness by merely

working? Are you going to waste your time and power in useless

unproductive labour, carrying dates to Hajar (or coals to Newcastle,

which is the English equivalent), that you might not be called an

idler, a loafer?"

"Indeed not," we reply; "for the Poet taking in the sea, or the woods,

or the starry-night, the poet who might be just sharing the sunshine

with the salamander, is as much a labourer as the stoker or the

bricklayer."

And with a few more such remarks, we showed our friend that, not being

of india-rubber, we could not but expand under the heat of his

grandiosity.

We then make our purpose known, and Shakib is overjoyed. He offers to

kiss us for the noble thought.

"Yes, Europe should know Khalid better, and only through you and me

can this be done. For you can not properly understand him, unless you

read the _Histoire Intime_, which I have just finished. That will give

you _les dessous de cartes_ of his character."

"_Les dessons_"--and the Poet who intersperses his Arabic with fancy

French, explains.--"The lining, the ligaments."--"Ah, that is exactly

what we want."

And he offers to let us have the use of his Manuscript, if we link his

name with that of his illustrious Master in this Book. To which we

cheerfully agree. For after all, what's in a name?

On the following day, lugging an enormous bundle under each arm, the

Poet came. We were stunned as he stood in the door; we felt as if he

had struck us in the head with them.

"This is the _Histoire Intime_," said he, laying it gently on the

table.

And we laid our hand upon it, fetching a deep sigh. Our misgivings,

however, were lighted with a happy idea. We will hire a few boys to

read it, we thought, and mark out the passages which please them most.

That will be just what an editor wants.

"And this," continued the Poet, laying down the other bundle, "is the

original manuscript of my forthcoming Book of Poems.--"

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

"It will be issued next Autumn in Cairo.--"

Fortunate City!

"And if you will get to work on it at once,--"

Mercy!

"You can get out an English Translation in three month, I am sure--"

We sink in our chair in breathless amazement.

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

We sit up, revived with another happy idea, and assure the Poet that

his Work will be translated into a universal language, and that very

soon. For which assurance he kisses us again and again, and goes away

hugging his Muse.

The idea! A Book of Poems to translate into the English language! As

if the English language has not enough of its own troubles! Translate

it, O Fire, into your language! Which work the Fire did in two

minutes. And the dancing, leaping, singing flames, the white and blue

and amber flames, were more beautiful, we thought, than anything the

Ms. might contain.

As for the _Histoire Intime_, we split it into three parts and got our

boys working on it. The result was most satisfying. For now we can

show, and though he is a native of Asia, the land of the Prophets, and

though he conceals from us his origin after the manner of the

Prophets, that he was born and bred and fed, and even thwacked, like

all his fellows there, this Khalid.

CHAPTER II

THE CITY OF BAAL

The City of Baal, or Baalbek, is between the desert and the deep

sea. It lies at the foot of Anti-Libanus, in the sunny plains of

Coele-Syria, a day's march from either Damascus or Beirut. It is a

city with a past as romantic as Rome's, as wicked as Babel's; its

ruins testify both to its glory and its shame. It is a city with a

future as brilliant as any New-World city; the railroad at its

gate, the modern agricultural implements in its fields, and the

porcelain bath-tubs in its hotels, can testify to this. It is a city

that enticed and still entices the mighty of the earth; Roman

Emperors in the past came to appease the wrath of its gods, a German

Emperor to-day comes to pilfer its temples. For the Acropolis in

the poplar grove is a mine of ruins. The porphyry pillars, the

statues, the tablets, the exquisite friezes, the palimpsests, the

bas-reliefs,--Time and the Turks have spared a few of these. And when

the German Emperor came, Abd'ul-Hamid blinked, and the Berlin Museum

is now the richer for it.

Of the Temple of Jupiter, however, only six standing columns remain;

of the Temple of Bacchus only the god and the Bacchantes are missing.

And why was the one destroyed, the other preserved, only the six

columns, had they a tongue, could tell. Indeed, how many blustering

vandals have _they_ conquered, how many savage attacks have they

resisted, what wonders and what orgies have they beheld! These six

giants of antiquity, looking over Anti-Lebanon in the East, and

down upon the meandering Leontes in the South, and across the

Syrian steppes in the North, still hold their own against Time and the

Elements. They are the dominating feature of the ruins; they tower

above them as the Acropolis towers above the surrounding poplars. And

around their base, and through the fissures, flows the perennial

grace of the seasons. The sun pays tribute to them in gold; the rain,

in mosses and ferns; the Spring, in lupine flowers. And the

swallows, nesting in the portico of the Temple of Bacchus, above

the curious frieze of egg-decoration,--as curious, too, _their_ art of

egg-making,--pour around the colossal columns their silvery notes.

Surely, these swallows and ferns and lupine flowers are more

ancient than the Acropolis. And the marvels of extinct nations can

not hold a candle to the marvels of Nature.

Here, under the decaying beauty of Roman art, lies buried the

monumental boldness of the Phoenicians, or of a race of giants whose

extinction even Homer deplores, and whose name even the Phoenicians

could not decipher. For might they not, too, have stood here

wondering, guessing, even as we moderns guess and wonder? Might not

the Phoenicians have asked the same questions that we ask to-day: Who

were the builders? and with what tools? In one of the walls of the

Acropolis are stones which a hundred bricklayers can not raise an inch

from the ground; and among the ruins of the Temple of Zeus are

porphyry pillars, monoliths, which fifty horses could barely move, and

the quarry of which is beyond the Syrian desert. There, now, solve the

problem for yourself.

Hidden in the grove of silver-tufted poplars is the little Temple of

Venus, doomed to keep company with a Mosque. But it is a joy to stand

on the bridge above the stream that flows between them, and listen to

the muazzen in the minaret and the bulbuls in the Temple. Mohammad

calling to Venus, Venus calling to Mohammad--what a romance! We leave

the subject to the poet that wants it. Another Laus Veneris to another

Swinburne might suggest itself.

An Arab Prophet with the goddess, this time--but the River flows

between the Temple and the Mosque. In the city, life is one such

picturesque languid stream. The shop-keepers sit on their rugs in

their stalls, counting their beads, smoking their narghilahs, waiting

indifferently for Allah's bounties. And the hawkers shuffle along

crying their wares in beautiful poetic illusions,--the flower-seller

singing, "Reconcile your mother-in-law! Perfume your spirit! Buy a

jasmine for your soul!" the seller of loaves, his tray on his head,

his arms swinging to a measured step, intoning in pious thankfulness,

"O thou Eternal, O thou Bountiful!" The _sakka_ of licorice-juice,

clicking his brass cups calls out to the thirsty one, "Come, drink and

live! Come, drink and live!" And ere you exclaim, How quaint! How

picturesque! a train of laden camels drives you to the wall, rudely

shaking your illusion. And the mules and donkeys, tottering under

their heavy burdens, upsetting a tray of sweetmeats here, a counter of

spices there, must share the narrow street with you and compel you to

move along slowly, languidly like themselves. They seem to take Time

by the sleeve and say to it, "What's your hurry?" "These donkeys,"

Shakib writes, quoting Khalid, "can teach the strenuous Europeans and

hustling Americans a lesson."

In the City Square, as we issue from the congested windings of the

Bazaar, we are greeted by one of those scrub monuments that are found

in almost every city of the Ottoman Empire. And in most cases, they

are erected to commemorate the benevolence and public zeal of some

wali or pasha who must have made a handsome fortune in the promotion

of a public enterprise. Be this as it may. It is not our business here

to probe the corruption of any particular Government. But we observe

that this miserable botch of a monument is to the ruins of the

Acropolis, what this modern absolutism, this effete Turkey is to the

magnificent tyrannies of yore. Indeed, nothing is duller, more stupid,

more prosaic than a modern absolutism as compared with an ancient one.

But why concern ourselves with like comparisons? The world is better

to-day in spite of its public monuments. These little flights or

frights in marble are as snug in their little squares, in front of

their little halls, as are the majestic ruins in their poplar groves.

In both instances, Nature and Circumstance have harmonised between

the subject and the background. Come along. And let the rhymsters

chisel on the monument whatever they like about sculptures and the

wali. To condemn in this case is to praise.

We issue from the Square into the drive leading to the spring at the

foot of the mountain. On the meadows near the stream, is always to be

found a group of Baalbekians bibbing _arak_ and swaying languidly to

the mellow strains of the lute and the monotonous melancholy of Arabic

song. Among such, one occasionally meets with a native who, failing as

peddler or merchant in America, returns to his native town, and,

utilising the chips of English he picked up in the streets of the

New-World cities, becomes a dragoman and guide to English and American

tourists.

Now, under this sky, between Anti-Libanus rising near the spring,

Rasulain, and the Acropolis towering above the poplars, around

these majestic ruins, amidst these fascinating scenes of Nature,

Khalid spent the halcyon days of his boyhood. Here he trolled his

favourite ditties beating the hoof behind his donkey. For he

preferred to be a donkey-boy than to be called a donkey at school.

The pedagogue with his drivel and discipline, he could not learn to

love. The company of muleteers was much more to his liking. The open

air was his school; and everything that riots and rejoices in the

open air, he loved. Bulbuls and beetles and butterflies, oxen and

donkeys and mules,--these were his playmates and friends. And when he

becomes a muleteer, he reaches in his first venture, we are told,

the top round of the ladder. This progressive scale in his

trading, we observe. Husbanding his resources, he was soon after, by

selling his donkey, able to buy a sumpter-mule; a year later he

sells his mule and buys a camel; and finally he sells the camel and

buys a fine Arab mare, which he gives to a tourist for a hundred

pieces of English gold. This is what is called success. And with the

tangible symbol of it, the price of his mare, he emigrates to

America. But that is to come.

Let us now turn our "stereopticon on the screen of reminiscence,"

using the pictures furnished by Shakib. But before they can be used to

advantage, they must undergo a process of retroussage. Many of the

lines need be softened, some of the shades modified, and not a few of

the etchings, absolutely worthless, we consign to the flames. Who of

us, for instance, was not feruled and bastinadoed by the town

pedagogue? Who did not run away from school, whimpering, snivelling,

and cursing in his heart and in his sleep the black-board and the

horn-book? Nor can we see the significance of the fact that Khalid

once smashed the icon of the Holy Virgin for whetting not his wits,

for hearing not his prayers. It may be he was learning then the use of

the sling, and instead of killing his neighbour's laying-hen, he broke

the sacred effigy. No, we are not warranted to draw from these

trivialities the grand results which send Shakib in ecstasies about

his Master's genius. Nor do we for a moment believe that the

waywardness of a genius or a prophet in boyhood is always a

significant adumbration. Shakespeare started as a deer-poacher, and

Rousseau as a thief. Yet, neither the one nor the other, as far as we

know, was a plagiarist. This, however, does not disprove the contrary

proposition, that he who begins as a thief or an iconoclast is likely

to end as such. But the actuating motive has nothing to do with what

we, in our retrospective analysis, are pleased to prove. Not so far

forth are we willing to piddle among the knicknacks of Shakib's

_Histoire Intime_ of his Master.

Furthermore, how can we interest ourselves in his fiction of history

concerning Baalbek? What have we to do with the fact or fable that

Seth the Prophet lived in this City; that Noah is buried in its

vicinity; that Solomon built the Temple of the Sun for the Queen of

Sheba; that this Prince and Poet used to lunch in Baalbek and dine at

Istachre in Afghanistan; that the chariot of Nimrod drawn by four

phoenixes from the Tower of Babel, lighted on Mt. Hermon to give said

Nimrod a chance to rebuild the said Temple of the Sun? How can we

bring any of these fascinating fables to bear upon our subject? It is

nevertheless significant to remark that the City of Baal, from the

Phoenicians and Moabites down to the Arabs and Turks, has ever been

noted for its sanctuaries of carnal lust. The higher religion, too,

found good soil here; for Baalbek gave the world many a saint and

martyr along with its harlots and poets and philosophers. St. Minius,

St. Cyril and St. Theodosius, are the foremost among its holy

children; Ste. Odicksyia, a Magdalene, is one of its noted daughters.

These were as famous in their days as Ashtarout or Jupiter-Ammon. As

famous too is Al-Iman ul-Ouzaai the scholar; al-Makrizi the historian;

Kallinichus the chemist, who invented the Greek fire; Kosta ibn Luka,

a doctor and philosopher, who wrote among much miscellaneous rubbish a

treaty entitled, On the Difference Between the Mind and the Soul; and

finally the Muazzen of Baalbek to whom "even the beasts would stop to

listen." Ay, Shakib relates quoting al-Makrizi, who in his turn

relates, quoting one of the octogenarian Drivellers, _Muhaddetheen_

(these men are the chief sources of Arabic History) that he was told

by an eye and ear witness that when this celebrated Muazzen was once

calling the Faithful to prayer, the camels at the creek craned their

necks to listen to the sonorous music of his voice. And such was their

delight that they forgot they were thirsty. This, by the way of a

specimen of the _Muhaddetheen_. Now, about these historical worthies

of Baalbek, whom we have but named, Shakib writes whole pages, and

concludes--and here is the point--that Khalid might be a descendant of

any or all of them! For in him, our Scribe seriously believes, are

lusty strains of many varied and opposing humours. And although he had

not yet seen the sea, he longed when a boy for a long sea voyage, and

he would sail little paper boats down the stream to prove the fact. In

truth, that is what Shakib would prove. The devil and such logic had a

charm for us once, but no more.

Here is another bubble of retrospective analysis to which we apply the

needle. It is asserted as a basis for another astounding deduction

that Khalid used to sleep in the ruined Temple of Zeus. As if ruined

temples had anything to do with the formation or deformation of the

brain-cells or the soul-afflatus! The devil and such logic, we repeat,

had once a charm for us. But this, in brief, is how it came about.

Khalid hated the pedagogue to whom he had to pay a visit of courtesy

every day, and loved his cousin Najma whom he was not permitted to

see. And when he runs away from the bastinado, breaking in revenge the

icon of the Holy Virgin, his father turns him away from home.

Complaining not, whimpering not, he goes. And hearing the bulbuls

calling in the direction of Najma's house that evening, he repairs

thither. But the crabbed, cruel uncle turns him away also, and bolts

the door. Whereupon Khalid, who was then in the first of his teens,

takes a big scabrous rock and sends it flying against that door. The

crabbed uncle rushes out, blustering, cursing; the nephew takes up

another of those scabrous missiles and sends it whizzing across his

shoulder. The second one brushes his ear. The third sends the blood

from his temple. And this, while beating a retreat and cursing his

father and his uncle and their ancestors back to fifty generations. He

is now safe in the poplar grove, and his uncle gives up the charge.

With a broken noddle he returns home, and Khalid with a broken heart

wends his way to the Acropolis, the only shelter in sight. In relating

this story, Shakib mentions "the horrible old moon, who was wickedly

smiling over the town that night." A broken icon, a broken door, a

broken pate,--a big price this, the crabbed uncle and the cruel father

had to pay for thwarting the will of little Khalid. "But he entered

the Acropolis a conqueror," says our Scribe; "he won the battle." And

he slept in the temple, in the portico thereof, as sound as a

muleteer. And the swallows in the niches above heard him sleep.

In the morning he girds his loins with a firm resolution. No longer

will he darken his father's door. He becomes a muleteer and

accomplishes the success of which we have spoken. His first beau idéal

was to own the best horse in Baalbek; and to be able to ride to the

camp of the Arabs and be mistaken for one of them, was his first great

ambition. Which he realises sooner than he thought he would. For

thrift, grit and perseverance, are a few of the rough grains in his

character. But no sooner he is possessed of his ideal than he begins

to loosen his hold upon it. He sold his mare to the tourist, and was

glad he did not attain the same success in his first love. For he

loved his mare, and he could not have loved his cousin Najma more.

"The realisation is a terrible thing," writes our Scribe, quoting his

Master. But when this fine piece of wisdom was uttered, whether when

he was sailing paper boats in Baalbek, or unfurling his sails in New

York, we can not say.

And now, warming himself on the fire of his first ideal, Khalid will

seek the shore and launch into unknown seas towards unknown lands.

From the City of Baal to the City of Demiurgic Dollar is not in fact a

far cry. It has been remarked that he always dreamt of adventures, of

long journeys across the desert or across the sea. He never was

satisfied with the seen horizon, we are told, no matter how vast and

beautiful. His soul always yearned for what was beyond, above or

below, the visible line. And had not the European tourist alienated

from him the love of his mare and corrupted his heart with the love of

gold, we might have heard of him in Mecca, in India, or in Dahomey.

But Shakib prevails upon him to turn his face toward the West. One

day, following some tourists to the Cedars, they behold from

Dahr'ul-Qadhib the sun setting in the Mediterranean and make up their

minds to follow it too. "For the sundown," writes Shakib, "was more

appealing to us than the sunrise, ay, more beautiful. The one was so

near, the other so far away. Yes, we beheld the Hesperian light that

day, and praised Allah. It was the New World's bonfire of hospitality:

the sun called to us, and we obeyed."

CHAPTER III

VIA DOLOROSA

In their baggy, lapping trousers and crimson caps, each carrying a

bundle and a rug under his arm, Shakib and Khalid are smuggled through

the port of Beirut at night, and safely rowed to the steamer. Indeed,

we are in a country where one can not travel without a passport, or a

password, or a little pass-money. And the boatmen and officials of the

Ottoman Empire can better read a gold piece than a passport. So,

Shakib and Khalid, not having the latter, slip in a few of the former,

and are smuggled through. One more longing, lingering glance behind,

and the dusky peaks of the Lebanons, beyond which their native City of

Baal is sleeping in peace, recede from view. On the high sea of hope

and joy they sail; "under the Favonian wind of enthusiasm, on the

friendly billows of boyish dreams," they roll. Ay, and they sing for

joy. On and on, to the gold-swept shores of distant lands, to the

generous cities and the bounteous fields of the West, to the Paradise

of the World--to America.

We need not dwell too much with our Scribe, on the repulsive details

of the story of the voyage. We ourselves have known a little of the

suffering and misery which emigrants must undergo, before they reach

that Western Paradise of the Oriental imagination. How they are

huddled like sheep on deck from Beirut to Marseilles; and like cattle

transported under hatches across the Atlantic; and bullied and

browbeaten by rough disdainful stewards; and made to pay for a

leathery gobbet of beef and a slice of black flint-like bread: all

this we know. But that New World paradise is well worth these passing

privations.

The second day at sea, when the two Baalbekian lads are snug on deck,

their rugs spread out not far from the stalls in which Syrian cattle

are shipped to Egypt and Arab horses to Europe or America, they

rummage in their bags--and behold, a treat! Shakib takes out his

favourite poet Al-Mutanabbi, and Khalid, his favourite bottle, the

choicest of the Ksarah distillery of the Jesuits. For this whilom

donkey-boy will begin by drinking the wine of these good Fathers and

then their--blood! His lute is also with him; and he will continue to

practise the few lessons which the bulbuls of the poplar groves have

taught him. No, he cares not for books. And so, he uncorks the bottle,

hands it to Shakib his senior, then takes a nip himself, and,

thrumming his lute strings, trolls a few doleful pieces of Arabic

song. "In these," he would say to Shakib, pointing to the bottle and

the lute, "is real poetry, and not in that book with which you would

kill me." And Shakib, in stingless sarcasm, would insist that the

music in Al-Mutanabbi's lines is just a little more musical than

Khalid's thrumming. They quarrel about this. And in justice to both,

we give the following from the _Histoire Intime_.

"When we left our native land," Shakib writes, "my literary bent was

not shared in the least by Khalid. I had gone through the higher

studies which, in our hedge-schools and clerical institutions, do not

reach a very remarkable height. Enough of French to understand the

authors tabooed by our Jesuit professors,--the Voltaires, the

Rousseaus, the Diderots; enough of Arabic to enable one to parse and

analyse the verse of Al-Mutanabbi; enough of Church History to show

us, not how the Church wielded the sword of persecution, but how she

was persecuted herself by the pagans and barbarians of the earth;--of

these and such like consists the edifying curriculum. Now, of this

high phase of education, Khalid was thoroughly immune. But his

intuitive sagacity was often remarkable, and his humour, sweet and

pathetic. Once when I was reading aloud some of the Homeric effusions

of Al-Mutanabbi, he said to me, as he was playing his lute, 'In the

heart of this,' pointing to the lute, 'and in the heart of me, there

be more poetry than in that book with which you would kill me.' And

one day, after wandering clandestinely through the steamer, he comes

to me with a gesture of surprise and this: 'Do you know, there are

passengers who sleep in bunks below, over and across each other? I saw

them, billah! And I was told they pay more than we do for such a low

passage--the fools! Think on it. I peeped into a little room, a dingy,

smelling box, which had in it six berths placed across and above each

other like the shelves of the reed manchons we build for our

silk-worms at home. I wouldn't sleep in one of them, billah! even

though they bribe me. This bovine fragrance, the sight of these fine

horses, the rioting of the wind above us, should make us forget the

brutality of the stewards. Indeed, I am as content, as comfortable

here, as are their Excellencies in what is called the Salon. Surely,

we are above them--at least, in the night. What matters it, then, if

ours is called the Fourth Class and theirs the Primo. Wherever one is

happy, Shakib, there is the Primo.'"

But this happy humour is assailed at Marseilles. His placidity and

stolid indifference are rudely shaken by the sharpers, who differ

only from the boatmen of Beirut in that they wear pantaloons and

intersperse their Arabic with a jargon of French. These brokers,

like rapacious bats, hover around the emigrant and before his

purse is opened for the fourth time, the trick is done. And with

what ceremony, you shall see. From the steamer the emigrant is led

to a dealer in frippery, where he is required to doff his baggy

trousers and crimson cap, and put on a suit of linsey-woolsey and a

hat of hispid felt: end of First Act; open the purse. From the dealer

of frippery, spick and span from top to toe, he is taken to the

hostelry, where he is detained a fortnight, sometimes a month, on

the pretext of having to wait for the best steamer: end of Second Act;

open the purse. From the hostelry at last to the steamship agent,

where they secure for him a third-class passage on a fourth-class

ship across the Atlantic: end of Third Act; open the purse. And now

that the purse is almost empty, the poor emigrant is permitted to

leave. They send him to New York with much gratitude in his heart

and a little trachoma in his eyes. The result being that a month

later they have to look into such eyes again. But the purse of the

distressed emigrant now being empty,--empty as his hopes and

dreams,--the rapacious bats hover not around him, and the door of

the verminous hostelry is shut in his face. He is left to starve

on the western shore of the Mediterranean.

Ay, even the droll humour and stolidity of Khalid, are shaken,

aroused, by the ghoulish greed, the fell inhumanity of these sharpers.

And Shakib from his cage of fancy lets loose upon them his hyenas of

satire. In a squib describing the bats and the voyage he says: "The

voyage to America is the Via Dolorosa of the emigrant; and the Port of

Beirut, the verminous hostelries of Marseilles, the Island of Ellis in

New York, are the three stations thereof. And if your hopes are not

crucified at the third and last station, you pass into the Paradise of

your dreams. If they are crucified, alas! The gates of the said

Paradise will be shut against you; the doors of the hostelries will be

slammed in your face; and with a consolation and a vengeance you will

throw yourself at the feet of the sea in whose bosom some charitable

Jonah will carry you to your native strands."

And when the emigrant has a surplus of gold, when his capital is such

as can not be dissipated on a suit of shoddy, a fortnight's lodging,

and a passage across the Atlantic, the ingenious ones proceed with the

Fourth Act of _Open Thy Purse_. "Instead of starting in New York as a

peddler," they say, unfolding before him one of their alluring

schemes, "why not do so as a merchant?" And the emigrant opens his

purse for the fourth time in the office of some French manufacturer,

where he purchases a few boxes of trinketry,--scapulars, prayer-beads,

crosses, jewelry, gewgaws, and such like,--all said to be made in the

Holy Land. These he brings over with him as his stock in trade.

Now, Khalid and Shakib, after passing a fortnight in Marseilles, and

going through the Fourth Act of the Sorry Show, find their dignity as

merchants rudely crushed beneath the hatches of the Atlantic steamer.

For here, even the pleasure of sleeping on deck is denied them. The

Atlantic Ocean would not permit of it. Indeed, everybody has to slide

into their stivy bunks to save themselves from its rising wrath. A

fortnight of such unutterable misery is quite supportable, however, if

one continues to cherish the Paradise already mentioned. But in this

dark, dingy smelling hole of the steerage, even the poets cease to

dream. The boatmen of Beirut and the sharpers of Marseilles we could

forget; but in this grave among a hundred and more of its kind, set

over and across each other, neither the lute nor the little that

remained in that Ksarah bottle, could bring us any solace.

We are told that Khalid took up his lute but once throughout the

voyage. And this when they were permitted one night to sleep on deck.

We are also informed that Khalid had a remarkable dream, which, to our

Scribe at least, is not meaningless. And who of us, thou silly Scribe,

did not in his boyhood tell his dreams to his mother, who would turn

them in her interpretation inside out? But Khalid, we are assured,

continued to cherish the belief, even in his riper days, that when you

dream you are in Jannat, for instance, you must be prepared to go

through Juhannam the following day. A method of interpretation as

ancient as Joseph, to be sure. But we quote the dream to show that

Khalid should not have followed the setting sun. He should have turned

his face toward the desert.

They slept on deck that night. They drank the wine of the Jesuits,

repeated, to the mellow strains of the lute, the song of the bulbuls,

intoned the verses of Al-Mutanabbi, and, wrapping themselves in their

rugs, fell asleep. But in the morning they were rudely jostled from

their dreams by a spurt from the hose of the sailors washing the deck.

Complaining not, they straggle down to their bunks to change their

clothes. And Khalid, as he is doing this, implores Shakib not to

mention to him any more that New-World paradise. "For I have dreamt

last night," he continues, "that, in the multicoloured robes of an

Arab amir, on a caparisoned dromedary, at the head of an immense

multitude of people, I was riding through the desert. Whereto and

wherefrom, I know not. But those who followed me seemed to know; for

they cried, 'Long have we waited for thee, now we shall enter in

peace.' And at every oasis we passed, the people came to the gate to

meet us, and, prostrating themselves before me, kissed the fringe of

my garment. Even the women would touch my boots and kiss their hands,

exclaiming, '_Allahu akbar!_' And the palm trees, billah! I could see

bending towards us that we might eat of their fruits, and the springs

seemed to flow with us into the desert that we might never thirst. Ay,

thus in triumph we marched from one camp to another, from one oasis to

the next, until we reached the City on the Hills of the Cedar Groves.

Outside the gate, we were met by the most beautiful of its tawny

women, and four of these surrounded my camel and took the reins from

my hand. I was then escorted through the gates, into the City, up to

the citadel, where I was awaited by their Princess. And she, taking a

necklace of cowries from a bag that hung on her breast, placed it on

my head, saying, 'I crown thee King of--' But I could not hear the

rest, which was drowned by the cheering of the multitudes. And the

cheering, O Shakib, was drowned by the hose of the sailors. Oh, that

hose! Is it not made in the paradise you harp upon, the paradise we

are coming to? Never, therefore, mention it to me more."

This is the dream, at once simple and symbolic, which begins to worry

Khalid. "For in the evening of the day he related it to me," writes

Shakib, "I found him sitting on the edge of his bunk brooding over I

know not what. It was the first time he had the blues. Nay, it was the

first time he looked pensive and profound. And upon asking him the

reason for this, he said, 'I am thinking of the paper-boats which I

used to sail down the stream in Baalbek, and that makes me sad.'"

How strange! And yet, this first event recorded by our Scribe, in

which Khalid is seen struggling with the mysterious and unknown, is

most significant. Another instance, showing a latent phase, hitherto

dormant, in his character, we note. Among the steerage passengers is a

Syrian girl who much resembles his cousin Najma. She was sea-sick

throughout the voyage, and when she comes out to breathe of the fresh

air, a few hours before they enter the harbour of New York, Khalid

sees her, and Shakib swears that he saw a tear in Khalid's eye as he

stood there gazing upon her. Poor Khalid! For though we are

approaching the last station of the Via Dolorosa, though we are

nearing the enchanted domes of the wonder-working, wealth-worshipping

City, he is inexplicably sad.

And Shakib, directly after swearing that he saw a tear in his eye,

writes the following: "Up to this time I observed in my friend only

the dominating traits of a hard-headed, hard-hearted boy, stubborn,

impetuous, intractable. But from the time he related to me his dream,

a change in his character was become manifest. In fact a new phase was

being gradually unfolded. Three things I must emphasise in this

connection: namely, the first dream he dreamt in a foreign land, the

first time he looked pensive and profound, and the first tear he shed

before we entered New York. These are keys to the secret chamber of

one's soul."

And now, that the doors, by virtue of our Scribe's open-sesames, are

thrown open, we enter, _bismillah_.

CHAPTER IV

ON THE WHARF OF ENCHANTMENT

Not in our make-up, to be sure,--not in the pose which is preceded by

the tantaras of a trumpet,--do the essential traits in our character

first reveal themselves. But truly in the little things the real self

is exteriorised. Shakib observes closely the rapid changes in his

co-adventurer's humour, the shadowy traits which at that time he

little understood. And now, by applying his palm to his front, he

illumines those chambers of which he speaks, and also the niches

therein. He helps us to understand the insignificant points which mark

the rapid undercurrents of the seemingly sluggish soul of Khalid. Not

in vain, therefore, does he crystallise for us that first tear he shed

in the harbour of Manhattan. But his gush about the recondite beauty

of this pearl of melancholy, shall not be intended upon the gustatory

nerves of the Reader. This then we note--his description of New York

harbour.

"And is this the gate of Paradise," he asks, "or the port of some

subterrestrial city guarded by the Jinn? What a marvel of enchantment

is everything around us! What manifestations of industrial strength,

what monstrosities of wealth and power, are here! These vessels

proudly putting to sea; these tenders scurrying to meet the Atlantic

greyhound which is majestically moving up the bay; these barges

loading and unloading schooners from every strand, distant and near;

these huge lighters carrying even railroads over the water; these

fire-boats scudding through the harbour shrilling their sirens; these

careworn, grim, strenuous multitudes ferried across from one enchanted

shore to another; these giant structures tickling heaven's sides;

these cable bridges, spanning rivers, uniting cities; and this

superterrestrial goddess, torch in hand--wake up, Khalid, and behold

these wonders. Salaam, this enchanted City! There is the Brooklyn

Bridge, and here is the Statue of Liberty which people speak of, and

which are as famous as the Cedars of Lebanon."

But Khalid is as impassive as the bronze goddess herself. He leans

over the rail, his hand supporting his cheek, and gazes into the ooze.

The stolidity of his expression is appalling. With his mouth open as

usual, his lips relaxed, his tongue sticking out through the set

teeth,--he looks as if his head were in a noose. But suddenly he

braces up, runs down for his lute, and begins to serenade--Greater New

York?

"On thee be Allah's grace,

Who hath the well-loved face!"

No; not toward this City does his heart flap its wings of song. He is

on another sea, in another harbour. Indeed, what are these wonders as

compared with those of the City of Love? The Statue of Eros there is

more imposing than the Statue of Liberty here. And the bridges are

not of iron and concrete, but of rainbows and--moonshine! Indeed, both

these lads are now on the wharf of enchantment; the one on the

palpable, the sensuous, the other on the impalpable and unseen. But

both, alas, are suddenly, but temporarily, disenchanted as they are

jostled out of the steamer into the barge which brings them to the

Juhannam of Ellis Island. Here, the unhappy children of the steerage

are dumped into the Bureau of Emigration as--such stuff! For even in

the land of equal rights and freedom, we have a right to expect from

others the courtesy and decency which we ourselves do not have to

show, or do not know.

These are sturdy and adventurous foreigners whom the grumpy officers

jostle and hustle about. For neither poverty, nor oppression, nor both

together can drive a man out of his country, unless the soul within

him awaken. Indeed, many a misventurous cowering peasant continues to

live on bread and olives in his little village, chained in the fear of

dying of hunger in a foreign land. Only the brave and daring spirits

hearken to the voice of discontent within them. They give themselves

up to the higher aspirations of the soul, no matter how limited such

aspirations might be, regardless of the dangers and hardship of a long

sea voyage, and the precariousness of their plans and hopes. There may

be nothing noble in renouncing one's country, in abandoning one's

home, in forsaking one's people; but is there not something remarkable

in this great move one makes? Whether for better or for worse, does

not the emigrant place himself above his country, his people and his

Government, when he turns away from them, when he goes forth propelled

by that inner self which demands of him a new life?

And might it not be a better, a cleaner, a higher life? What say our

Masters of the Island of Ellis? Are not these straggling, smelling,

downcast emigrants almost as clean inwardly, and as pure, as the

grumpy officers who harass and humiliate them? Is not that spirit of

discontent which they cherish, and for which they carry the cross, so

to speak, across the sea, deserving of a little consideration, a

little civility, a little kindness?

Even louder than this Shakib cries out, while Khalid open-mouthed

sucks his tongue. Here at the last station, where the odours of

disinfectants are worse than the stench of the steerage, they await

behind the bars their turn; stived with Italian and Hungarian fellow

sufferers, uttering such whimpers of expectancy, exchanging such

gestures of hope. Soon they shall be brought forward to be examined by

the doctor and the interpreting officer; the one shall pry their

purses, the other their eyes. For in this United States of America we

want clear-sighted citizens at least. And no cold-purses, if the

matter can be helped. But neither the eyes, alas, nor the purses of

our two emigrants are conformable to the Law; the former are filled

with granulations of trachoma, the latter have been emptied by the

sharpers of Marseilles. Which means that they shall be detained for

the present; and if within a fortnight nothing turns up in their

favour, they shall certainly be deported.

Trachoma! a little granulation on the inner surface of the eyelids,

what additional misery does it bring upon the poor deported emigrant?

We are asked to shed a tear for him, to weep with him over his blasted

hopes, his strangled aspirations, his estate in the mother country

sold or mortgaged,--in either case lost,--and his seed of a new life

crushed in its cotyledon by the physician who might be short-sighted

himself, or even blind. But the law must be enforced for the sake of

the clear-sighted citizens of the Republic. We will have nothing to do

with these poor blear-eyed foreigners.

And thus our grievous Scribe would continue, if we did not exercise

the prerogative of our Editorial Divan. Rather let us pursue our

narration. Khalid is now in the hospital, awaiting further development

in his case. But in Shakib's, whose eyes are far gone in trachoma, the

decision of the Board of Emigration is final, irrevokable. And so,

after being detained a week in the Emigration pen, the unfortunate

Syrian must turn his face again toward the East. Not out into the

City, but out upon the sea, he shall be turned adrift. The grumpy

officer shall grumpishly enforce the decision of the Board by handing

our Scribe to the Captain of the first steamer returning to Europe--if

our Scribe can be found! For this flyaway son of a Phoenician did not

seem to wait for the decision of the polyglot Judges of the Emigration

Board.

And that he did escape, we are assured. For one morning he eludes the

grumpy officer, and sidles out among his Italian neighbours who were

permitted to land. See him genuflecting now, to kiss the curbstone

and thank Allah that he is free. But before he can enjoy his freedom,

before he can sit down and chuckle over the success of his escapade,

he must bethink him of Khalid. He will not leave him to the mercy of

the honourable Agents of the Law, if he can help it. Trachoma, he

knows, is a hard case to cure. And in ten days, under the care of the

doctors, it might become worse. Straightway, therefore, he puts

himself to the dark task. A few visits to the Hospital where Khalid is

detained--the patients in those days were not held at Ellis

Island--and the intrigue is afoot. On the third or fourth visit, we

can not make out which, a note in Arabic is slipt into Khalid's

pocket, and with a significant Arabic sign, Shakib takes himself off.

The evening of that very day, the trachoma-afflicted Syrian was absent

from the ward. He was carried off by Iblis,--the porter and a few

Greenbacks assisting. Yes, even Shakib, who knew only a few English

monosyllables, could here make himself understood. For money is one of

the two universal languages of the world, the other being love.

Indeed, money and love are as eloquent in Turkey and Dahomey as they

are in Paris or New York.

And here we reach one of those hedges in the _Histoire Intime_ which

we must go through in spite of the warning-signs. Between two

paragraphs, to be plain, in the one of which we are told how the two

Syrians established themselves as merchants in New York, in the other,

how and wherefor they shouldered the peddling-box and took to the

road, there is a crossed paragraph containing a most significant

revelation. It seems that after giving the matter some serious

thought, our Scribe came to the conclusion that it is not proper to

incriminate his illustrious Master. But here is a confession which a

hundred crosses can not efface. And if he did not want to bring the

matter to our immediate cognisance, why, we ask, did he not re-write

the page? Why did he not cover well that said paragraph with crosses

and arabesques? We do suspect him here of chicanery; for by this

plausible recantation he would shift the responsibility to the

shoulders of the Editor, if the secret is divulged. Be this as it may,

no red crosses can conceal from us the astounding confession, which we

now give out. For the two young Syrians, who were smuggled out of

their country by the boatmen of Beirut, and who smuggled themselves

into the city of New York (we beg the critic's pardon; for, being

foreigners ourselves, we ought to be permitted to stretch this term,

smuggle, to cover an Arabic metaphor, or to smuggle into it a foreign

meaning), these two Syrians, we say, became, in their capacity of

merchants, smugglers of the most ingenious and most evasive type.

We now note the following, which pertains to their business. We learn

that they settled in the Syrian Quarter directly after clearing their

merchandise. And before they entered their cellar, we are assured,

they washed their hands of all intrigues and were shrived of their

sins by the Maronite priest of the Colony. For they were pious in

those days, and right Catholics. 'Tis further set down in the

_Histoire Intime_:

"We rented a cellar, as deep and dark and damp as could be found. And

our landlord was a Teague, nay, a kind-hearted old Irishman, who

helped us put up the shelves, and never called for the rent in the

dawn of the first day of the month. In the front part of this cellar

we had our shop; in the rear, our home. On the floor we laid our

mattresses, on the shelves, our goods. And never did we stop to think

who in this case was better off. The safety of our merchandise before

our own. But ten days after we had settled down, the water issued

forth from the floor and inundated our shop and home. It rose so high

that it destroyed half of our capital stock and almost all our

furniture. And yet, we continued to live in the cellar, because,

perhaps, every one of our compatriot-merchants did so. We were all

alike subject to these inundations in the winter season. I remember

when the water first rose in our store, Khalid was so hard set and in

such a pucker that he ran out capless and in his shirt sleeves to

discover in the next street the source of the flood. And one day, when

we were pumping out the water he asked me if I thought this was easier

than rolling our roofs in Baalbek. For truly, the paving-roller is

child's play to this pump. And a leaky roof is better than an

inundated cellar."

However, this is not the time for brooding. They have to pump ahead to

save what remained of their capital stock. But Khalid, nevertheless,

would brood and jabber. And what an inundation of ideas, and what

questions!

"Think you," he asks, "that the inhabitants of this New World are

better off than those of the Old?--Can you imagine mankind living in a

huge cellar of a world and you and I pumping the water out of its

bottom?--I can see the palaces on which you waste your rhymes, but

mankind live in them only in the flesh. The soul I tell you, still

occupies the basement, even the sub-cellar. And an inundated cellar at

that. The soul, Shakib, is kept below, although the high places are

vacant."

And his partner sputters out his despair; for instead of helping to

pump out the water, Khalid stands there gazing into it, as if by some

miracle he would draw it out with his eyes or with his breath. And the

poor Poet cries out, "Pump! the water is gaining on us, and our shop

is going to ruin. Pump!" Whereupon the lazy, absent-minded one resumes

pumping, while yearning all the while for the plashing stone-rollers

and the purling eaves of his home in Baalbek. And once in a

pinch,--they are labouring under a peltering rain,--he stops as is his

wont to remind Shakib of the Arabic saying, "From the dripping ceiling

to the running gargoyle." He is labouring again under a hurricane of

ideas. And again he asks, "Are you sure we are better off here?"

And our poor Scribe, knee-deep in the water below, blusters out

curses, which Khalid heeds not. "I am tired of this job," he growls;

"the stone-roller never drew so much on my strength, nor did

muleteering. Ah, for my dripping ceiling again, for are we not now

under the running gargoyle?" And he reverts into a stupor, leaving the

world to the poet and the pump.

For five years and more they lead such a life in the cellar. And they

do not move out of it, lest they excite the envy of their compatriots.

But instead of sleeping on the floor, they stretch themselves on the

counters. The rising tide teaches them this little wisdom, which keeps

the doctor and Izräil away. Their merchandise, however,--their

crosses, and scapulars and prayer-beads,--are beyond hope of recovery.

For what the rising tide spares, the rascally flyaway peddlers carry

away. That is why they themselves shoulder the box and take to the

road. And the pious old dames of the suburbs, we are told, receive

them with such exclamations of joy and wonder, and almost tear their

coats to get from them a sacred token. For you must remember, they are

from the Holy Land. Unlike their goods, they at least are genuine. And

every Saturday night, after beating the hoof in the country and making

such fabulous profits on their false Holy-Land gewgaws, they return to

their cellar happy and content.

"In three years," writes our Scribe, "Khalid and I acquired what I

still consider a handsome fortune. Each of us had a bank account, and

a check book which we seldom used.... In spite of which, we continued

to shoulder the peddling box and tramp along.... And Khalid would say

to me, 'A peddler is superior to a merchant; we travel and earn money;

our compatriots the merchants rust in their cellars and lose it.' To

be sure, peddling in the good old days was most attractive. For the

exercise, the gain, the experience--these are rich acquirements."

And both Shakib and Khalid, we apprehend, have been hitherto most

moderate in their habits. The fact that they seldom use their check

books, testifies to this. They have now a peddleress, Im-Hanna by

name, who occupies their cellar in their absence, and keeps what

little they have in order. And when they return every Saturday night

from their peddling trip, they find the old woman as ready to serve

them as a mother. She cooks _mojadderah_ for them, and sews the

bed-linen on the quilts as is done in the mother country.

"The linen," says Shakib, "was always as white as a dove's wing, when

Im-Hanna was with us."

And in the Khedivial Library Manuscript we find this curious note upon

that popular Syrian dish of lentils and olive oil.

"_Mojadderah_," writes Khalid, "has a marvellous effect upon my humour

and nerves. There are certain dishes, I confess, which give me the

blues. Of these, fried eggplants and cabbage boiled with corn-beef on

the American system of boiling, that is to say, cooking, I abominate

the most. But _mojadderah_ has such a soothing effect on the nerves;

it conduces to cheerfulness, especially when the raw onion or the leek

is taken with it. After a good round pewter platter of this delicious

dish and a dozen leeks, I feel as if I could do the work of all

mankind. And I am then in such a beatific state of mind that I would

share with all mankind my sack of lentils and my pipkin of olive oil.

I wonder not at Esau's extravagance, when he saw a steaming mess of

it. For what is a birthright in comparison?"

That Shakib also shared this beatific mood, the following quaint

picture of their Saturday nights in the cellar, will show.

"A bank account," he writes, "a good round dish of _mojadderah_, the

lute for Khalid, Al-Mutanabbi for me,--neither of us could forego his

hobby,--and Im-Hanna, affectionate, devoted as our mothers,--these

were the joys of our Saturday nights in our underground diggings. We

were absolutely happy. And we never tried to measure our happiness in

those days, or gauge it, or flay it to see if it be dead or alive,

false or real. Ah, the blessedness of that supreme unconsciousness

which wrapped us as a mother would her babe, warming and caressing our

hearts. We did not know then that happiness was a thing to be sought.

We only knew that peddling is a pleasure, that a bank account is a

supreme joy, that a dish of _mojadderah_ cooked by Im-Hanna is a royal

delight, that our dour dark cellar is a palace of its kind, and that

happiness, like a bride, issues from all these, and, touching the

strings of Khalid's lute, mantles us with song."

CHAPTER V

THE CELLAR OF THE SOUL

Heretofore, Khalid and Shakib have been inseparable as the Pointers.

They always appeared together, went the rounds of their peddling orbit

together, and together were subject to the same conditions and

restraints. Which restraints are a sort of sacrifice they make on the

altar of friendship. One, for instance, would never permit himself an

advantage which the other could not enjoy, or a pleasure in which the

other could not share. They even slept under the same blanket, we

learn, ate from the same plate, puffed at the same narghilah, which

Shakib brought with him from Baalbek, and collaborated in writing to

one lady-love! A condition of unexampled friendship this, of complete

oneness. They had both cut themselves garments from the same cloth, as

the Arabic saying goes. And on Sunday afternoon, in garments spick and

span, they would take the air in Battery Park, where the one would

invoke the Statue of Liberty for a thought, or the gilded domes of

Broadway for a metaphor, while the other would be scouring the horizon

for the Nothingness, which is called, in the recondite cant of the

sophisticated, a vague something.

In the Khedivial Library MS. we find nothing which this Battery Park

might have inspired. And yet, we can not believe that Khalid here was

only attracted by that vague something which, in his spiritual

enceinteship, he seemed to relish. Nothing? Not even the does and

kangaroos that adorn the Park distracted or detained him? We doubt it;

and Khalid's lute sustains us in our doubt. Ay, and so does our

Scribe; for in his _Histoire Intime_ we read the following, which we

faithfully transcribe.

"Of the many attractions of Battery Park, the girls and the sea were

my favourite. For the girls in a crowd have for me a fascination which

only the girls at the bath can surpass. I love to lose myself in a

crowd, to buffet, so to speak, its waves, to nestle under their

feathery crests. For the rolling waves of life, the tumbling waves of

the sea, and the fiery waves of Al-Mutanabbi's poetry have always been

my delight. In Battery Park I took especial pleasure in reading aloud

my verses to Khalid, or in fact to the sea, for Khalid never would

listen.

"Once I composed a few stanzas to the Milkmaid who stood in her wagon

near the lawn, rattling out milk-punches to the boys. A winsome lass

she was, fresh in her sororiation, with fair blue eyes, a celestial

flow of auburn hair, and cheeks that suggested the milk and cherry in

the glass she rattled out to me. I was reading aloud the stanzas which

she inspired, when Khalid, who was not listening, pointed out to me a

woman whose figure and the curves thereof were remarkable. 'Is it not

strange,' said he, 'how the women here indraw their stomachs and

outdraw their hips? And is not this the opposite of the shape which

our women cultivate?'

"Yes, with the Lebanon women, the convex curve beneath the waist is

frontward, not hindward. But that is a matter of taste, I thought, and

man is partly responsible for either convexity. I have often wondered,

however, why the women of my country cultivate that shape. And why do

they in America cultivate the reverse of it? Needless to say that both

are pruriently titillating,--both distentions are damnably suggestive,

quite killing. The American woman, from a fine sense of modesty, I am

told, never or seldom ventures abroad, when big with child. But in the

kangaroo figure, the burden is slightly shifted and naught is amiss.

Ah, such haunches as are here exhibited suggest the _aliats_ of our

Asiatic sheep."

And what he says about the pruriently titillating convexities, whether

frontward or hindward, suggests a little prudery. For in his rhymes he

betrays both his comrade and himself. Battery Park and the attractions

thereof prove fatal. Elsewhere, therefore, they must go, and begin to

draw on their bank accounts. Which does not mean, however, that they

are far from the snare. No; for when a young man begins to suffer from

what the doctors call hebephrenia, the farther he draws away from such

snares the nearer he gets to them. And these lusty Syrians could not

repel the magnetic attraction of the polypiosis of what Shakib likens

to the _aliat_ (fattail) of our Asiatic sheep. Surely, there be more

devils under such an _aliat_ than under the hat of a Jesuit. And

Khalid is the first to discover this. Both have been ensnared,

however, and both, when in the snare, have been infernally inspired.

What Khalid wrote, when he was under the influence of feminine curves,

was preserved by Shakib, who remarks that one evening, after returning

from the Park, Khalid said to him, 'I am going to write a poem.' A

fortnight later, he hands him the following, which he jealously kept

among his papers.

I dreamt I was a donkey-boy again.

Out on the sun-swept roads of Baalbek, I tramp behind my

burro, trolling my _mulayiah_.

At noon, I pass by a garden redolent of mystic scents and

tarry awhile.

Under an orange tree, on the soft green grass, I stretch my

limbs.

The daisies, the anemones, and the cyclamens are round me

pressing:

The anemone buds hold out to me their precious rubies; the

daisies kiss me in the eyes and lips; and the cyclamens

shake their powder in my hair.

On the wall, the roses are nodding, smiling; above me the

orange blossoms surrender themselves to the wooing

breeze; and on yonder rock the salamander sits, complacent

and serene.

I take a daisy, and, boy as boys go, question its

petals:

Married man or monk, I ask, plucking them off one by one,

And the last petal says, Monk.

I perfume my fingers with crumpled cyclamens, cover my

face with the dark-eyed anemones, and fall asleep.

And my burro sleeps beneath the wall, in the shadow of

nodding roses.

And the black-birds too are dozing, and the bulbuls flitting

by whisper with their wings, 'salaam.'

Peace and salaam!

The bulbul, the black-bird, the salamander, the burro, and

the burro-boy, are to each other shades of noon-day sun:

Happy, loving, generous, and free;--

As happy as each other, and as free.

We do what we please in Nature's realm, go where we

please;

No one's offended, no one ever wronged.

No sentinels hath Nature, no police.

But lo, a goblin as I sleep comes forth;--

A goblin taller than the tallest poplar, who carries me upon

his neck to the Park in far New York.

Here women, light-heeled, heavy-haunched, pace up and

down the flags in graceful gait.

My roses these, I cry, and my orange blossoms.

But the goblin placed his hand upon my mouth, and I was

dumb.

The cyclamens, the anemones, the daisies, I saw them, but I

could not speak to them.

The goblin placed his hand upon my mouth, and I was

dumb.

O take me back to my own groves, I cried, or let me speak.

But he threw me off his shoulders in a huff, among the daisies

and the cyclamens.

Alone among them, but I could not speak.

He had tied my tongue, the goblin, and left me there alone.

And in front of me, and towards me, and beside me,

Walked Allah's fairest cyclamens and anemones.

I smell them, and the tears flow down my cheeks;

I can not even like the noon-day bulbul

Whisper with my wings, salaam!

I sit me on a bench and weep.

And in my heart I sing

O, let me be a burro-boy again;

O, let me sleep among the cyclamens

Of my own land.

Shades of Whitman! But Whitman, thou Donkey, never weeps. Whitman, if

that goblin tried to silence him, would have wrung his neck, after he

had ridden upon it. The above, nevertheless, deserves the space we

give it here, as it shadows forth one of the essential elements of

Khalid's spiritual make-up. But this slight symptom of that disease we

named, this morbidness incident to adolescence, is eventually overcome

by a dictionary and a grammar. Ay, Khalid henceforth shall cease to

scour the horizon for that vague something of his dreams; he has

become far-sighted enough by the process to see the necessity of

pursuing in America something more spiritual than peddling crosses and

scapulars. Especially in this America, where the alphabet is spread

broadcast, and free of charge. And so, he sets himself to the task of

self-education. He feels the embryo stir within him, and in the

squeamishness of enceinteship, he asks but for a few of the fruits of

knowledge. Ah, but he becomes voracious of a sudden, and the little

pocket dictionary is devoured entirely in three sittings. Hence his

folly of treating his thoughts and fancies, as he was treated by the

goblin. For do not words often rob a fancy of its tongue, or a thought

of its soul? Many of the pieces Khalid wrote when he was devouring

dictionaries were finally disposed of in a most picturesque manner, as

we shall relate. And a few were given to Shakib, of which that Dream

of Cyclamens was preserved.

And Khalid's motto was, "One book at a time." He would not encumber

himself with books any more than he would with shoes. But that the

mind might not go barefoot, he always bought a new book before

destroying the one in hand. Destroying? Yes; for after reading or

studying a book, he warms his hands upon its flames, this Khalid, or

makes it serve to cook a pot of _mojadderah_. In this extraordinary

and outrageous manner, barbarously capricious, he would baptise the

ideal in the fire of the real. And thus, glowing with health and

confidence and conceit, he enters another Park from which he escapes

in the end, sad and wan and bankrupt. Of a truth, many attractions and

distractions are here; else he could not forget the peddling-box and

the light-heeled, heavy-haunched women of Battery Park. Here are

swings for the mind; toboggan-chutes for the soul; merry-go-rounds for

the fancy; and many devious and alluring paths where one can lose

himself for years. A sanitarium this for the hebephreniac. And like

all sanitariums, you go into it with one disease and come out of it

with ten. Had Shakib been forewarned of Khalid's mind, had he even

seen him at the gate before he entered, he would have given him a few

hints about the cross-signs and barbed-cordons therein. But should he

not have divined that Khalid soon or late was coming? Did _he_ not

call enough to him, and aloud? "Get thee behind me on this dromedary,"

our Scribe, reading his Al-Mutanabbi, would often say to his comrade,

"and come from this desert of barren gold, if but for a day,--come out

with me to the oasis of poesy."

But Khalid would only ride alone. And so, he begins his course of

self-education. But how he shall manage it, in this cart-before-the-horse

fashion, the reader shall know. Words before rules, ideas before

systems, epigrams before texts,--that is Khalid's fancy. And that

seems feasible, though not logical; it will prove effectual, too, if one

finally brushed the text and glanced at the rules. For an epigram,

when it takes possession of one, goes farther in influencing his

thoughts and actions than whole tomes of ethical culture science. You

know perhaps how the Arabs conquered the best half of the world with an

epigram, a word. And Khalid loves a fine-sounding, easy-flowing word; a

word of supple joints, so to speak; a word that you can twist and roll

out, flexible as a bamboo switch, resilient as a fine steel rapier.

But once Shakib, after reading one of Khalid's first attempts, gets up in

the night when his friend is asleep, takes from the bottom drawer of the

peddling-box the evil-working dictionary, and places therein a grammar.

This touch of delicacy, this fine piece of criticism, brief and neat,

without words withal, Khalid this time is not slow to grasp and

appreciate. He plunges, therefore, headlong into the grammar, turns a

few somersaults in the mazes of Sibawai and Naftawai, and coming out

with a broken noddle, writes on the door the following: "What do I care

about your theories of nouns and verbs? Whether the one be derived from

the other, concerns not me. But this I know, after stumbling once or

twice in your labyrinths, one comes out parsing the verb, to run.

Indeed, verbs are more essential than nouns and adjectives. A noun can

be represented pictorially; but how, pictorially, can you represent a noun

in motion,--Khalid, for instance, running out of your labyrinths? Even

an abstract state can be represented in a picture, but a transitive state

never. The richest language, therefore, is not the one which can boast of

a thousand names for the lion or two thousand for the camel, but the

one whose verbs have a complete and perfect gamut of moods and tenses."

That is why, although writing in Arabic, Khalid prefers English. For

the Arabic verb is confined to three tenses, the primary ones only;

and to break through any of these in any degree, requires such

crowbars as only auxiliaries and other verbs can furnish. For this and

many other reasons Khalid stops short in the mazes of Sibawai, runs

out of them exasperated, depressed, and never for a long time after

looks in that direction. He is now curious to know if the English

language have its Sibawais and Naftawais. And so, he buys him a

grammar, and there finds the way somewhat devious, too, but not enough

to constitute a maze. The men who wrote these grammars must have had

plenty of time to do a little useful work. They do not seem to have

walked leisurely in flowing robes disserting a life-long dissertation

on the origin and descent of a preposition. One day Shakib is amazed

by finding the grammars page by page tacked on the walls of the cellar

and Khalid pacing around leisurely lingering a moment before each

page, as if he were in an art gallery. That is how he tackled his

subject. And that is why he and Shakib begin to quarrel. The idea!

That a fledgling should presume to pick flaws. To Shakib, who is

textual to a hair, this is intolerable. And that state of oneness

between them shall be subject hereafter to "the corrosive action of

various unfriendly agents." For Khalid, who has never yet been

snaffled, turns restively from the bit which his friend, for his own

sake, would put in his mouth. The rupture follows. The two for a while

wend their way in opposite directions. Shakib still cherishing and

cultivating his bank account, shoulders his peddling-box and jogs

along with his inspiring demon, under whose auspices, he tells us, he

continues to write verse and gull with his brummagems the pious dames

of the suburbs. And Khalid sits on his peddling-box for hours

pondering on the necessity of disposing of it somehow. For now he

scarcely makes more than a few peddling-trips each month, and when he

returns, he does not go to the bank to add to his balance, but to draw

from it. That is why the accounts of the two Syrians do not fare

alike; Shakib's is gaining in weight, Khalid's is wasting away.

Yes, the strenuous spirit is a long time dead in Khalid. He is

gradually reverting to the Oriental instinct. And when he is not

loafing in Battery Park, carving his name on the bench, he is

burrowing in the shelves of some second-hand book-shop or dreaming in

the dome of some Broadway skyscraper. Does not this seem inevitable,

however, considering the palingenetic burden within him? And is not

loafing a necessary prelude to the travail? Khalid, of course, felt

the necessity of this, not knowing the why and wherefor. And from the

vast world of paper-bound souls, for he relished but pamphlets at the

start--they do not make much smoke in the fire, he would say--from

that vast world he could command the greatest of the great to help him

support the loafing while. And as by a miracle, he came out of that

chaos of contending spirits without a scratch. He enjoyed the

belligerency of pamphleteers as an American would enjoy a prize

fight. But he sided with no one; he took from every one his best and

consigned him to Im-Hanna's kitchen. Torquemada could not have done

better; but Khalid, it is hoped, will yet atone for his crimes.

Monsieur Pascal, with whom he quarrels before he burns, had a

particular influence upon him. He could not rest after reading his

"Thoughts" until he read the Bible. And of the Prophets of the Old

Testament he had an especial liking for Jeremiah and Isaiah. And once

he bought a cheap print of Jeremiah which he tacked on the wall of his

cellar. From the Khedivial Library MS. we give two excerpts relating

to Pascal and this Prophet.

"O Monsieur Pascal,

"I tried hard to hate and detest myself, as you advise, and I

found that I could not by so doing love God. 'Tis in loving the

divine in Man, in me, in you, that we rise to the love of our

Maker. And in giving your proofs of the true religion, you speak

of the surprising measures of the Christian Faith, enjoining man

to acknowledge himself vile, base, abominable, and obliging him

at the same time to aspire towards a resemblance of his Maker.

Now, I see in this a foreshadowing of the theory of evolution,

nay a divine warrant for it. Nor is it the Christian religion

alone which unfolds to man the twofold mystery of his nature;

others are as dark and as bright on either side of the pole. And

Philosophy conspiring with Biology will not consent to the

apotheosis of Man, unless he wear on his breast a symbol of his

tail.... _Au-revoir_, Monsieur Pascal, Remember me to St.

Augustine."

"O Jeremiah,

"Thy picture, sitting among the ruins of the City of Zion,

appeals to my soul. Why, I know not. It may be because I myself

once sat in that posture among the ruins of my native City of

Baal. But the ruins did not grieve me as did the uncle who

slammed the door in my face that night. True, I wept in the

ruins, but not over them. Something else had punctured the

bladderets of my tears. And who knows who punctured thine, O

Jeremiah? Perhaps a daughter of Tamar had stuck a bodkin in

thine eye, and in lamenting thine own fate--Pardon me, O

Jeremiah. Melikes not all these tears of thine. Nor did Zion and

her children in Juhannam, I am sure.... Instead of a scroll in

thy hand, I would have thee hold a harp. Since King David, Allah

has not thought of endowing his prophets with musical talent.

Why, think what an honest prophet could accomplish if his

message were put into music. And withal, if he himself could

sing it. Yes, our modern Jeremiahs should all take music

lessons; for no matter how deep and poignant our sorrows, we can

always rise from them, harp in hand, to an ecstasy, joyous and

divine."

Now, connect with this the following from the _Histoire Intime_, and

you have the complete history of this Prophet in Khalid's cellar. For

Khalid himself never gives us the facts in the case. Our Scribe,

however, comes not short in this.

"The picture of the Prophet Jeremiah," writes he, "Khalid hung on the

wall, above his bed. And every night he would look up to it

invokingly, muttering I know not what. One evening, while in this

posture, he took up his lute and trolled a favourite ditty. For three

days and three nights that picture hung on the wall. And on the

morning of the fourth day--it was a cold December morning, I

remember--he took it down and lighted the fire with it. The Pamphlet

he had read a few days since, he also threw into the fire, and

thereupon called to me saying, 'Come, Shakib, and warm yourself.'"

And the Pamphlet, we learn, which was thus baptised in the same fire

with the Prophet's picture, was Tom Paine's _Age of Reason_.

CHAPTER VI

THE SUMMER AFTERNOON OF A SHAM

For two years and more Khalid's young mind went leaping from one swing

to another, from one carousel or toboggan-chute to the next, without

having any special object in view, without knowing why and wherefor.

He even entered such mazes of philosophy, such labyrinths of mysticism

as put those of the Arabian grammaticasters in the shade. To him,

education was a sport, pursued in a free spirit after his own fancy,

without method or discipline. For two years and more he did little but

ramble thus, drawing meanwhile on his account in the bank, and burning

pamphlets.

One day he passes by a second-hand book-shop, which is in the

financial hive of the city, hard by a church and within a stone's

throw from the Stock Exchange. The owner, a shabby venerable,

standing there, pipe in mouth, between piles of pamphlets and

little pyramids of books, attracts Khalid. He too occupies a

cellar. And withal he resembles the Prophet in the picture which was

burned with Tom Paine's _Age of Reason_. Nothing in the face at

least is amiss. A flowing, serrated, milky beard, with a touch of

gold around the mouth; an aquiline nose; deep set blue eyes canopied

with shaggy brows; a forehead broad and high; a dome a little frowsy

but not guilty of a hair--the Prophet Jeremiah! Only one thing, a clay

pipe which he seldom took out of his mouth except to empty and

refill, seemed to take from the prophetic solemnity of the face.

Otherwise, he is as grim and sullen as the Prophet. In his voice,

however, there is a supple sweetness which the hard lines in his face

do not express. Khalid nicknames him second-hand Jerry, makes to him

professions of friendship, and for many months comes every day to

see him. He comes with his bucket, as he would say, to Jerry's well.

For the two, the young man and the old man of the cellar, the

neophite and the master, would chat about literature and the makers

of it for hours. And what a sea of information is therein under that

frowsy dome. Withal, second-hand Jerry is a man of ideals and

abstractions, exhibiting now and then an heretical twist which is

as agreeable as the vermiculations in a mahogany. "We moderns," said

he once to Khalid, "are absolutely one-sided. Here, for instance, is

my book-shop, there is the Church, and yonder is the Stock Exchange.

Now, the men who frequent them, and though their elbows touch, are

as foreign to each other as is a jerboa to a polar bear. Those who

go to Church do not go to the Stock Exchange; those who spend their

days on the Stock Exchange seldom go to Church; and those who

frequent my cellar go neither to the one nor the other. That is why

our civilisation produces so many bigots, so many philistines, so

many pedants and prigs. The Stock Exchange is as necessary to

Society as the Church, and the Church is as vital, as essential

to its spiritual well-being as my book-shop. And not until man

develops his mental, spiritual and physical faculties to what

Matthew Arnold calls 'a harmonious perfection,' will he be able to

reach the heights from which Idealism is waving to him."

Thus would the master discourse, and the neophite, sitting on the

steps of the cellar, smoking his cigarette, listens, admiring,

pondering. And every time he comes with his bucket, Jerry would be

standing there, between his little pyramids of books, pipe in mouth,

hands in pockets, ready for the discourse. He would also conduct

through his underworld any one who had the leisure and inclination.

But fortunately for Khalid, the people of this district are either too

rich to buy second-hand books, or too snobbish to stop before this

curiosity shop of literature. Hence the master is never too busy; he

is always ready to deliver the discourse.

One day Khalid is conducted into the labyrinthine gloom and mould of

the cellar. Through the narrow isles, under a low ceiling, papered, as

it were, with pamphlets, between ramparts and mounds of books, old

Jerry, his head bowed, his lighted taper in hand, proceeds. And Khalid

follows directly behind, listening to his guide who points out the

objects and places of interest. And thus, through the alleys and

by-ways, through the nooks and labyrinths of these underground

temple-ruins, we get to the rear, where the ramparts and mounds

crumble to a mighty heap, rising pell-mell to the ceiling. Here, one

is likely to get a glimpse into such enchanted worlds as the name of

a Dickens or a Balzac might suggest. Here, too, is Shakespeare in

lamentable state; there is Carlyle in rags, still crying, as it were,

against the filth and beastliness of this underworld. And look at my

lord Tennyson shivering in his nakedness and doomed to keep company

with the meanest of poetasters. Observe how Emerson is wriggled and

ruffled in this crushing crowd. Does he not seem to be still sighing

for a little solitude? But here, too, are spots of the rarest literary

interest. Close to the vilest of dime novels is an autograph copy of a

book which you might not find at Brentano's. Indeed, the rarities here

stand side by side with the superfluities--the abominations with the

blessings of literature--cluttered together, reduced to a common

level. And all in a condition which bespeaks the time when they were

held in the affection of some one. Now, they lie a-mouldering in these

mounds, and on these shelves, awaiting a curious eye, a kindly hand.

"To me," writes Khalid in the K. L. MS., "there is always

something pathetic in a second-hand book offered again for sale.

Why did its first owner part with it? Was it out of disgust or

surfeit or penury? Did he throw it away, or give it away, or

sell it? Alas, and is this how to treat a friend? Were it not

better burned, than sold or thrown away? After coming out of the

press, how many have handled this tattered volume? How many has

it entertained, enlightened, or perverted? Look at its pages,

which evidence the hardship of the journey it has made. Here

still is a pressed flower, more convincing in its shrouded

eloquence than the philosophy of the pages in which it lies

buried. On the fly-leaf are the names of three successive

owners, and on the margin are lead pencil notes in which the

reader criticises the author. Their spirits are now shrouded

together and entombed in this pile, where the mould never fails

and the moths never die. They too are fallen a prey to the worms

of the earth. A second-hand book-shop always reminds me of a

Necropolis. It is a kind of Serapeum where lies buried the kings

and princes with the helots and underlings of literature. Ay,

every book is a mortuary chamber containing the remains of some

poor literary wretch, or some mighty genius.... A book is a

friend, my brothers, and when it ceases to entertain or instruct

or inspire, it is dead. And would you sell a dead friend, would

you throw him away? If you can not keep him embalmed on your

shelf, is it not the wiser part, and the kinder, to cremate

him?"

And Khalid tells old Jerry, that if every one buying and reading

books, disposed of them in the end as he himself does, second-hand

book-shops would no longer exist. But old Jerry never despairs of

business. And the idea of turning his Serapeum into a kiln does not

appeal to him. Howbeit, Khalid has other ideas which the old man

admires, and which he would carry out if the police would not

interfere. "If I were the owner of this shop," thus the neophite to

the master, "I would advertise it with a bonfire of pamphlets. I would

take a few hundreds from that mound there and give them the match

right in front of that Church, or better still before the Stock

Exchange. And I would have two sandwich-men stand about the bonfire,

as high priests of the Temple, and chant the praises of second-hand

Jerry and his second-hand book-shop. This will be the sacrifice which

you will have offered to the god of Trade right in front of his

sanctuary that he might soften the induration in the breasts of these

worthy citizens, your rich neighbours. And if he does not, why, shut

up shop or burn it up, and let us go out peddling together."

We do not know, however, whether old Jerry ever adopted Khalid's idea.

He himself is an Oriental in this sense; and the business is good

enough to keep up, so long as Khalid comes. He is supremely content.

Indeed, Shakib asseverates in round Arabic, that the old man of the

cellar got a good portion of Khalid's balance, while balancing

Khalid's mind. Nay, firing it with free-thought literature. Are we

then to consider this cellar as Khalid's source of spiritual

illumination? And is this genial old heretic an American avatar of the

monk Bohaira? For Khalid is gradually becoming a man of ideas and

crotchets. He is beginning to see a purpose in all his literary and

spiritual rambles. His mental nebulosity is resolving itself into

something concrete, which shall weigh upon him for a while and propel

him in the direction of Atheism and Demagogy. For old Jerry once

visits Khalid in his cellar, and after partaking of a dish of

_mojadderah_, takes him to a political meeting to hear the popular

orators of the day.

And in this is ineffable joy for Khalid. Like every young mind he is

spellbound by one of those masters of spread-eagle oratory, and for

some time he does not miss a single political meeting in his district.

We even see him among the crowd before the corner groggery, cheering

one of the political spouters of the day.

And once he accompanies Jerry to the Temple of Atheism to behold its

high Priest and hear him chant halleluiah to the Nebular Hypothesis.

This is wonderful. How easy it is to dereligionise the human race and

banish God from the Universe! But after the High Priest had done this,

after he had proven to the satisfaction of every atheist that God is a

myth, old Jerry turns around and gives Khalid this warning: "Don't

believe all he says, for I know that atheist well. He is as eloquent

as he is insincere."

And so are all atheists. For at bottom, atheism is either a fad or a

trade or a fatuity. And whether the one or the other, it is a sham

more pernicious than the worst. To the young mind, it is a shibboleth

of cheap culture; to the shrewd and calculating mind, to such orators

as Khalid heard, it is a trade most remunerative; and to the

scientists, or rather monists, it is the aliment with which they

nourish the perversity of their preconceptions. Second-hand Jerry did

not say these things to our young philosopher; for had he done so,

Khalid, now become edacious, would not have experienced those

dyspeptic pangs which almost crushed the soul-fetus in him. For we are

told that he is as sedulous in attending these atheistic lectures as

he is in flocking with his fellow citizens to hear and cheer the idols

of the stump. Once he took Shakib to the Temple of Atheism, but the

Poet seems to prefer his _Al-Mutanabby_. In relating of Khalid's

waywardness he says:

"Ever since we quarrelled about Sibawai, Khalid and I have seldom been

together. And he had become so opinionated that I was glad it was so.

Even on Sunday I would leave him alone with Im-Hanna, and returning

in the evening, I would find him either reading or burning a pamphlet.

Once I consented to accompany him to one of the lectures he was so

fond of attending. And I was really surprised that one had to pay

money for such masquerades of eloquence as were exhibited that night

on the platform. Yes, it occurred to me that if one had not a dollar

one could not become an atheist. Billah! I was scandalized. For no

matter how irreverent one likes to pose, one ought to reverence at

least his Maker. I am a Christian by the grace of Allah, and my

ancestors are counted among the martyrs of the Church. And thanks to

my parents, I have been duly baptized and confirmed. For which I

respect them the more, and love them. Now, is it not absurd that I

should come here and pay a hard dollar to hear this heretical

speechifier insult my parents and my God? Better the ring of

Al-Mutanabbi's scimitars and spears than the clatter of these

atheistical bones!"

From which we infer that Shakib was not open to reason on the subject.

He would draw his friend away from the verge of the abyss at any cost.

"And this," continues he, "did not require much effort. For Khalid

like myself is constitutionally incapable of denying God. We are from

the land in which God has always spoken to our ancestors."

And the argument between the shrewd verse-maker and the foolish

philosopher finally hinges on this: namely, that these atheists are

not honest investigators, that in their sweeping generalisations, as

in their speciosity and hypocrisy, they are commercially perverse.

And Khalid is not long in deciding about the matter. He meets with an

accident--and accidents have always been his touchstones of

success--which saves his soul and seals the fate of atheism.

One evening, returning from a ramble in the Park, he passes by the

Hall where his favourite Mountebank was to lecture on the Gospel of

Soap. But not having the price of admittance that evening, and being

anxious to hear the orator whom he had idolised, Khalid bravely

appeals to his generosity in this quaint and touching note: "My

pocket," he wrote, "is empty and my mind is hungry. Might I come to

your Table to-night as a beggar?" And the man at the stage door, who

carries the note to the orator, returns in a trice, and tells Khalid

to lift himself off. Khalid hesitates, misunderstands; and a heavy

hand is of a sudden upon him, to say nothing of the heavy boot.

Ay, and that boot decided him. Atheism, bald, bold, niggardly, brutal,

pretending withal, Khalid turns from its door never to look again in

that direction, Shakib is right. "These people," he growled, "are not

free thinkers, but free stinkards. They do need soap to wash their

hearts and souls."

An idea did not come to Khalid, as it were, by instalments. In his

puerperal pains of mind he was subject to such crises, shaken by such

downrushes of light, as only the few among mortals experience. (We are

quoting our Scribe, remember.) And in certain moments he had more

faith in his instincts than in his reason. "Our instincts," says he,

"never lie. They are honest, and though they be sometimes blind." And

here, he seems to have struck the truth. He can be practical too.

Honesty in thought, in word, in deed--this he would have as the

cornerstone of his truth. Moral rectitude he places above all the

cardinal virtues, natural and theological. "Better keep away from the

truth, O Khalid," he writes, "better remain a stranger to it all thy

life, if thou must sully it with the slimy fingers of a mercenary

juggler." Now, these brave words, we can not in conscience criticise.

But we venture to observe that Khalid must have had in mind that

Gospel of Soap and the incident at the stage door.

And in this, we, too, rejoice. We, too, forgetting the dignity of our

position, participate of the revelry in the cellar on this occasion.

For our editorialship, dear Reader, is neither American nor English.

We are not bound, therefore, to maintain in any degree the algidity

and indifference of our confrères' sublime attitude. We rejoice in the

spiritual safety of Khalid. We rejoice that he and Shakib are now

reconciled. For the reclaimed runagate is now even permitted to draw

on the poet's balance at the banker. Ay, even Khalid can dissimulate

when he needs the cash. For with the assistance of second-hand Jerry

and the box-office of the atheistical jugglers, he had exhausted his

little saving. He would not even go out peddling any more. And when

Shakib asks him one morning to shoulder the box and come out, he

replies: "I have a little business with it here." For after having

impeached the High Priests of Atheism he seems to have turned upon

himself. We translate from the K. L. MS.

"When I was disenchanted with atheism, when I saw somewhat of the

meanness and selfishness of its protagonists, I began to doubt in

the honesty of men. If these, our supposed teachers, are so vile,

so mercenary, so false,--why, welcome Juhannam! But the more I

doubted in the honesty of men, the more did I believe that honesty

should be the cardinal virtue of the soul. I go so far in this, that

an honest thief in my eyes is more worthy of esteem than a canting

materialist or a hypocritical free thinker. Still, the voice within

me asked if Shakib were honest in his dealings, if I were honest in

my peddling? Have I not misrepresented my gewgaws as the atheist

misrepresents the truth? 'This is made in the Holy Land,'--'This is

from the Holy Sepulchre'--these lies, O Khalid, are upon you. And

what is the difference between the jewellery you passed off for gold

and the arguments of the atheist-preacher? Are they not both

instruments of deception, both designed to catch the dollar? Yes, you

have been, O Khalid, as mean, as mercenary, as dishonest as those

canting infidels.

"And what are you going to do about it? Will you continue, while in

the quagmires yourself, to point contemptuously at those standing in

the gutter? Will you, in your dishonesty, dare impeach the honesty of

men? Are you not going to make a resolution now, either to keep silent

or to go out of the quagmires and rise to the mountain-heights? Be

pure yourself first, O Khalid; then try to spread this purity around

you at any cost.

"Yes; that is why, when Shakib asked me to go out peddling one day, I

hesitated and finally refused. For atheism, in whose false dry light I

walked a parasang or two, did not only betray itself to me as a sham,

but also turned my mind and soul to the sham I had shouldered for

years. From the peddling-box, therefore, I turned even as I did from

atheism. Praised be Allah, who, in his providential care, seemed to

kick me away from the door of its temple. The sham, although effulgent

and alluring, was as brief as a summer afternoon."

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

following Chapter.

CHAPTER VII

IN THE TWILIGHT OF AN IDEA

It is Voltaire, we believe, who says something to the effect that

one's mind should be in accordance with one's years. That is why an

academic education nowadays often fails of its purpose. For whether

one's mind runs ahead of one's years, or one's years ahead of one's

mind, the result is much the same; it always goes ill with the mind.

True, knowledge is power; but in order to feel at home with it, we

must be constitutionally qualified. And if we are not, it is likely to

give the soul such a wrenching as to deform it forever. Indeed, how

many of us go through life with a fatal spiritual or intellectual

twist which could have been avoided in our youth, were we a little

less wise. The young _philosophes_, the products of the University

Machine of to-day, who go about with a nosegay of -isms, as it were,

in their lapels, and perfume their speech with the bottled logic of

the College Professor,--are not most of them incapable of honestly and

bravely grappling with the real problems of life? And does not a

systematic education mean this, that a young man must go through life

dragging behind him his heavy chains of set ideas and stock systems,

political, social, or religious? (Remember, we are translating from

the Khedivial Library MS.) The author continues:

"Whether one devour the knowledge of the world in four years

or four nights, the process of assimilation is equally

hindered, if the mind is sealed at the start with the seal of

authority. Ay, we can not be too careful of dogmatic science in

our youth; for dogmas often dam certain channels of the soul

through which we might have reached greater treasures and

ascended to purer heights. A young man, therefore, ought to be

let alone. There is an infinite possibility of soul-power in

every one of us, if it can be developed freely, spontaneously,

without discipline or restraint. There is, too, an infinite

possibility of beauty in every soul, if it can be evoked at an

auspicious moment by the proper word, the proper voice, the

proper touch. That is why I say, Go thy way, O my Brother. Be

simple, natural, spontaneous, courageous, free. Neither

anticipate your years, nor lag child-like behind them. For

verily, it is as ridiculous to dye the hair white as to dye it

black. Ah, be foolish while thou art young; it is never too late

to be wise. Indulge thy fancy, follow the bent of thy mind;

for in so doing thou canst not possibly do thyself more harm

than the disciplinarians can do thee. Live thine own life;

think thine own thoughts; keep developing and changing until

thou arrive at the truth thyself. An ounce of it found by thee

were better than a ton given to thee _gratis_ by one who

would enslave thee. Go thy way, O my Brother. And if my words

lead thee to Juhannam, why, there will be a great surprise for

thee. There thou wilt behold our Maker sitting on a flaming

glacier waiting for the like of thee. And he will take thee

into his arms and poke thee in the ribs, and together you will

laugh and laugh, until that glacier become a garden and thou

a flower therein. Go thy way, therefore; be not afraid. And no

matter how many tears thou sheddest on this side, thou wilt

surely be poked in the ribs on the other. Go--thy--but--let

Nature be thy guide; acquaint thyself with one or two of her

laws ere thou runnest wild."

And to what extent did this fantastic mystic son of a Phoenician

acquaint himself with Nature's laws, we do not know. But truly, he was

already running wild in the great cosmopolis of New York. From his

stivy cellar he issues forth into the plashing, plangent currents of

city life. Before he does this, however, he rids himself of all the

encumbrances of peddlery which hitherto have been his sole means of

support. His little stock of crosses, rosaries, scapulars, false

jewellery, mother-of-pearl gewgaws, and such like, which he has on the

little shelf in the cellar, he takes down one morning--but we will let

our Scribe tell the story.

"My love for Khalid," he writes, "has been severely tried. We could no

longer agree about anything. He had become such a dissenter that often

would he take the wrong side of a question if only for the sake of

bucking. True, he ceased to frequent the cellar of second-hand Jerry,

and the lectures of the infidels he no longer attended. We were in

accord about atheism, therefore, but in riotous discord about many

other things, chief among which was the propriety, the necessity, of

doing something to replenish his balance at the banker. For he was now

impecunious, and withal importunate. Of a truth, what I had I was

always ready to share with him; but for his own good I advised him to

take up the peddling-box again. I reminded him of his saying once,

'Peddling is a healthy and profitable business.' 'Come out,' I

insisted, 'and though it be for the exercise. Walking is the whetstone

of thought.'

"One evening we quarrelled about this, and Im-Hanna sided with me. She

rated Khalid, saying, 'You're a good-for-nothing loafer; you don't

deserve the _mojadderah_ you eat.' And I remember how she took me

aside that evening and whispered something about books, and Khalid's

head, and Mar-Kizhayiah.[1] Indeed, Im-Hanna seriously believed that

Khalid should be taken to Mar-Kizhayiah. She did not know that New

York was full of such institutions.[2] Her scolding, however, seemed

to have more effect on Khalid than my reasoning. And consenting to go

out with me, he got up the following morning, took down his stock from

the shelf, every little article of it--he left nothing there--and

packed all into his peddling-box. He then squeezed into the bottom

drawer, which he had filled with scapulars, the bottle with a little

of the Stuff in it. For we were in accord about this, that in New York

whiskey is better than arak. And we both took a nip now and then. So I

thought the bottle was in order. But why he placed his bank book,

which was no longer worth a straw, into that bottom drawer, I could

not guess. With these preparations, however, we shouldered our boxes,

and in an hour we were in the suburbs. We foot it along then, until we

reach a row of cottages not far from the railway station. 'Will you

knock at one of these doors,' I asked. And he, 'I do not feel like

chaffering and bargaining this morning.' 'Why then did you come out,'

I urged. And he, in an air of nonchalance, 'Only for the walk.' And

so, we pursued our way in the Bronx, until we reached one of our

favourite spots, where a sycamore tree seemed to invite us to its

ample shade.

"Here, Khalid, absent-minded, laid down his box and sat upon it, and I

stretched my limbs on the grass. But of a sudden, he jumped up, opened

the bottom drawer of his case, and drew from it the bottle. It is

quite in order now, I mused; but ere I had enjoyed the thought, Khalid

had placed his box at a little distance, and, standing there beside

it, bottle in hand, delivered himself in a semi-solemn, semi-mocking

manner of the following: 'This is the oil,' I remember him saying,

'with which I anoint thee--the extreme unction I apply to thy soul.'

And he poured the contents of the bottle into the bottom drawer and

over the box, and applied to it a match. The bottle was filled with

kerosene, and in a jiffy the box was covered with the flame. Yes; and

so quickly, so neatly it was done, that I could not do aught to

prevent it. The match was applied to what I thought at first was

whiskey, and I was left in speechless amazement. He would not even

help me to save a few things from the fire. I conjured him in the name

of Allah, but in vain. I clamoured and remonstrated, but to no

purpose. And when I asked him why he had done this, he asked me in

reply, 'And why have you not done the same? Now, methinks I deserve my

_mojadderah_. And not until you do likewise, will you deserve yours, O

Shakib. Here are the lies, now turned to ashes, which brought me my

bread and are still bringing you yours. Here are our instruments of

deception, our poisoned sources of lucre. I am most happy now, O

Shakib. And I shall endeavour to keep my blood in circulation by

better, purer means.' And he took me thereupon by the shoulders,

looked into my face, then pushed me away, laughing the laugh of the

hasheesh-smokers.

"Indeed, Im-Hanna was right. Khalid had become too odd, too queer to

be sane. Needless to say, I was not prone to follow his example at

that time. Nor am I now. _Mashallah!_ Lacking the power and madness to

set fire to the whole world, it were folly, indeed, to begin with

one's self. I believe I had as much right to exaggerate in peddling as

I had in writing verse. My license to heighten the facts holds good in

either case. And to some extent, every one, a poet be he or a cobbler,

enjoys such a license. I told Khalid that the logical and most

effective course to pursue, in view of his rigorous morality, would be

to pour a gallon of kerosene over his own head and fire himself out of

existence. For the instruments of deception and debasement are not in

the peddling-box, but rather in his heart. No; I did not think

peddling was as bad as other trades. Here at least, the means of

deception were reduced to a minimum. And of a truth, if everybody were

to judge themselves as strictly as Khalid, who would escape burning?

So I turned from him that day fully convinced that my little stock of

holy goods was innocent, and my balance at the banker's was as pure as

my rich neighbour's. And he turned from me fully convinced, I believe,

that I was an unregenerate rogue. Ay, and when I was knocking at the

door of one of my customers, he was walking away briskly, his hands

clasped behind his back, and his eyes, as usual, scouring the

horizon."

And on that horizon are the gilded domes and smoking chimneys of the

seething city. Leaving his last friend and his last burden behind, he

will give civilised life another trial. Loafer and tramp that he is!

For even the comforts of the grand cable-railway he spurns, and foots

it from the Bronx down to his cellar near Battery Park, thus cutting

the city in half and giving one portion to Izräil and the other to

Iblis. But not being quite ready himself for either of these winged

Furies, he keeps to his cellar. He would tarry here a while, if but to

carry out a resolution he has made. True, Khalid very seldom resolves

upon anything; but when he does make a resolution, he is even willing

to be carried off by the effort to carry it out. And now, he would

solve this problem of earning a living in the great city by honest

means. For in the city, at least, success well deserves the

compliments which those who fail bestow upon it. What Montaigne said

of greatness, therefore, Khalid must have said of success. If we can

not attain it, let us denounce it. And in what terms does he this, O

merciful Allah! We translate a portion of the apostrophe in the K. L.

MS., and not the bitterest, by any means.

"O Success," the infuriated failure exclaims, "how like the Gorgon of

the Arabian Nights thou art! For does not every one whom thou favorest

undergo a pitiful transformation even from the first bedding with

thee? Does not everything suffer from thy look, thy touch, thy breath?

The rose loses its perfume, the grape-vine its clusters, the bulbul

its wings, the dawn its light and glamour. O Success, our lords of

power to-day are thy slaves, thy helots, our kings of wealth. Every

one grinds for thee, every one for thee lives and dies.... Thy palaces

of silver and gold are reared on the souls of men. Thy throne is

mortised with their bones, cemented with their blood. Thou ravenous

Gorgon, on what bankruptcies thou art fed, on what failures, on what

sorrows! The railroads sweeping across the continents and the steamers

ploughing through the seas, are laden with sacrifices to thee. Ay, and

millions of innocent children are torn from their homes and from their

schools to be offered to thee at the sacrificial-stone of the

Factories and Mills. The cultured, too, and the wise, are counted

among thy slaves. Even the righteous surrender themselves to thee and

are willing to undergo that hideous transformation. O Success, what an

infernal litany thy votaries and high-priests are chanting to thee....

Thou ruthless Gorgon, what crimes thou art committing, and what crimes

are being committed in thy name!"

From which it is evident that Khalid does not wish for success. Khalid

is satisfied if he can maintain his hold on the few spare feet he has

in the cellar, and continue to replenish his little store of lentils

and olive oil. For he would as lief be a victim of success, he assures

us, as to forego his _mojadderah_. And still having this, which he

considers a luxury, he is willing to turn his hand at anything, if he

can but preserve inviolate the integrity of his soul and the freedom

of his mind. These are a few of the pet terms of Khalid. And in as

much as he can continue to repeat them to himself, he is supremely

content. He can be a menial, if while cringing before his superiors,

he were permitted to chew on his pet illusions. A few days before he

burned his peddling-box, he had read Epictetus. And the thought that

such a great soul maintained its purity, its integrity, even in bonds,

encouraged and consoled him. "How can they hurt me," he asks, "if

spiritually I am far from them, far above them? They can do no more

than place gilt buttons on my coat and give me a cap to replace this

slouch. Therefore, I will serve. I will be a slave, even like

Epictetus."

And here we must interpose a little of our skepticism, if but to

gratify an habitual craving in us. We do not doubt that Khalid's

self-sufficiency is remarkable; that his courage--on paper--is quite

above the common; that the grit and stay he shows are wonderful; that

his lofty aspirations, so indomitable in their onwardness, are great:

but we only ask, having thus fortified his soul, how is he to fortify

his stomach? He is going to work, to be a menial, to earn a living by

honest means? Ah, Khalid, Khalid! Did you not often bestow a furtive

glance on some one else's checkbook? Did you not even exercise therein

your skill in calculation? If the bank, where Shakib deposits his

little saving, failed, would you be so indomitable, so dogged in your

resolution? Would you not soften a trifle, loosen a whit, if only for

the sake of your blood-circulation?

Indeed, Shakib has become a patron to Khalid. Shakib the poet, who

himself should have a patron, is always ready to share his last dollar

with his loving, though cantankerous friend. And this, in spite of all

the disagreeable features of a friendship which in the Syrian Colony

was become proverbial. But Khalid now takes up the newspapers and

scans the Want Columns for hours. The result being a clerkship in a

lawyer's office. Nay, an apprenticeship; for the legal profession, it

seems, had for a while engaged his serious thoughts.

And this of all the professions is the one on which he would graft his

scion of lofty morality? Surely, there be plenty of fuel for a

conflagration in a lawyer's office. Such rows of half-calf tomes, such

piles of legal documents, all designed to combat dishonesty and fraud,

"and all immersed in them, and nourished and maintained by them." In

what a sorry condition will your Morality issue out of these bogs! A

lawyer's clerk, we are informed, can not maintain his hold on his

clerkship, if he does not learn to blink. That is why Khalid is not

long in serving papers, copying summonses, and searching title-deeds.

In this lawyer's office he develops traits altogether foreign to his

nature. He even becomes a quidnunc, prying now and then into the

personal affairs of his superiors. Ay, and he dares once to suggest to

his employer a new method of dealing with the criminals among his

clients. Withal, Khalid is slow, slower than the law itself. If he

goes out to serve a summons he does not return for a day. If he is

sent to search title-deeds, he does not show up in the office for a

week. And often he would lose himself in the Park surrounding the

Register's Office, pondering on his theory of immanent morality. He

would sit down on one of those benches, which are the anchors of

loafers of another type, his batch of papers beside him, and watch the

mad crowds coming and going, running, as it were, between two fires.

These puckered people are the living, moving chambers of sleeping

souls.

Khalid was always glad to come to this Register's Office. For though

the searching of title-deeds be a mortal process, the loafing margin

of the working hour could be extended imperceptibly, and without

hazarding his or his employer's interest. The following piece of

speculative fantasy and insight must have been thought out when he

should have been searching title-deeds.

"This Register's Office," it is written in the K. L. MS., "is the very

bulwark of Society. It is the foundation on which the Trust Companies,

the Courts, and the Prisons are reared. Your codes are blind without

the miraculous torches which this Office can light. Your judges can

not propound the 'laur'--I beg your pardon, the law--without the aid

of these musty, smelling, dilapidated tomes. Ay, these are the very

constables of the realm, and without them there can be no realm, no

legislators, and no judges. Strong, club-bearing constables, these

Liebers, standing on the boundary lines, keeping peace between

brothers and neighbours.

"Here, in these Liebers is an authority which never fails, never

dies--an authority which willy-nilly we obey and in which we place

unbounded trust. In any one of these Registers is a potentiality which

can always worst the quibbles and quiddities of lawyers and ward off

the miserable technicalities of the law. Any of them, when called

upon, can go into court and dictate to the litigants and the

attorneys, the jury and the judge. They are the deceased witnesses

come to life. And without them, the judges are helpless, the marshals

and sheriffs too. Ay, and what without them would be the state of our

real-estate interests? Abolish your constabulary force, and your

police force, and with these muniments of power, these dumb but

far-seeing agents of authority and intelligence, you could still

maintain peace and order. But burn you this Register's Office, and

before the last Lieber turn to ashes, ere the last flame of the

conflagration die out, you will have to call forth, not only your fire

squads, but your police force and even your soldiery, to extinguish

other fires different in nature, but more devouring--and as many of

them as there are boundary lines in the land."

And we now come to the gist of the matter.

"What wealth of moral truth," he continues, "do we find in these

greasy, musty pages. When one deeds a piece of property, he

deeds with it something more valuable, more enduring. He deeds

with it an undying human intelligence which goes down to

posterity, saying, Respect my will; believe in me; and convey

this respect and this belief to your offspring. Ay, the immortal

soul breathes in a deed as in a great book. And the implicit

trust we place in a musty parchment, is the mystic outcome of

the blind faith, or rather the far-seeing faith which our

ancestors had in the morality and intelligence of coming

generations. For what avails their deeds if they are not

respected?... We are indebted to our forbears, therefore, not

for the miserable piece of property they bequeath us, but for

the confidence and trust, the faith and hope they had in our

innate or immanent morality and intelligence. The will of the

dead is law for the living."

Are we then to look upon Khalid as having come out of that Office with

soiled fingers only? Or has the young philosopher abated in his

clerkship the intensity of his moral views? Has he not assisted his

employer in the legal game of quieting titles? Has he not acquired a

little of the delusive plausibilities of lawyers? Shakib throws no

light on these questions. We only know that the clerkship or rather

apprenticeship was only held for a season. Indeed, Khalid must have

recoiled from the practice. Or in his recklessness, not to say

obtrusion, he must have been outrageous enough to express in the

office of the honourable attorney, or in the neighbourhood thereof,

his views about pettifogging and such like, that the said honourable

attorney was under the painful necessity of asking him to stay home.

Nay, the young Syrian was discharged. Or to put it in a term adequate

to the manner in which this was done, he was "fired." Now, Khalid

betakes him back to his cellar, and thrumming his lute-strings, lights

up the oppressive gloom with Arabic song and music.

-----

[1] A monastery in Mt. Lebanon, a sort of Bedlam, where the

exorcising monks beat the devil out of one's head with clouted

shoes.--EDITOR.

[2] And the doctors here practise in the name of science what

the exorcising monks practise in the name of religion. The poor

devil, or patient, in either case is done to death.--EDITOR.

CHAPTER VIII

WITH THE HURIS

From the house of law the dervish Khalid wends his way to that of

science, and from the house of science he passes on to that of

metaphysics. His staff in hand, his wallet hung on his shoulder, his

silver cigarette case in his pocket, patient, confident, content, he

makes his way from one place to another. Unlike his brother dervishes,

he is clean and proud of it, too. He knocks at this or that door,

makes his wish known to the servant or the mistress, takes the crumbs

given him, and not infrequently gives his prod to the dogs. In the

vestibule of one of the houses of spiritism, he tarries a spell and

parleys with the servant. The Mistress, a fair-looking, fair-spoken

dame of seven lustrums or more, issues suddenly from her studio, in a

curiously designed black velvet dressing-gown; she is drawn to the

door by the accent of the foreigner's speech and the peculiar cadence

of his voice. They meet: and magnetic currents from his dark eyes and

her eyes of blue, flow and fuse. They speak: and the lady asks the

stranger if he would not serve instead of begging. And he protests, "I

am a Dervish at the door of Allah." "And I am a Spirit in Allah's

house," she rejoins. They enter: and the parley in the vestibule is

followed by a tête-à-tête in the parlour and another in the

dining-room. They agree: and the stranger is made a member of the

Spiritual Household, which now consists of her and him, the Medium and

the Dervish.

Now, this fair-spoken dame, who dotes on the occult and exotic,

delights in the aroma of Khalid's cigarettes and Khalid's fancy. And

that he might feel at ease, she begins by assuring him that they have

met and communed many times ere now, that they have been friends under

a preceding and long vanished embodiment. Which vagary Khalid seems to

countenance by referring to the infinite power of Allah, in the

compass of which nothing is impossible. And with these mystical

circumlocutions of ceremony, they plunge into an intimacy which is

bordered by the metaphysical on one side, and the physical on the

other. For though the Medium is at the threshold of her climacteric,

Khalid afterwards tells Shakib that there be something in her eyes and

limbs which always seem to be waxing young. And of a truth, the

American woman, of all others, knows best how to preserve her beauty

from the ravages of sorrow and the years. That is why, we presume, in

calling him, "child," she does not permit him to call her, "mother."

Indeed, the Medium and the Dervish often jest, and somewhiles mix the

frivolous with the mysterious.

We would still follow our Scribe here, were it not that his pruriency

often reaches the edge. He speaks of "the _liaison_" with all the rude

simplicity and frankness of the Arabian Nights. And though, as the

Mohammedans say, "To the pure everything is pure," and again, "Who

quotes a heresy is not guilty of it"; nevertheless, we do not feel

warranted in rending the veil of the reader's prudery, no matter how

transparent it might be. We believe, however, that the pruriency of

Orientals, like the prudery of Occidentals, is in fact only an

appearance. On both sides there is a display of what might be called

verbal virtue and verbal vice. And on both sides, the exaggerations

are configured in a harmless pose. Be this as it may, we at least,

shall withhold from Shakib's lasciviousness the English dress it seeks

at our hand.

We note, however, that Khalid now visits him in the cellar only when

he craves a dish of _mojadderah_; that he and the Medium are absorbed

in the contemplation of the Unseen, though not, perhaps, of the

Impalpable; that they gallivant in the Parks, attend Bohemian dinners,

and frequent the Don't Worry Circles of Metaphysical Societies; that

they make long expeditions together to the Platonic North-pole and

back to the torrid regions of Swinburne; and that together they

perform their _zikr_ and drink at the same fountain of ecstasy and

devotion. Withal, the Dervish, who now wears his hair long and grows

his finger nails like a Brahmin, is beginning to have some manners.

The Medium, nevertheless, withholds from him the secret of her art. If

he desires, he can attend the séances like every other stranger. Once

Khalid, who would not leave anything unprobed, insisted, importuned;

he could not see any reason for her conduct. Why should they not work

together in Tiptology, as in Physiology and Metaphysics? And one

morning, dervish-like, he wraps himself in his _aba_, and, calling

upon Allah to witness, takes a rose from the vase on the table,

angrily plucks its petals, and strews them on the carpet. Which

portentous sign the Medium understands and hastens to minister her

palliatives.

"No, Child, you shall not go," she begs and supplicates; "listen to

me, are we not together all the time? Why not leave me alone then with

the spirits? One day you shall know all, believe me. Come, sit here,"

stroking her palm on her lap, "and listen. I shall give up this

tiptology business very soon; you and I shall overturn the table. Yes,

Child, I am on the point of succumbing under an awful something. So,

don't ask me about the spooks any more. Promise not to torment me thus

any more. And one day we shall travel together in the Orient; we shall

visit the ruins of vanished kingdoms and creeds. Ah, to be in Palmyra

with you! Do you know, Child, I am destined to be a Beduin queen. The

throne of Zenobia is mine, and yours too, if you will be good. We

shall resuscitate the glory of the kingdom of the desert."

To all of which Khalid acquiesces by referring as is his wont to the

infinite wisdom of Allah, in whose all-seeing eye nothing is

impossible.

And thus, apparently satisfied, he takes the cigarette which she had

lighted for him, and lights for her another from his own. But the

smoke of two cigarettes dispels not the threatening cloud; it only

conceals it from view. For they dine together at a Bohemian Club that

evening, where Khalid meets a woman of rare charms. And she invites

him to her studio. The Medium, who is at first indifferent, finally

warns her callow child. "That woman is a writer," she explains, "and

writers are always in search of what they call 'copy.' She in

particular is a huntress of male curiosities, _originales_, whom she

takes into her favour and ultimately surrenders them to the reading

public. So be careful." But Khalid hearkens not. For the writer, whom

he afterwards calls a flighter, since she, too, "like the van of the

brewer only skims the surface of things," is, in fact, younger than

the Medium. Ay, this woman is even beautiful--to behold, at least. So

the Dervish, a captive of her charms, knocks at the door of her studio

one evening and enters. Ah, this then is a studio! "I am destined to

know everything, and to see everything," he says to himself, smiling

in his heart.

The charming hostess, in a Japanese kimono receives him somewhat

orientally, offering him the divan, which he occupies alone for a

spell. He is then laden with a huge scrap-book containing press

notices and reviews of her many novels. These, he is asked to go

through while she prepares the tea. Which is a mortal task for the

Dervish in the presence of the Enchantress. Alas, the tea is long in

the making, and when the scrap-book is laid aside, she reinforces him

with a lot of magazines adorned with stories of the short and long and

middling size, from her fertile pen. "These are beautiful," says he,

in glancing over a few pages, "but no matter how you try, you can not

with your pen surpass your own beauty. The charm of your literary

style can not hold a candle to the charm of your--permit me to read

your hand." And laying down the magazine, he takes up her hand and

presses it to his lips. In like manner, he tries to read somewhat in

the face, but the Enchantress protests and smiles. In which case the

smile renders the protest null and void.

Henceforth, the situation shall be trying even to the Dervish who can

eat live coals. He oscillates for some while between the Medium and

the Enchantress, but finds the effort rather straining. The first

climax, however, is reached, and our Scribe thinks it too sad for

words. He himself sheds a few rheums with the fair-looking,

fair-spoken Dame, and dedicates to her a few rhymes. Her magnanimity,

he tells us, is unexampled, and her fatalism pathetic. For when Khalid

severs himself from the Spiritual Household, she kisses him thrice,

saying, "Go, Child; Allah brought you to me, and Allah will bring you

again." Khalid refers, as usual, to the infinite wisdom of the

Almighty, and, taking his handkerchief from his pocket, wipes the

tears that fell--from her eyes over his. He passes out of the

vestibule, silent and sad, musing on the time he first stood there as

a beggar.

Now, the horizon of the Enchantress is unobstructed. Khalid is there

alone; and her free love can freely pass on from him to another. And

such messages they exchange! Such evaporations of the insipidities of

free love! Khalid again takes up with Shakib, from whom he does not

conceal anything. The epistles are read by both, and sometimes replied

to by both! And she, in an effort to seem Oriental, calls the

Dervish, "My Syrian Rose," "My Desert Flower," "My Beduin Boy," et

cetera, always closing her message with either a strip of Syrian sky

or a camel load of the narcissus. Ah, but not thus will the play

close. True, Khalid alone adorns her studio for a time, or rather

adores in it; he alone accompanies her to Bohemia. But the Dervish,

who was always going wrong in Bohemia,--always at the door of the

Devil,--ventures one night to escort another woman to her studio. Ah,

those studios! The Enchantress on hearing of the crime lights the fire

under her cauldron. "Double, double, toil and trouble!" She then goes

to the telephone--g-r-r-r-r you swine--you Phoenician murex--she hangs

up the receiver, and stirs the cauldron. "Double, double, toil and

trouble!" But the Dervish writes her an extraordinary letter, in which

we suspect the pen of our Scribe, and from which we can but transcribe

the following:

"You found in me a vacant heart," he pleads, "and you occupied

it. The divan therein is yours, yours alone. Nor shall I ever

permit a chance caller, an intruder, to exasperate you.... My

breast is a stronghold in which you are well fortified. How then

can any one disturb you?... How can I turn from myself against

myself? Somewhat of you, the best of you, circulates with my

blood; you are my breath of life. How can I then overcome you?

How can I turn to another for the sustenance which you alone can

give?... If I be thirst personified, you are the living, flowing

brook, the everlasting fountain. O for a drink--"

And here follows a hectic uprush about pearly breasts, and

honey-sources, and musk-scented arbours, closing with "Your Beduin Boy

shall come to-night."

Notwithstanding which, the Enchantress abandons the Syrian Dwelling:

she no longer fancies the vacant Divan of which Khalid speaks.

Fortress or no fortress, she gives up occupation and withdraws from

the foreigner her favour. Not only that; but the fire is crackling

under the cauldron, and the typewriter begins to click. Ay, these

modern witches can make even a typewriter dance around the fire and

join in the chorus. "Double, double, toil and trouble, Fire burn, and

cauldron bubble!" and the performance was transformed from the studio

to the magazine supplement of one of the Sunday newspapers. There, the

Dervish is thrown into the cauldron along with the magic herbs.

Bubble--bubble. The fire-eating Dervish, how can he now swallow this

double-tongued flame of hate and love? The Enchantress had wrought her

spell, had ministered her poison. Now, where can he find an antidote,

who can teach him a healing formula? Bruno D'Ast was once bewitched by

a sorceress, and by causing her to be burned he was immediately cured.

Ah, that Khalid could do this! Like an ordinary pamphlet he would

consign the Enchantress to the flames, and her scrap-books and novels

to boot. He does well, however, to return to his benevolent friend,

the Medium. The spell can be counteracted by another, though less

potent. Ay, even witchcraft has its homeopathic remedies.

And the Medium, Shakib tells us, is delighted to welcome back her

prodigal child. She opens to him her arms, and her heart; she slays

the fatted calf. "I knew that Allah will bring you back to me," she

ejaculates; "my prevision is seldom wrong." And kissing her hand,

Khalid falters, "Forgiveness is for the sinner, and the good are for

forgiveness." Whereupon, they plunge again into the Unseen, and thence

to Bohemia. The aftermath, however, does not come up to the

expectations of the good Medium. For the rigmarole of the Enchantress

about the Dervish in New York had already done its evil work.

And--double--double--wherever the Dervish goes. Especially in Bohemia,

where many of its daughters set their caps for him.

And here, he is neither shy nor slow nor visionary. Nor shall his

theory of immanent morality trouble him for the while. Reality is met

with reality on solid, though sometimes slippery, ground. His

animalism, long leashed and starved, is eager for prey. His Phoenician

passion is awake. And fortunately, Khalid finds himself in Bohemia

where the poison and the antidote are frequently offered together.

Here the spell of one sorceress can straightway be offset by that of

her sister. And we have our Scribe's word for it, that the Dervish

went as far and as deep with the huris, as the doctors eventually

would permit him. That is why, we believe, in commenting upon his

adventures there, he often quotes the couplet,

"In my sublunar paradise

There's plenty of honey--and plenty of flies."

The flies in his cup, however, can not be detected with the naked

eye. They are microbes rather--microbes which even the physicians can

not manage with satisfaction. For it must be acknowledged that

Khalid's immanent morality and intellectualism suffered an interregnum

with the huris. Reckless, thoughtless, heartless, he plunges headlong

again. It is said in Al-Hadith that he who guards himself against the

three cardinal evils, namely, of the tongue (_laklaka_), of the

stomach (_kabkaba_), and of the sex (_zabzaba_), will have guarded

himself against all evil. But Khalid reads not in the Hadith of the

Prophet. And that he became audacious, edacious, and loquacious, is

evident from such wit and flippancy as he here likes to display. "Some

women," says he, "might be likened to whiskey, others to seltzer

water; and many are those who, like myself, care neither for the soda

or the whiskey straight. A 'high-ball' I will have."

Nay, he even takes to punch; for in his cup of amour there is a subtle

and multifarious mixture. With him, he himself avows, one woman

complemented another. What the svelte brunette, for instance, lacked,

the steatopygous blonde amply supplied. Delicacy and intensity,

effervescence and depth, these he would have in a woman, or a hareem,

as in anything else. But these excellences, though found in a hareem,

will not fuse, as in a poem or a picture. Even thy bones, thou scented

high-lacquered Dervish, are likely to melt away before they melt into

one.

It is written in the K. L. MS. that women either bore, or inspire, or

excite. "The first and the last are to be met with anywhere; but the

second? Ah, well you have heard the story of Diogenes. So take up your

lamp and come along. But remember, when you do meet the woman that

inspires, you will begin to yearn for the woman that excites."

And here, the hospitality of the Dervish does not belie his Arab

blood. In Bohemia, the bonfire of his heart was never extinguished,

and the wayfarers stopping before his tent, be they of those who

bored, or excited, or inspired, were welcome guests for at least three

days and nights. And in this he follows the rule of hospitality among

his people.

[Illustration]

BOOK THE SECOND

IN THE TEMPLE

[Illustration]

TO NATURE

_O Mother eternal, divine, satanic, all encompassing, all-nourishing,

all-absorbing, O star-diademed, pearl-sandaled Goddess, I am thine

forever and ever: whether as a child of thy womb, or an embodiment of

a spirit-wave of thy light, or a dumb blind personification of thy

smiles and tears, or an ignis-fatuus of the intelligence that is in

thee or beyond thee, I am thine forever and ever: I come to thee, I

prostrate my face before thee, I surrender myself wholly to thee. O

touch me with thy wand divine again; stir me once more in thy

mysterious alembics; remake me to suit the majestic silence of thy

hills, the supernal purity of thy sky, the mystic austerity of thy

groves, the modesty of thy slow-swelling, soft-rolling streams, the

imperious pride of thy pines, the wild beauty and constancy of thy

mountain rivulets. Take me in thine arms, and whisper to me of thy

secrets; fill my senses with thy breath divine; show me the bottom of

thy terrible spirit; buffet me in thy storms, infusing in me of thy

ruggedness and strength, thy power and grandeur; lull me in thine

autumn sun-downs to teach me in the arts that enrapture, exalt,

supernaturalise. Sing me a lullaby, O Mother eternal! Give me to drink

of thy love, divine and diabolic; thy cruelty and thy kindness, I

accept both, if thou wilt but whisper to me the secret of both. Anoint

me with the chrism of spontaneity that I may be ever worthy of

thee.--Withdraw not from me thy hand, lest universal love and sympathy

die in my breast.--I implore thee, O Mother eternal, O sea-throned,

heaven-canopied Goddess, I prostrate my face before thee, I surrender

myself wholly to thee. And whether I be to-morrow the censer in the

hand of thy High Priest, or the incense in the censer,--whether I

become a star-gem in thy cestus or a sun in thy diadem or even a

firefly in thy fane, I am content. For I am certain that it shall be

for the best._--KHALID.

CHAPTER I

THE DOWRY OF DEMOCRACY

Old Arabic books, printed in Bulaq, generally have a broad margin

wherein a separate work, independent of the text, adds gloom to the

page. We have before us one of these tomes in which the text treats of

the ethics of life and religion, and the margins are darkened with

certain adventures which Shahrazad might have added to her famous

Nights. The similarity between Khalid's life in its present stage and

some such book, is evident. Nay, he has been so assiduous in writing

the marginal Work, that ever since he set fire to his peddling-box, we

have had little in the Text worth transcribing. Nothing, in fact; for

many pages back are as blank as the evil genius of Bohemia could wish

them. And how could one with that mara upon him, write of the ethics

of life and religion?

Al-Hamazani used to say that in Jorajan the man from Khorasan must

open thrice his purse: first, to pay for the rent; second, for the

food; and third, for his coffin. And so, in Khalid's case, at least,

is Bohemia. For though the purse be not his own, he was paying dear,

and even in advance, in what is dearer than gold, for his experience.

"O, that the Devil did not take such interest in the marginal work of

our life! Why should we write it then, and for whom? And how will it

fare with us when, chapfallen in the end and mortified, we stand

before the great Task-Master like delinquent school boys with a blank

text in our hands?" (Thus Shakib, who has caught the moralising evil

from his Master.) And that we must stand, and fall, for thus standing,

he is quite certain. At least, Khalid is. For he would not return to

the Text to make up for the blank pages therein, if he were not.

"When he returned from his last sojourn in Bohemia," writes our

Scribe, "Khalid was pitiful to behold. Even Sindbad, had he seen him,

would have been struck with wonder. The tears rushed to my eyes when

we embraced; for instead of Khalid I had in my arms a phantom. And I

could not but repeat the lines of Al-Mutanabbi,

"So phantom-like I am, and though so near,

If I spoke not, thou wouldst not know I'm here."

"No more voyages, I trust, O thou Sindbad." And he replied, "Yes, one

more; but to our dear native land this time." In fact, I, too, was

beginning to suffer from nostalgia, and was much desirous of returning

home. But Shakib is in such a business tangle that he could not

extricate himself in a day. So, they tarry another year in New York,

the one meanwhile unravelling his affairs, settling with his creditors

and collecting what few debts he had, the other brooding over the few

blank pages in his Text.

One day he receives a letter from a fellow traveller, a distinguished

citizen of Tammany Land, whom he had met and befriended in Bohemia,

relating to an enterprise of great pith and moment. It was election

time, we learn, and the high post of political canvasser of the Syrian

District was offered to Khalid for a consideration of--but the letter

which Shakib happily preserved, we give in full.

"Dear Khalid:

"I have succeeded in getting Mr. O'Donohue to appoint you a

canvasser of the Syrian District. You must stir yourself,

therefore, and try to do some good work, among the Syrian

voters, for Democracy's Candidate this campaign. Here is a

chance which, with a little hustling on your part, will

materialise. And I see no reason why you should not try to cash

your influence among your people. This is no mean position, mind

you. And if you will come up to the Wigwam to-morrow, I'll give

you a few suggestions on the business of manipulating votes.

"Yours truly,

"PATRICK HOOLIHAN."

And the said Mr. Hoolihan, the letter shows, is Secretary to

Mr. O'Donohue, who is first henchman to the Boss. Such a letter,

if luckily misunderstood, will fire for a while the youthful

imagination. No; not his Shamrag Majesty's Tammany Agent to

Syria, this Canvassership, you poor phantom-like zany! A high

post, indeed, you fond and pitiful dreamer, on which you must

hang the higher aspirations of your soul, together with your

theory of immanent morality. You would not know this at first. You

would still kiss the official notification of Mr. Hoolihan, and

hug it fondly to your breast. Very well. At last--and the gods

will not damn thee for musing--you will stand in the band-wagon

before the corner groggery and be the object of the admiration of

your fellow citizens--perhaps of missiles, too. Very well, Khalid;

but you must shear that noddle of thine, and straightway, for the

poets are potted in Tammany Land. We say this for your sake.

The orator-dream of youth, ye gods, shall it be realised in this

heaven of a dray-cart with its kerosene torch and its drum, smelling

and sounding rather of Juhannam? Surely, from the Table of Bohemia to

the Stump in Tammany Land, is a far cry. But believe us, O Khalid, you

will wish you were again in the gardens of Proserpine, when the

silence and darkness extinguish the torch and the drum and the echoes

of the shouting crowds. The headaches are certain to follow this

inebriation. You did not believe Shakib; you would not be admonished;

you would go to the Wigwam for your portfolio. "_High post_,"

"_political canvasser_," "_manipulation of votes_," you will know the

exact meaning of these esoteric terms, when, alas, you meet Mr.

Hoolihan. For you must know that not every one you meet in Bohemia is

not a Philistine. Indeed, many helots are there, who come from

Philistia to spy out the Land.

We read in the _Histoire Intime_ of Shakib that Khalid did become a

Tammany citizen, that is to say, a Tammany dray-horse; that he was

much esteemed by the Honourable Henchmen, and once in the Wigwam he

was particularly noticed by his Shamrag Majesty Boss O'Graft; that he

was Tammany's Agent to the Editors of the Syrian newspapers of New

York, whom he enrolled in the service of the Noble Cause for a

consideration which no eloquence or shrewdness could reduce to a

minimum; that he also took to the stump and dispensed to his fellow

citizens, with rhetorical gestures at least, of the cut-and-dried

logic which the Committee of Buncombe on such occasions furnishes its

squad of talented spouters; and that--the most important this--he was

subject in the end to the ignominy of waiting in the lobby with

tuft-hunters and political stock-jobbers, until it pleased the

Committee of Buncombe and the Honourable Treasurer thereof to give

him--a card of dismissal!

But what virtue is there in waiting, our cynical friend would ask. Why

not go home and sleep? Because, O cynical friend, the Wigwam now is

Khalid's home. For was he not, in creaking boots and a slouch hat,

ceremoniously married to Democracy? Ay, and after spending their

honeymoon on the Stump and living another month or two with his troll

among her People, he returns to his cellar to brood, not over the

blank pages in his Text, nor over the disastrous results of the

Campaign, but on the weightier matter of divorce. For although

Politics and Romance, in the History of Human Intrigue, have often

known and enjoyed the same yoke, with Khalid they refused to pull at

the plough. They were not sensible even to the goad. Either the yoke

in his case was too loose, or the new yoke-fellow too thick-skinned

and stubborn.

Moreover, the promise of a handsome dowry, made by the Shamrag

Father-in-Law or his Brokers materialised only in the rotten eggs and

tomatoes with which the Orator was cordially received on his honeymoon

trip. Such a marriage, O Mohammad, and such a honeymoon, and such a

dowry!--is not this enough to shake the very sides of the Kaaba with

laughter? And yet, in the Wigwam this not uncommon affair was

indifferently considered; for the good and honourable Tammanyites

marry off their Daughters every day to foreigners and natives alike,

and with like extraordinary picturesque results.

Were it not wiser, therefore, O Khalid, had you consulted your

friend the Dictionary before you saw exact meaning of canvass and

manipulation, before you put on your squeaking boots and slouch

hat and gave your hand and heart to Tammany's Daughter and her

Father-in-Law O'Graft? But the Dictionary, too, often falls short

of human experience; and even Mr. O'Donohue could at best but hint at

the meaning of the esoteric terms of Tammany's political creed. These

you must define for yourself as you go along; and change and revise

your definitions as you rise or descend in the Sacred Order. For

canvass here might mean eloquence; there it might mean shrewdness;

lower down, intimidation and coercion; and further depthward, human

sloth and misery. It is but a common deal in horses. Ay, in Tammany

Land it is essentially a trade honestly conducted on the known

principle of supply and demand. These truths you had to discover for

yourself, you say; for neither the Dictionary, nor your friend and

fellow traveller in Bohemia, Mr. Hoolihan, could stretch their

knowledge or their conscience to such a compass. And you are not

sorry to have made such a discovery? Can you think of the Dowry and

say that? We are, indeed, sorry for you. And we would fain insert

in letter D of the Dictionary a new definition: namely, Dowry, n.

(Tammany Land Slang). The odoriferous missiles, such as eggs and

tomatoes, which are showered on an Orator-Groom by the people.

But see what big profits Khalid draws from these small shares in the

Reality Stock Company. You remember, good Reader, how he was kicked

away from the door of the Temple of Atheism. The stogies of that

inspired Doorkeeper were divine, according to his way of viewing

things, for they were at that particular moment God's own boots. Ay,

it was God, he often repeats, who kicked him away from the Temple of

his enemies. And now, he finds the Dowry of Democracy, with all its

wonderful revelations, as profitable in its results, as divine in its

purpose. And in proof of this, we give here a copy of his letter to

Boss O'Graft, written in that downright manner of his contemporaries,

the English original of which we find in the _Histoire Intime_.

"From Khalid to Boss O'Graft.

"Right _Dis_honourable Boss:

"I have just received a check from your Treasurer, which by no

right whatever is due me, having been paid for my services by

Him who knows better than you and your Treasurer what I deserve.

The voice of the people, and their eggs and tomatoes, too, are,

indeed, God's. And you should know this, you who dare to

remunerate me in what is not half as clean as those missiles. I

return not your insult of a check, however; but I have tried to

do your state some service in purchasing the few boxes of soap

which I am now dispatching to the Wigwam. You need more, I know,

you and your Honourable Henchmen or Hashmen. And instead of

canvassing and orating for Democracy's illustrious Candidate and

the Noble Cause, _mashallah!_ one ought to do a little

canvassing for Honesty and Truth among Democracy's leaders,

tuft-hunters, political stock-jobbers, and such like. O, for a

higher stump, my Boss, to preach to those who are supporting and

degrading the stumps and the stump-orators of the Republic!"

And is it come to this, you poor phantom-like dreamer? Think you a

Tammany Boss is like your atheists and attorneys and women of the

studio, at whom you could vent your ire without let or hindrance?

These harmless humans have no constables at their command. But his

Shamrag Majesty--O wretched Khalid, must we bring one of his myrmidons

to your cellar to prove to you that, even in this Tammany Land, you

can not with immunity give free and honest expression to your

thoughts? Now, were you not summoned to the Shamrag's presence to

answer for the crime of _lèse-majesté_? And were you not, for your

audacity, left to brood ten days and nights in gaol? And what tedium

we have in Shakib's History about the charge on which he was arrested.

It is unconscionable that Khalid should misappropriate Party funds.

Indeed, he never even touched or saw any of it, excepting, of course,

that check which he returned. But the Boss was still in power. And

what could Shakib do to exonerate his friend? He did much, and he

tells as much about it. With check-boot in his pocket, he makes his

way through aldermen, placemen, henchmen, and other questionable

political species of humanity, up to the Seat of Justice--but such

detail, though of the veracity of the writer nothing doubting, we

gladly set aside, since we believe with Khalid that his ten days in

gaol were akin to the Boots and the Dowry in their motive and effect.

But our Scribe, though never remiss when Khalid is in a pickle, finds

much amiss in Khalid's thoughts and sentiments. And as a further

illustration of the limpid shallows of the one and the often opaque

depths of the other, we give space to the following:

"When Khalid was ordered to appear before the Boss," writes Shakib,

"such curiosity and anxiety as I felt at that time made me accompany

him. For I was anxious about Khalid, and curious to see this great

Leader of men. We set out, therefore, together, I musing on an

incident in Baalbek when we went out to meet the Pasha of the Lebanons

and a droll old peasant, having seen him for the first time, cried

out, 'I thought the Pasha to be a Pasha, but he's but a man.' And I am

sorry, after having seen the Boss, I can not say as much for him."

Here follows a little philosophising, unbecoming of our Scribe, on men

and names and how they act and react upon each other. Also, a page

about his misgivings and the effort he made to persuade Khalid not to

appear before the Boss. But skipping over these, "we reach the Tammany

Wigwam and are conducted by a thick-set, heavy-jowled, heavy-booted

citizen through the long corridor into a little square room occupied

by a little square-faced clerk. Here we wait a half hour and more,

during which the young gentleman, with his bell before him and his

orders to minor clerks who come and go, poses as somebody of some

importance. We are then asked to follow him from one room into

another, until we reach the one adjoining the private office of the

Boss. A knock or two are executed on the door of Greatness with a

nauseous sense of awe, and 'Come in,' Greatness within huskily

replies. The square-faced clerk enters, shuts the door after him,

returns in a trice, and conducts us into the awful Presence. Ye gods

of Baalbek, the like of this I never saw before. Here is a room

sumptuously furnished with sofas and fauteuils, and rugs from Ispahan.

On the walls are pictures of Washington, Jefferson, and the great Boss

Tweed; and right under the last named, behind that preciously carved

mahogany desk, in that soft rolling mahogany chair, is the squat

figure of the big Boss. On the desk before him, besides a plethora of

documents, lay many things pell-mell, among which I noticed a box of

cigars, the Criminal Code, and, most prominent of all, the Boss' feet,

raised there either to bid us welcome, or to remind us of his power.

And the rich Ispahan rug, the cuspidor being small and overfull,

receives the richly coloured matter which he spurts forth every time

he takes the cigar out of his mouth. O, the vulgarity, the bestiality

of it! Think of those poor patient Persian weavers who weave the

tissues of their hearts into such beautiful work, and of this proud

and paltry Boss, whose office should have been furnished with straw.

Yes, with straw; and the souls of those poor artist-weavers will sleep

in peace. O, the ignominy of having such precious pieces of

workmanship under the feet and spittle of such vulgar specimens of

humanity. But if the Boss had purchased these rugs himself, with money

earned by his own brow-sweat, I am sure he would appreciate them

better. He would then know, if not their intrinsic worth, at least

their market value. Yes, and they were presented to him by some one

_needing, I suppose, police connivance and protection_. The first half

of this statement I had from the Boss himself; the second, I base on

Khalid's knowingness and suspicion. Be this, however, as it may.

"When we entered this sumptuously furnished office, the squat figure

in the chair under the picture of Boss Tweed, remained as immobile as

a fixture and did not as much as reply to our _salaam_. But he pointed

disdainfully to seats in the corner of the room, saying, 'Sit down

there,' in a manner quite in keeping with his stogies raised on the

desk directly in our face. Such freedom, nay, such bestiality, I could

never tolerate. Indeed, I prefer the suavity and palaver of Turkish

officials, no matter how crafty and corrupt, to the puffing, spitting

manners of these come-up-from-the-shamble men. But Khalid could sit

there as immobile as the Boss himself, and he did so, billah! For he

was thinking all the while, as he told me when we came out, not of

such matters as grate on the susceptibilities of a poet, but on the

one sole idea of how such a bad titman could lead by the nose so many

good people."

Shakib then proceeds to give us a verbatim report of the interview. It

begins with the Boss' question, "What do you mean by writing such a

letter?" and ends with this other, "What do you mean by immanent

morality?" The reader, given the head and tail of the matter, can

supply the missing parts. Or, given its two bases, he can construct

this triangle of Politics, Ethics, and the Constable, with Khalid's

letter, offended Majesty, and a prison cell, as its three turning

points. We extract from the report, however, the concluding advice of

the Boss. For when he asked Khalid again what he meant by immanent

morality, he continued in a crescendo of indignation: "You mean the

morality of hayseeds, and priests, and philosophical fools? That sort

of morality will not as much as secure a vote during the campaign, nor

even help to keep the lowest clerk in office. That sort of morality is

good for your mountain peasants or other barbarous tribes. But the

free and progressive people of the United States must have something

better, nobler, more practical. You'd do well, therefore, to get you a

pair of rings, hang them in your ears, and go preach, your immanent

morality to the South African Pappoos. But before you go, you shall

taste of the rigour of our law, you insolent, brazen-faced, unmannerly

scoundrel!"

And we are assured that the Boss did not remain immobile as be spurted

forth this mixture of wrath and wisdom, nor did the stogies; for

moved by his own words, he rose promptly to his feet. "And what

of it," exclaims our Scribe. "Surely, I had rather see those boots

perform any office, high or low, as to behold their soles raised like

mirrors to my face." But how high an office they performed when the

Boss came forward, we are not told. All that our Scribe gives out

about the matter amounts to this: namely, that he walked out of the

room, and as he looked back to see if Khalid was following, he saw him

brushing with his hands--his hips! And on that very day Khalid was

summoned to appear before the Court and give answer to the charge of

misappropriation of public funds. The orator-dream of youth--what a

realisation! He comes to Court, and after the legal formalities are

performed, he is delivered unto an officer who escorts him across

the Bridge of Sighs to gaol. There, for ten days and nights,--and it

might have been ten months were it not for his devoted and steadfast

friend,--we leave Khalid to brood on Democracy and the Dowry of

Democracy. A few extracts from the Chapter in the K. L. MS.

entitled "In Prison," are, therefore, appropriate.

"So long as one has faith," he writes, "in the general moral

summation of the experience of mankind, as the philosophy of

reason assures us, one should not despair. But the material fact

of the Present, the dark moment of no-morality, consider that,

my suffering Brothers. And reflect further that in this great

City of New York the majority of citizens consider it a blessing

to have a _rojail_ (titman) for their boss and leader.... How

often have I mused that if Ponce de Leon sought the Fountain of

Youth in the New World, I, Khalid, sought the Fountain of Truth,

and both of us have been equally successful!

"But the Americans are neither Pagans--which is consoling--nor

fetish-worshipping heathens: they are all true and honest

votaries of Mammon, their great God, their one and only God. And

is it not natural that the Demiurgic Dollar should be the

national Deity of America? Have not deities been always

conceived after man's needs and aspirations? Thus in Egypt, in a

locality where the manufacture of pottery was the chief

industry, God was represented as a potter; in agricultural

districts, as a god of harvest; among warring tribes as an

avenger, a Jehovah. And the more needs, the more deities; the

higher the aspirations, the better the gods. Hence the ugly

fetish of a savage tribe, and the beautiful mythology of a Greek

Civilisation. Change the needs and aspirations of the Americans,

therefore, and you will have changed their worship, their

national Deity, and even their Government. And believe me, this

change is coming; people get tired of their gods as of

everything else. Ay, the time will come, when man in this

America shall not suffer for not being a seeker and lover and

defender of the Dollar....

"Obedience, like faith, is a divine gift; but only when it comes

from the heart: only when prompted by love and sincerity is it

divine. If you can not, however, reverence what you obey, then,

I say, withhold your obedience. And if you prefer to barter your

identity or ego for a counterfeit coin of ideology, that right

is yours. For under a liberal Constitution and in a free

Government, you are also at liberty to sell your soul, to open a

bank account for your conscience. But don't blame God, or

Destiny, or Society, when you find yourself, after doing this, a

brother to the ox. Herein, we Orientals differ from Europeans

and Americans; we are never bribed into obedience. We obey

either from reverence and love, or from fear. We are either

power-worshippers or cowards but never, never traders. It might

be said that the masses in the East are blind slaves, while in

Europe and America they are become blind rebels. And which is

the better part of valour, when one is blind--submission or

revolt?...

"No; popular suffrage helps not the suffering individual; nor

does it conduce to a better and higher morality. Why, my

Masters, it can not as much as purge its own channels. For what

is the ballot box, I ask again, but a modern vehicle of

corruption and debasement? The ballot box, believe me, can not

add a cubit to your frame, nor can it shed a modicum of light on

the deeper problems of life. Of course, it is the exponent of

the will of the majority, that is to say, the will of the Party

that has more money at its disposal. The majority, and Iblis,

and Juhannam--ah, come out with me to the new gods!..."

But we must make allowance for these girds and gibes at Democracy, of

which we have given a specimen. Khalid's irony bites so deep at times

as to get at the very bone of truth. And here is the marrow of it. We

translate the following prophecy with which he closes his Chapter "In

Prison," and with it, too, we close ours.

"But my faith in man," he swears, "is as strong as my faith in

God. And as strong, too, perhaps, is my faith in the future

world-ruling destiny of America. To these United States shall

the Nations of the World turn one day for the best model of good

Government; in these United States the well-springs of the

higher aspirations of the soul shall quench the thirst of every

race-traveller on the highway of emancipation; and from these

United States the sun and moon of a great Faith and a great Art

shall rise upon mankind. I believe this, billah! and I am

willing to go on the witness stand to swear to it. Ay, in this

New World, the higher Superman shall rise. And he shall not be

of the tribe of Overmen of the present age, of the beautiful

blond beast of Zarathustra, who would riddle mankind as they

would riddle wheat or flour; nor of those political moralists

who would reform the world as they would a parish.

"From his transcendental height, the Superman of America shall

ray forth in every direction the divine light, which shall

mellow and purify the spirit of Nations and strengthen and

sweeten the spirit of men, in this New World, I tell you, he

shall be born, but he shall not be an American in the Democratic

sense. He shall be nor of the Old World nor of the New; he shall

be, my Brothers, of both. In him shall be reincarnated the

Asiatic spirit of origination, of Poesy and Prophecy, and the

European spirit of Art, and the American spirit of Invention.

Ay, the Nation that leads the world to-day in material progress

shall lead it, too, in the future, in the higher things of the

mind and soul. And when you reach that height, O beloved

America, you will be far from the majority-rule, and Iblis, and

Juhannam. And you will then conquer those 'enormous mud

Megatheriums' of which Carlyle makes loud mention."

CHAPTER II

SUBTRANSCENDENTAL

Deficiencies in individuals, as in States, have their value and

import. Indeed, that sublime impulse of perfectibility, always

vivacious, always working under various forms and with one underlying

purpose, would be futile without them, and fatuous. And what were life

without this incessant striving of the spirit? What were life without

its angles of difficulty and defeat, and its apices of triumph and

power? A banality this, you will say. But need we not be reminded of

these wholesome truths, when the striving after originality nowadays

is productive of so much quackery? The impulse of perfectibility, we

repeat, whether at work in a Studio, or in a Factory, or in a Prison

Cell, is the most noble of all human impulses, the most divine.

Of that Chapter, In Prison, we have given what might be called the

exogenous bark of the Soul, or that which environment creates. And now

we shall endeavour to show the reader somewhat of the ludigenous

process, by which the Soul, thrumming its own strings or eating its

own guts, develops and increases its numbers. For Khalid in these

gaol-days is much like Hamlet's player, or even like Hamlet

himself--always soliloquising, tearing a passion to rags. And what

mean these outbursts and objurgations of his, you will ask; these

suggestions, fugitive, rhapsodical, mystical; this furibund allegro

about Money, Mediums, and Bohemia; these sobs and tears and

asseverations, in which our Lady of the Studio and Shakib are both

expunged with great billahs;--the force and significance of these

subliminal uprushes, dear Reader, we confess we are, like yourself,

unable to understand, without the aid of our Interpreter. We shall,

therefore, let him speak.

"When in prison," writes Shakib, "Khalid was subject to spasms and

strange hallucinations. One day, when I was sweating in the effort to

get him out of gaol, he sends me word to come and see him. I go; and

after waiting a while at the Iron gate, I behold Khalid rushing down

the isle like an angry lion. 'What do you want,' he growled, 'why are

you here?' And I, amazed, 'Did you not send for me?' And he snapped

up, 'I did; but you should not have come. You should withhold from me

your favours.' Life of Allah, I was stunned. I feared lest his mind,

too, had gone in the direction of his health, which was already

sorrily undermined. I looked at him with dim, tearful eyes, and

assured him that soon he shall be free. 'And what is the use of

freedom,' he exclaimed, 'when it drags us to lower and darker depths?

Don't think I am miserable in prison. No; I am not--I am happy. I have

had strange visions, marvellous. O my Brother, if you could behold the

sloughs, deeper and darker than any prison-cell, into which _you_ have

thrown me. Yes, _you_--and another. O, I hate you both. I hate my

best lovers. I hate You--no--no, no, no.' And he falls on me, embraces

me, and bathes my cheeks with his tears. After which he falters out

beseechingly, 'Promise, promise that you will not give me any more

money, and though starving and in rags you find me crouching at your

door, promise.' And of a truth, I acquiesced in all he said, seeing

how shaken in body and mind he was. But not until I had made a promise

under oath would he be tranquillised. And so, after our farewell

embrace, he asked me to come again the following day and bring him

some books to read. This I did, fetching with me Rousseau's _Emile_

and Carlyle's _Hero-Worship_, the only two books he had in the cellar.

And when he saw them, he exclaimed with joy, 'The very books I want! I

read them twice already, and I shall read them again. O, let me kiss

you for the thought.' And in an ecstasy he overwhelms me again with

suffusing sobs and embraces.

"What a difference, I thought, between Khalid of yesterday and Khalid

of to-day. What a transformation! Even I who know the turn and temper

of his nature had much this time to fear. Surely, an alienist would

have made a case of him. But I began to get an inkling into his cue of

passion, when he told me that he was going to start a little business

again, if I lend him the necessary capital. But I reminded him that we

shall soon be returning home. 'No, not I,' he swore; 'not until I can

pay my own passage, at least. I told you yesterday I'll accept no more

money from you, except, of course, the sum I need to start the little

business I am contemplating.' 'And suppose you lose this money,' I

asked.--'Why, then _you_ lose _me_. But no, you shall not. For I know,

I believe, I am sure, I swear that my scheme this time will not be a

failure in any sense of the word. I have heavenly testimony on

that.'--'And what was the matter with you yesterday? Why were you so

queer?' 'O, I had nightmares and visions the night before, and you

came too early in the morning. See this.' And he holds down his head

to show me the back of his neck. 'Is there no swelling here? I feel

it. Oh, it pains me yet. But I shall tell you about it and about the

vision when I am out.'--And at this, the gaoler comes to inform us

that Khalid's minutes are spent and he must return to his cell."

All of which from our Interpreter is as clear as God Save the King.

And from which we hope our Reader will infer that those outbursts and

tears and rhapsodies of Khalid did mean somewhat. They did mean, even

when we first approached his cell, that something was going on in

him--a revolution, a _coup d'état_, so to speak, of the spirit. For a

Prince in Rags, but not in Debts and Dishonour, will throttle the

Harpy which has hitherto ruled and degraded his soul.

But the dwelling, too, of that soul is sorely undermined. And so, his

leal and loving friend Shakib takes him later to the best physician in

the City, who after the tapping and auscultation, shakes his head,

writes his prescriptions, and advises Khalid to keep in the open air

as much as possible, or better still, to return to his native

country. The last portion of the advice, however, Khalid can not

follow at present. For he will either return home on his own account

or die in New York. "If I can not in time save enough money for the

Steamship Company," he said to Shakib, "I can at least leave enough to

settle the undertaker's bill. And in either case, I shall have paid my

own passage out of this New World. And I shall stand before my Maker

in a shroud, at least, which I can call my own."

To which Shakib replies by going to the druggist with the prescriptions.

And when he returns to the cellar with a package of four or five

medicine bottles for rubbing and smelling and drinking, he finds Khalid

sitting near the stove--we are now in the last month of Winter--warming

his hands on the flames of the two last books he read. _Emile_ and

_Hero-Worship_ go the way of all the rest. And there he sits, meditating

over Carlyle's crepitating fire and Rousseau's writhing, sibilating

flame. And it may be he thought of neither. Perhaps he was brooding

over the resolution he had made, and the ominous shaking of the doctor's

head. Ah, but his tutelar deities are better physicians, he thought.

And having made his choice, he will pitch the medicine bottles into the

street, and only follow the doctor's advice by keeping in the open air.

Behold him, therefore, with a note in hand, applying to Shakib, in a

formal and business-like manner, for a loan; and see that noble

benefactor and friend, after gladly giving the money, throw the note

into the fire. And now, Khalid is neither dervish nor philosopher,

but a man of business with a capital of twenty-five dollars in his

pocket. And with one-fifth of this capital he buys a second-hand

push-cart from his Greek neighbour, wends his way with it to the

market-place, makes a purchase there of a few boxes of oranges, sorts

them in his cart into three classes,--"there is no equality in

nature," he says, while doing this,--sticks a price card at the head

of each class, and starts, in the name of Allah, his business. That is

how he will keep in the open air twelve hours a day.

But in the district where he is known he does not long remain. The

sympathy of his compatriots is to him worse than the doctor's

medicines, and those who had often heard him speechifying exchanged

significant looks when he passed. Moreover, the police would not let

him set up his stand anywhere. "There comes the push-cart orator,"

they would say to each other; and before our poor Syrian stops to

breathe, one of them grumpishly cries out, "Move on there! Move on!"

Once Khalid ventures to ask, "But why are others allowed to set up

their stands here?" And the "copper" (we beg the Critic's pardon

again) coming forward twirling his club, lays his hand on Khalid's

shoulder and calmly this: "Don't you think I know you? Move on, I

say." O Khalid, have you forgotten that these "coppers" are the

minions of Tammany? Why tarry, therefore, and ask questions? Yes, make

a big move at once--out of the district entirely.

Now, to the East Side, into the Jewish Quarter, Khalid directs his

cart. And there, he falls in with Jewish fellow push-cart peddlers

and puts up with them in a cellar similar to his in the Syrian

Quarter. But only for a month could he suffer what the Jew has

suffered for centuries. Why? There is this difference between the

cellar of the Semite Syrian and that of the Semite Jew: in the first

we eat _mojadderah_, in the second, _kosher_ but stinking flesh; in

the first we read poetry and play the lute, in the second we fight

about the rent and the division of the profits of the day; in the

first we sleep in linen "as white as the wings of the dove," in the

second on pieces of smelly blankets; the first is redolent of ottar of

roses, Shakib's favourite perfume, the second is especially made

insufferable by that stench which is peculiar to every Hebrew hive.

For these and other reasons, Khalid separates himself from his Semite

fellow peddlers, and makes this time a bigger move than the first.

Ay, even to the Bronx, where often in former days, shouldering the

peddling-box, he tramped, will he now push his orange-cart and his

hopes. There, between City and Country, nearer to Nature, and not far

from the traffic of life, he fares better both in health and purse. It

is much to his liking, this upper end of the City. Here the atmosphere

is more peaceful and soothing, and the police are more agreeable. No,

they do not nickname and bully him in the Bronx. And never was he

ordered to move on, even though he set up his stand for months at the

same corner. "Ah, how much kinder and more humane people become," he

says, "even when they are not altogether out of the City, but only on

the outskirts of the country expanse."

Khalid passes the Spring and Summer in the Bronx and keeps in the open

air, not only in the day, but also in the night. How he does this, is

told in a letter which he writes to Shakib. But does he sleep at all,

you ask, and how, and where? Reader, we thank you for your anxiety

about Khalid's health. And we would fain show you the Magic Carpet

which he carries in the lock-box of his push-cart. But see for

yourself, here be neither Magic Carpet, nor Magic Ring. Only his

papers, a few towels, a blanket, some underwear, and his coffee

utensils, are here. For Khalid could forego his _mojadderah_, but

never his coffee, the Arab that he is. But an Arab on the wayfare, if

he finds himself at night far from the camp, will dig him a ditch in

the sands and lie there to sleep under the living stars. Khalid could

not do thus, neither in the City nor out of it. And yet, he did not

lodge within doors. He hired a place only for his push-cart; and this,

a small padlock-booth where he deposits his stock in trade. But how he

lived in the Bronx is described in the following letter:

"My loving Brother Shakib,

"I have been two months here, in a neighbourhood familiar to

you. Not far from the place where I sleep is the sycamore tree

under which I burned my peddling-box. And perhaps I shall yet

burn there my push-cart too. But for the present, all's well. My

business is good and my health is improving. The money-order I

am enclosing with this, will cancel the note, but not the many

debts, I owe you. And I hope to be able to join you again soon,

to make the voyage to our native land together. Meanwhile I am

working, and laying up a little something. I make from two to

three dollars a day, of which I never spend more than one. And

this on one meal only; for my lodging and my lunch and breakfast

cost next to nothing. Yes, I can be a push-cart peddler in the

day; I can sleep out of doors at night; I can do with coffee and

oranges for lunch and breakfast; but in the evening I will

assert my dignity and do justice to my taste: I will dine at the

Hermitage and permit you to call me a fool. And why not, since

my purse, like my stomach, is now my own? Why not go to the

Hermitage since my push-cart income permits of it? But the first

night I went there my shabbiness attracted the discomforting

attention of the fashionable diners, and made even the waiters

offensive. Indeed, one of them came to ask if I were looking for

somebody. 'No,' I replied with suppressed indignation; 'I'm

looking for a place where I can sit down and eat, without being

eaten by the eyes of the vulgar curious.' And I pass into an

arbor, which from that night becomes virtually my own, followed

by a waiter who from that night, too, became my friend. For

every evening I go there, I find my table unoccupied and my

waiter ready to receive and serve me. But don't think he does

this for the sake of my black eyes or my philosophy. That

disdainful glance of his on the first evening I could never

forget, billah. And I found that it could be baited and mellowed

only by a liberal tip. And this I make in advance every week for

both my comfort and his. Yes, I am a fool, I grant you, but I'm

not out of my element there.

"After dinner I take a stroll in the Flower Gardens, and

crossing the rickety wooden bridge over the river, I enter the

hemlock grove. Here, in a sequestered spot near the river bank,

I lay me on the grass and sleep for the night. I always bring my

towels with me; for in the morning I take a dip, and at night I

use them for a pillow. When the weather requires it, I bring my

blankets too. And hanging one of them over me, tied to the trees

by the cords sown to its corners, I wrap myself in the other,

and praise Allah.

"These and the towels, after taking my bath, I leave at the

Hermitage; my waiter minds them for me. And so, I suspect I am

happy--if, curse it! I could but breathe better. O, come up to

see me. I'll give you a royal dinner at the Hermitage, and a

royal bed in the hemlock grove on the river-bank. Do come up,

the peace of Allah upon thee. Read my salaam to Im-Hanna."

And during his five months in the Bronx he did not sleep five nights

within doors, we are told, nor did he once dine out of the Hermitage.

Even his hair, a fantastic fatuity behind a push-cart, he did not take

the trouble to cut or trim. It must have helped his business. But this

constancy, never before sustained to such a degree, must soon cease,

having laid up, thanks to his push-cart and the people of the Bronx,

enough to carry him, not only to Baalbek, but to _Aymakanenkan_.

CHAPTER III

THE FALSE DAWN

What the Arabs always said of Andalusia, Khalid and Shakib said

once of America: a most beautiful country with one single vice--it

makes foreigners forget their native land. But now they are both

suffering from nostalgia, and America, therefore, is without a

single vice. It is perfect, heavenly, ideal. In it one sees only the

vices of other races, and the ugliness of other nations. America

herself is as lovely as a dimpled babe, and as innocent. A dimpled

babe she. But wait until she grows, and she will have more than one

vice to demand forgetfulness.

Shakib, however, is not going to wait. He begins to hear the call of

his own country, now that his bank account is big enough to procure

for him the Pashalic of Syria. And Khalid, though his push-cart had

developed to a stationary fruit stand,--and perhaps for this very

reason,--is now desirous of leaving America anon. He is afraid of

success overtaking him. Moreover, the Bronx Park has awakened in him

his long dormant love of Nature. For while warming himself on the

flames of knowledge in the cellar, or rioting with the Bassarides of

Bohemia, or canvassing and speechifying for Tammany, he little thought

of what he had deserted in his native country. The ancient historical

rivers flowing through a land made sacred by the divine madness of the

human spirit; the snow-capped mountains at the feet of which the lily

and the oleander bloom; the pine forests diffusing their fragrance

even among the downy clouds; the peaceful, sun-swept multi-coloured

meadows; the trellised vines, the fig groves, the quince orchards, the

orangeries: the absence of these did not disturb his serenity in the

cellar, his voluptuousness in Bohemia, his enthusiasm in Tammany

Land.

And we must not forget to mention that, besides the divine voice of

Nature and native soil, he long since has heard and still hears the

still sweet voice of one who might be dearer to him than all. For

Khalid, after his return from Bohemia, continued to curse the huris in

his dreams. And he little did taste of the blessings of "sore labour's

bath, balm of hurt minds." Ay, when he was not racked and harrowed by

nightmares, he was either disturbed by the angels of his visions or

the succubi of his dreams. And so, he determines to go to Syria for a

night's sleep, at least, of the innocent and just. His cousin Najma is

there, and that is enough. Once he sees her, the huris are no more.

Now Shakib, who is more faithful in his narration than we first

thought--who speaks of Khalid as he is, extenuating nothing--gives us

access to a letter which he received from the Bronx a month before

their departure from New York. In these Letters of Khalid, which our

Scribe happily preserved, we feel somewhat relieved of the dogmatism,

fantastic, mystical, severe, which we often meet with in the K. L.

MS. In his Letters, our Syrian peddler and seer is a plain blunt man

unbosoming himself to his friend. Read this, for instance.

"My loving Brother:

"It is raining so hard to-night that I must sleep, or in fact

keep, within doors. Would you believe it, I am no more

accustomed to the luxuries of a soft spring-bed, and I can not

even sleep on the floor, where I have moved my mattress. I am

sore, broken in mind and spirit. Even the hemlock grove and the

melancholy stillness of the river, are beginning to annoy me.

Oh, I am tired of everything here, tired even of the cocktails,

tired of the push-cart, tired of earning as much as five dollars

a day. Next Sunday is inauguration day for my stationary fruit

stand; but I don't think it's going to stand there long enough

to deserve to be baptized with champagne. If you come up,

therefore, we'll have a couple of steins at the Hermitage and

call it square.--O, I would square myself with the doctors by

thrusting a poker down my windpipe: I might be able to breathe

better then. I pause to curse my fate.--Curse it, Juhannam-born,

curse it!--

"I can not sleep, nor on the spring-bed, nor on the floor. It is

two hours past midnight now, and I shall try to while away the

time by scrawling this to you. My brother, I can not long

support this sort of life, being no more fit for rough,

ignominious labor. 'But why,' you will ask, 'did you undertake

it?' Yes, why? Strictly speaking, I made a mistake. But it's a

noble mistake, believe me--a mistake which everybody in my

condition ought to make, if but once in their life-time. Is it

not something to be able to make an honest resolution and carry

it out? I have heard strange voices in prison; I have hearkened

to them; but I find that one must have sound lungs, at least, to

be able to do the will of the immortal gods. And even if he had,

I doubt if he could do much to suit them in America. O, my

greatest enemy and benefactor in the whole world is this

dumb-hearted mother, this America, in whose iron loins I have

been spiritually conceived. Paradoxical, this? But is it not

true? Was not the Khalid, now writing to you, born in the

cellar? Down there, in the very loins of New York? But alas,

our spiritual Mother devours, like a cat, her own children. How

then can we live with her in the same house?

"I need not tell you now that the ignominious task I set my

hands to, was never to my liking. But the ox under the yoke is

not asked whether he likes it or not. I have been yoked to my

push-cart by the immortal gods; and soon my turn and trial will

end. It must end. For our country is just beginning to speak,

and I am her chosen voice. I feel that if I do not respond, if I

do not come to her, she will be dumb forever. No; I can not

remain here any more. For I can not be strenuous enough to be

miserably happy; nor stupid enough to be contentedly miserable.

I confess I have been spoiled by those who call themselves

spiritual sisters of mine. The huris be dam'd. And if I don't

leave this country soon, I'll find myself sharing the damnation

again--in Bohemia.--

"The power of the soul is doubled by the object of its love,

or by such labor of love as it undertakes. But, here I am,

with no work and nobody I can love; nay, chained to a task

which I now abominate. If a labor of love doubles the power of

the soul, a labor of hate, to use an antonym term, warps it,

poisons it, destroys it. Is it not a shame that in this great

Country,--this Circe with her golden horns of plenty,--one can

not as much as keep his blood in circulation without damning

the currents of one's soul? O America, equally hated and

beloved of Khalid, O Mother of prosperity and spiritual

misery, the time will come when you shall see that your gold

is but pinchbeck, your gilt-edge bonds but death decrees, and

your god of wealth a carcase enthroned upon a dung-hill. But

you can not see this now; for you are yet in the false dawn,

floundering tumultuously, worshipping your mammoth carcase on

a dung-hill--and devouring your spiritual children. Yes,

America is now in the false dawn, and as sure as America

lives, the true dawn must follow.

"Pardon, Shakib. I did not mean to end my letter in a rhapsody.

But I am so wrought, so broken in body, so inflamed in spirit. I

hope to see you soon. No, I hope to see myself with you on board

of a Transatlantic steamer."

And is not Khalid, like his spiritual Mother, floundering, too, in the

false dawn of life? His love of Nature, which was spontaneous and

free, is it not likely to become formal and scientific? His love of

Country, which begins tremulously, fervently in the woods and streams,

is it not likely to end in Nephelococcygia? His determination to work,

which was rudely shaken at a push-cart, is it not become again a

determination to loaf? And now, that he has a little money laid up,

has he not the right to seek in this world the cheapest and most

suitable place for loafing? And where, if not in the Lebanon hills,

"in which it seemed always afternoon," can he rejoin the Lotus-Eaters

of the East? This man of visions, this fantastic, rhapsodical--but we

must not be hard upon him. Remember, good Reader, the poker which he

would thrust down his windpipe to broaden it a little. With asthmatic

fits and tuberous infiltrations, one is permitted to commune with any

of Allah's ministers of grace or spirits of Juhannam. And that divine

spark of primal, paradisical love, which is rapidly devouring all

others--let us not forget that. Ay, we mean his cousin Najma. Of

course, he speaks, too, of his nation, his people, awaking, lisping,

beginning to speak, waiting for him, the chosen Voice! Which reminds

us of how he was described to us by the hasheesh-smokers of Cairo.

In any event, the Reader will rejoice with us, we hope, that Khalid

will not turn again toward Bohemia. He will agree with us that,

whether on account of his health, or his love, or his mission, it is

well, in his present fare of mind and body, that he is returning to

the land "in which it seemed always afternoon."

CHAPTER IV

THE LAST STAR

Is it not an ethnic phenomenon that a descendant of the ancient

Phoenicians can not understand the meaning and purport of the Cash

Register in America? Is it not strange that this son of Superstition

and Trade can not find solace in the fact that in this Pix of Business

is the Host of the Demiurgic Dollar? Indeed, the omnipresence and

omnipotence of it are not without divine significance. For can you not

see that this Cash Register, this Pix of Trade, is prominently set up

on the altar of every institution, political, moral, social, and

religious? Do you not meet with it everywhere, and foremost in the

sanctuaries of the mind and the soul? In the Societies for the

Diffusion of Knowledge; in the Social Reform Propagandas; in the Don't

Worry Circles of Metaphysical Gymnasiums; in Alliances, Philanthropic,

Educational; in the Board of Foreign Missions; in the Sacrarium of

Vaticinatress Eddy; in the Church of God itself;--is not the Cash

Register a divine symbol of the _credo_, the faith, or the idea?

"To trade, or not to trade," Hamlet-Khalid exclaims, "that is the

question: whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer, etc., or to take

arms against the Cash Registers of America, and by opposing end--"

What? Sacrilegious wretch, would you set your face against the

divinity in the Holy Pix of Trade? And what will you end, and how will

You end by it? An eternal problem, this, of opposing and ending. But

before you set your face in earnest, we would ask you to consider if

the vacancy or chaos which is sure to follow, be not more pernicious

than what you would end. If you are sure it is not, go ahead, and we

give you Godspeed. If you have the least doubt about it--but Khalid is

incapable now of doubting anything. And whether he opposes his theory

of immanent morality to the Cash Register, or to Democracy, or to the

ruling powers of Flunkeydom, we hope He will end well. Such is the

penalty of revolt against the dominating spirit of one's people and

ancestors, that only once in a generation is it attempted, and

scarcely with much success. In fact, the first who revolts must

perish, the second, too, and the third, and the fourth, until, in the

course of time and by dint of repetition and resistance, the new

species of the race can overcome the forces of environment and the

crushing influence of conformity. This, we know, is the biological

law, and Khalid must suffer under it. For, as far as our knowledge

extends, he is the first Syrian, the ancient Lebanon monks excepted,

who revolted against the ruling spirit of his people and the dominant

tendencies of the times, both in his native and his adopted

Countries.

Yes, the _êthos_ of the Syrians (for once we use Khalid's philosophic

term), like that of the Americans, is essentially money-seeking. And

whether in Beirut or in New York, even the moralists and reformers,

like the hammals and grocers, will ask themselves, before they

undertake to do anything for you or for their country, "What will this

profit us? How much will it bring us?" And that is what Khalid once

thought to oppose and end. Alas, oppose he might--and End He Must. How

can an individual, without the aid of Time and the Unseen Powers, hope

to oppose and end, or even change, this monstrous mass of things? Yet

we must not fail to observe that when we revolt against a tendency

inimical to our law of being, it is for our own sake, and not the

race's, that we do so. And we are glad we are able to infer, if not

from the K. L, MS., at least from his Letters, that Khalid is

beginning to realise this truth. Let us not, therefore, expatiate

further upon it.

If the reader will accompany us now to the cellar to bid our Syrian

friends farewell, we promise a few things of interest. When we first

came here some few years ago in Winter, or to another such underground

dwelling, the water rose ankle-deep over the floor, and the mould and

stench were enough to knock an ox dead. Now, a scent of ottar of roses

welcomes us at the door and leads us to a platform in the centre,

furnished with a Turkish rug, which Shakib will present to the

landlord as a farewell memento.

And here are our three Syrians making ready for the voyage. Shakib

is intoning some verses of his while packing; Im-Hanna is cooking

the last dish of _mojadderah_; and Khalid, with some vague dream

in his eyes, and a vaguer, far-looming hope in his heart, is

sitting on his trunk wondering at the variety of things Shakib is

cramming into his. For our Scribe, we must not fail to remind the

Reader, is contemplating great things of State, is nourishing a great

political ambition. He will, therefore, bethink him of those in

power at home. Hence these costly presents. Ay, besides the plated

jewellery--the rings, bracelets, brooches, necklaces, ear-rings,

watches, and chains--of which he is bringing enough to supply the

peasants of three villages, see that beautiful gold-knobbed ebony

stick, which he will present to the vali, and this precious gold cross

with a ruby at the heart for the Patriarch, and these gold fountain

pens for his literary friends, and that fine Winchester rifle for the

chief of the tribe Anezah. These he packs in the bottom of his

trunk, and with them his precious dilapidated copy of Al-Mutanabbi,

and--what MS. be this? What, a Book of Verse spawned in the

cellar? Indeed, the very embryo of that printed copy we read in

Cairo, and which Shakib and his friends would have us translate

for the benefit of the English reading public.

For our Scribe is the choragus of the Modern School of Arabic poetry.

And this particular Diwan of his is a sort of rhymed inventory of all

the inventions and discoveries of modern Science and all the wonders

of America. He has published other Diwans, in which French morbidity

is crowned with laurels from the Arabian Nights. For this Modern

School has two opposing wings, moved by two opposing forces, Science

being the motive power of the one, and Byron and De Musset the

inspiring geniuses of the other. We would not be faithful to our

Editorial task and to our Friend, if we did not give here a few

luminant examples of the Diwan in question. We are, indeed, very

sorry, for the sake of our readers, that space will not allow us to

give them a few whole qasïdahs from it. To those who are so fortunate

as to be able to read and understand the Original, we point out the

Ode to the Phonograph, beginning thus:

"O Phonograph, thou wonder of our time,

Thy tongue of wax can sing like me in rhyme."

And another to the Brooklyn Bridge, of which these are the opening

lines:

"O Brooklyn Bridge, how oft upon thy back

I tramped, and once I crossed thee in a hack."

And finally, the great Poem entitled, On the Virtue and Benefit of

Modern Science, of which we remember these couplets:

"Balloons and airships, falling from the skies,

Will be as plenty yet as summer flies.

* * * * *

"Electricity and Steam and Compressed Air

Will carry us to heaven yet, I swear."

Here be rhymed truth, at least, which can boast of not being poetry.

Ay, in this MS. which Shakib is packing along with Al-Mutanabbi in the

bottom of his trunk to evade the Basilisk touch of the Port officials

of Beirut, is packed all the hopes of the Modern School. Pack on,

Shakib; for whether at the Mena House, or in the hasheesh-dens of

Cairo, the Future is drinking to thee, and dreaming of thee and thy

School its opium dreams. And Khalid, the while, sits impassive on his

trunk, and Im-Hanna is cooking the last dinner of _mojadderah_.

Emigration has introduced into Syria somewhat of the three prominent

features of Civilisation: namely, a little wealth, a few modern ideas,

and many strange diseases. And of these three blessings our two

Syrians together are plentifully endowed. For Shakib is a type of the

emigrant, who returns home prosperous in every sense of the word. A

Book of Verse to lure Fame, a Letter of Credit to bribe her if

necessary, and a double chin to praise the gods. This is a complete

set of the prosperity, which Khalid knows not. But he has in his lungs

what Shakib the poet can not boast of; while in his trunk he carries

but a little wearing apparel, his papers, and his blankets. And in his

pocket, he has his ribbed silver cigarette case--the only object he

can not part with--a heart-shaped locket with a little diamond star on

its face--the only present he is bringing with him home,--and a

third-class passage across the Atlantic. For Khalid will not sleep in

a bunk, even though it be furnished with eiderdown cushions and tiger

skins.

And since he is determined to pass his nights on deck, it matters

little whether he travels first class, or second or tenth. Shakib, do

what he may, cannot prevail upon him to accept the first-class passage

he had bought in his name. "Let us not quarrel about this," says he;

"we shall be together on board the same ship, and that settles the

question. Indeed, the worse way returning home must be ultimately the

best. No, Shakib, it matters not how I travel, if I but get away

quickly from this pandemonium of Civilisation. Even now, as I sit on

this trunk waiting for the hour of departure, I have a foretaste of

the joy of being away from the insidious cries of hawkers, the

tormenting bells of the rag-man, the incessant howling of children,

the rumbling of carts and wagons, the malicious whir of cable cars,

the grum shrieks of ferry boats, and the thundering, reverberating,

smoking, choking, blinding abomination of an elevated railway. A

musician might extract some harmony from this chaos of noises, this

jumble of sounds. But I--extract me quickly from them!"

Ay, quickly please, especially for our sake and the Reader's. Now, the

dinner is finished, the rug is folded and presented to our landlord

with our salaams, the trunks are locked and roped, and our Arabs will

silently steal away. And peacefully, too, were it not that an hour

before sailing a capped messenger is come to deliver a message to

Shakib. There is a pleasant dilative sensation in receiving a message

on board a steamer, especially when the messenger has to seek you

among the Salon passengers. Now, Shakib dilates with pride as he takes

the envelope in his hand; but when he opens it, and reads on the

enclosed card, "Mr. Isaac Goldheimer wishes you a _bon voyage_," he

turns quickly on his heels and goes on deck to walk his wrath away.

For this Mr. Goldheimer is the very landlord who received the Turkish

rug. Reflect on this, Reader. Father Abraham would have walked with us

to the frontier to betoken his thanks and gratitude. "But this modern

Jew and his miserable card," exclaims Shakib in his teeth, as he tears

and throws it in the water,--"who asked him to send it, and who would

have sued him if he didn't?"

But Shakib, who has lived so long in America and traded with its

people, is yet ignorant of some of the fine forms and conventions of

Civilisation. He does not know that fashionable folk, or those aping

the dear fashionable folk, have a right to assert their superiority at

his expense.--I do not care to see you, but I will send a messenger

and card to do so for me. You are not my equal, and I will let you

know this, even at the hour of your departure, and though I have to

hire a messenger to do so.--Is there no taste, no feeling, no

gratitude in this? Don't you wish, O Shakib,--but compose yourself.

And think not so ill of your Jewish landlord, whom you wish you could

wrap in that rug and throw overboard. He certainly meant well. That

formula of card and messenger is so convenient and so cheap. Withal,

is he not too busy, think you, to come up to the dock for the puerile,

prosaic purpose of shaking hands and saying ta-ta? If you can not

consider the matter in this light, try to forget it. One must not be

too visceral at the hour of departure. Behold, your skyscrapers and

your Statue of Liberty are now receding from view; and your landlord

and his card and messenger will be further from us every while we

think of them, until, thanks to Time and Space and Steam! they will

be too far away to be remembered.

Here, then, with our young Seer and our Scribe, we bid New York

farewell, and earnestly hope that we do not have to return to it

again, or permit any of them to do so. In fact, we shall not hereafter

consider, with any ulterior material or spiritual motive, any more of

such disparaging, denigrating matter, in the two MSS. before us, as

has to pass through our reluctant hands "touchin' on and appertainin'

to" the great City of Manhattan and its distinguished denizens. For

our part, we have had enough of this painful task. And truly, we have

never before undergone such trials in sailing between--but that

Charybdis and Scylla allusion has been done to death. Indeed, we love

America, and in the course of our present task, which we also love, we

had to suffer Khalid's shafts to pass through our ken and sometimes

really through our heart. But no more of this. Ay, we would fain set

aside our pen from sheer weariness of spirit and bid the Reader, too,

farewell. Truly, we would end here this Book of Khalid were it not

that the greater part of the most important material in the K. L. MS.

is yet intact, and the more interesting portion of Shakib's History is

yet to come. Our readers, though we do not think they are sorry for

having come out with us so far, are at liberty either to continue with

us, or say good-bye. But for the Editor there is no choice. What we

have begun we must end, unmindful of the influence, good or ill, of

the Zodiacal Signs under which we work.

"Our Phoenician ancestors," says Khalid, "never left anything they

undertook unfinished. Consider what they accomplished in their days,

and the degree of culture they attained. The most beautiful

fabrications in metals and precious stones were prepared in Syria.

Here, too, the most important discoveries were made: namely, those of

glass and purple. As for me, I can not understand what the Murex

trunculus is; and I am not certain if scholars and archæologists, or

even mariners and fishermen, will ever find a fossil of that

particular species. But murex or no murex, Purple was discovered by my

ancestors. Hence the purple passion, that is to say the energy and

intensity which coloured everything they did, everything they felt and

believed. For whether in bemoaning Tammuz, or in making tear-bottles,

or in trading with the Gauls and Britons, the Phoenicians were the

same superstitious, honest, passionate, energetic people. And do not

forget, you who are now enjoying the privilege of setting down your

thoughts in words, that on these shores of Syria written language

received its first development.

"It is also said that they discovered and first navigated the Atlantic

Ocean, my Phoenicians; that they worked gold mines in the distant isle

of Thasos and opened silver mines in the South and Southwest of Spain.

In Africa, we know, they founded the colonies of Utica and Carthage.

But we are told they went farther than this. And according to some

historians, they rounded the Cape, they circumnavigated Africa. And

according to recent discoveries made by an American archæologist,

they must have discovered America too! For in the ruins of the Aztecs

of Mexico there are traces of a Phoenician language and religion.

This, about the discovery of America, however, I can not verify with

anything from Sanchuniathon. But might they not have made this

discovery after the said Sanchuniathon had given up the ghost? And if

they did, what can We, their worthless descendants do for them now?

Ah, if we but knew the name of their Columbus! No, it is not practical

to build a monument to a whole race of people. And yet, they deserve

more than this from us, their descendants.

"These dealers in tin and amber, these manufacturers of glass and

purple, these developers of a written language, first gave the impetus

to man's activity and courage and intelligence. And this activity of

the industry and will is not dead in man. It may be dead in us

Syrians, but not in the Americans. In their strenuous spirit it rises

uppermost. After all, I must love the Americans, for they are my

Phoenician ancestors incarnate. Ay, there is in the nature of things a

mysterious recurrence which makes for a continuous, everlasting

modernity. And I believe that the spirit which moved those brave

sea-daring navigators of yore, is still working lustily, bravely, but

alas, not joyously--bitterly, rather, selfishly, greedily--behind the

steam engine, the electric motor, the plough, and in the clinic and

the studio as in the Stock Exchange. That spirit in its real essence,

however, is as young, as puissant to-day as it was when the native of

Byblus first struck out to explore the seas, to circumnavigate

Africa, to discover even America!"

And what in the end might Khalid discover for us or for himself, at

least, in his explorations of the Spirit-World? What Colony of the

chosen sons of the young and puissant Spirit, on some distant isle

beyond the seven seas, might he found? To what far, silent, undulating

shore, where "a written language is the instrument only of the lofty

expressions and aspirations of the soul" might he not bring us? What

Cape of Truth in the great Sea of Mystery might we not be able to

circumnavigate, if only this were possible of the language of man?

"Not with glass," he exclaims, "not with tear-bottles, not with

purple, not with a written language, am I now concerned, but rather

with what those in Purple and those who make this written language

their capital, can bring within our reach of the treasures of the

good, the true, and the beautiful. I would fain find a land where the

soul of man, and the heart of man, and the mind of man, are as the

glass of my ancestors' tear-bottles in their enduring quality and

beauty. My ancestors' tear-bottles, and though buried in the earth ten

thousand years, lose not a grain of their original purity and

transparency, of their soft and iridescent colouring. But where is the

natural colour and beauty of these human souls, buried in bunks under

hatches? Or of those moving in high-lacquered salons above?...

"O my Brothers of the clean and unclean species, of the scented and

smelling kind, of the have and have-not classes, there is but one

star in this vague dusky sky above us, for you as for myself. And that

star is either the last in the eternal darkness, or the first in the

rising dawn. It is either the first or the last star of night. And who

shall say which it is? Not the Church, surely, nor the State; not

Science, nor Sociology, nor Philosophy, nor Religion. But the human

will shall influence that star and make it yield its secret and its

fire. Each of you, O my Brothers, can make it light his own hut, warm

his own heart, guide his own soul. Never before in the history of man

did it seem as necessary as it does now that each individual should

think for himself, will for himself, and aspire incessantly for the

realisation of his ideals and dreams. Yes, we are to-day at a terrible

and glorious turning point, and it depends upon us whether that one

star in the vague and dusky sky of modern life, shall be the harbinger

of Jannat or Juhannam."

CHAPTER V

PRIESTO-PARENTAL

If we remember that the name of Khalid's cousin is Najma (Star), the

significance to himself of the sign spoken of in the last Chapter, is

quite evident. But what it means to others remains to be seen. His one

star, however, judging from his month's experience in Baalbek, is not

promising of Jannat. For many things, including parental tyranny and

priestcraft and Jesuitism, will here conspire against the single

blessedness of him, which is now seeking to double itself.

"Where one has so many Fathers," he writes, "and all are pretending to

be the guardians of his spiritual and material well-being, one ought

to renounce them all at once. It was not with a purpose to rejoin my

folk that I first determined to return to my native country. For,

while I believe in the Family, I hate Familism, which is the curse of

the human race. And I hate this spiritual Fatherhood when it puts on

the garb of a priest, the three-cornered hat of a Jesuit, the hood of

a monk, the gaberdine of a rabbi, or the jubbah of a sheikh. The

sacredness of the Individual, not of the Family or the Church, do I

proclaim. For Familism, or the propensity to keep under the same roof,

as a social principle, out of fear, ignorance, cowardice, or

dependence, is, I repeat, the curse of the world. Your father is he

who is friendly and reverential to the higher being in you; your

brothers are those who can appreciate the height and depth of your

spirit, who hearken to you, and believe in you, if you have any truth

to announce to them. Surely, one's value is not in his skin that you

should touch him. Are there any two individuals more closely related

than mother and son? And yet, when I Khalid embrace my mother,

mingling my tears with hers, I feel that my soul is as distant from

her own as is Baalbek from the Dog-star. And so I say, this attempt to

bind together under the principle of Familism conflicting spirits, and

be it in the name of love or religion or anything else more or less

sacred, is in itself a very curse, and should straightway end. It will

end, as far as I am concerned. And thou my Brother, whether thou be a

son of the Morning or of the Noontide or of the Dusk,--whether thou be

a Japanese or a Syrian or a British man--if thou art likewise

circumstanced, thou shouldst do the same, not only for thine own sake,

but for the sake of thy family as well."

No; Khalid did not find that wholesome plant of domestic peace in his

mother's Nursery. He found noxious weeds, rather, and brambles galore.

And they were planted there, not by his father or mother, but by those

who have a lien upon the souls of these poor people. For the priest

here is no peeled, polished affair, but shaggy, scrubby, terrible,

forbidding. And with a word he can open yet, for such as Khalid's

folk, the gate which Peter keeps or the other on the opposite side of

the Universe. Khalid must beware, therefore, how he conducts himself

at home and abroad, and how, in his native town, he delivers his mind

on sacred things, and profane. In New York, for instance, or in Turabu

for that matter, he could say in plain forthright speech what he

thought of Family, Church or State, and no one would mind him. But

where these Institutions are the rottenest existing he will be minded

too well, and reminded, too, of the fate of those who preceded him.

The case of Habib Ish-Shidiak at Kannubin is not yet forgotten. And

Habib, be it known, was only a poor Protestant neophite who took

pleasure in carrying a small copy of the Bible in his hip pocket, and

was just learning to roll his eyes in the pulpit and invoke the

"laud." But Khalid, everybody out-protesting, is such an intractable

pro_test_ant, with, neither Bible in his pocket nor pulpit at his

service. And yet, with a flint on his tongue and a spark in his eyes,

he will make the neophite Habib smile beside him. For the priesthood

in Syria is not, as we have said, a peeled, polished, pulpy affair.

And Khalid's father has been long enough in their employ to learn

somewhat of their methods. Bigotry, cruelty, and tyranny at home,

priestcraft and Jesuitism abroad,--these, O Khalid, you will know

better by force of contact before you end. And you will begin to pine

again for your iron-loined spiritual Mother. Ay, and the scelerate

Jesuit will even make capital of your mass of flowing hair. For in

this country, only the native priests are privileged to be shaggy and

scrubby and still be without suspicion. But we will let Shakib give us

a few not uninteresting details of the matter.

"Not long after we had rejoined our people," he writes, "Khalid comes

to me with a sorry tale. In truth, a fortnight after our arrival in

Baalbek--our civility towards new comers seldom enjoys a longer

lease--the town was alive with rumours and whim-whams about my friend.

And whereso I went, I was not a little annoyed with the tehees and

grunts which his name seemed to invoke. The women often came to his

mother to inquire in particular why he grows his hair and shaves his

mustaches; the men would speak to his father about the change in his

accent and manners; the children teheed and tittered whenever he

passed through the town-square; and all were of one mind that Khalid

was a worthless fellow, who had brought nothing with him from the

Paradise of the New World but his cough and his fleece. Such tattle

and curiosity, however, no matter what degree of savage vulgarity they

reach, are quite harmless. But I felt somewhat uneasy about him, when

I heard the people asking each other, "Why does he not come to Church

like honest folks?" And soon I discovered that my apprehensions were

well grounded; for the questioning was noised at Khalid's door, and

the fire crackled under the roof within. The father commands; the

mother begs; the father objurgates, threatens, curses his son's faith;

and the mother, prostrating herself before the Virgin, weeps, and

prays, and beats her breast. Alas, and my Khalid? he goes out on the

terrace to search in the Nursery for his favourite Plant. No, he does

not find it; brambles are there and noxious weeds galore. The thorny,

bitter reality he must now face, and, by reason of his lack of

savoir-faire, be ultimately out-faced by it. For the upshot of the

many quarrels he had with his father, the prayers and tears of the

mother not availing, was nothing more or less than banishment. You

will either go to Church like myself, or get out of this house: this

the ultimatum of Abu-Khalid. And needless to say which alternative the

son chose.

"I still remember how agitated he was when he came to tell me of the

fatal breach. His words, which drew tears from my eyes, I remember

too. 'Homeless I am again,' said he, 'but not friendless. For besides

Allah, I have you.--Oh, this straitness of the chest is going to kill

me. I feel that my windpipe is getting narrower every day. At least,

my father is doing his mighty best to make things so hard and

strait.--Yes, I would have come now to bid you farewell, were it not

that I still have in this town some important business. In the which I

ask your help. You know what it is. I have often spoken to you about

my cousin Najma, the one star in my sky. And now, I would know what is

its significance to me. No, I can not leave Baalbek, I can not do

anything, until that star unfolds the night or the dawn of my destiny.

And you Shakib--'

"Of course, I promised to do what I could for him. I offered him such

cheer and comfort as my home could boast of, which he would not

accept. He would have only my terrace roof on which to build a booth

of pine boughs, and spread in it a few straw mats and cushions. But I

was disappointed in my calculations; for in having him thus near me

again, I had hoped to prevail upon him for his own good to temper his

behaviour, to conform a little, to concede somewhat, while he is among

his people. But virtually he did not put up with me. He ate outside;

he spent his days I know not where; and when he did come to his booth,

it was late in the night. I was informed later that one of the

goatherds saw him sleeping in the ruined Temple near Ras'ul-Ain. And

the muazzen who sleeps in the Mosque adjacent to the Temple of Venus

gave out that one night he saw him with a woman in that very place."

A woman with Khalid, and in the Temple of Venus at night? Be not too

quick, O Reader, to suspect and contemn; for the Venus-worship is not

reinstated in Baalbek. No tryst this, believe us, but a scene

pathetic, more sacred. Not Najma this questionable companion, but one

as dear to Khalid. Ay, it is his mother come to seek him here. And she

begs him, in the name of the Virgin, to return home, and try to do the

will of his father. She beats her breast, weeps, prostrates herself

before him, beseeches, implores, cries out, 'dakhilak (I am at your

mercy), come home with me.' And Khalid, taking her up by the arm,

embraces her and weeps, but says not a word. As two statues in the

Temple, silent as an autumn midnight, they remain thus locked in each

other's arms, sobbing, mingling their sighs and tears. The mother

then, 'Come, come home with me, O my child.' And Khalid, sitting on

one of the steps of the Temple, replies, 'Let him move out of the

house, and I will come. I will live with you, if he will keep at the

Jesuits.'

For Khalid begins to suspect that the Jesuits are the cause of his

banishment from home, that his father's religious ferocity is fuelled

and fanned by these good people. One day, before Khalid was banished,

Shakib tells us, one of them, Father Farouche by name, comes to pay a

visit of courtesy, and finds Khalid sitting cross-legged on a mat

writing a letter.

The Padre is received by Khalid's mother who takes his hand, kisses

it, and offers him the seat of honour on the divan. Khalid continues

writing. And after he had finished, he turns round in his cross-legged

posture and greets his visitor. Which greeting is surely to be

followed by a conversation of the sword-and-shield kind.

"How is your health?" this from Father Farouche in miserable Arabic.

"As you see: I breathe with an effort, and can hardly speak."

"But the health of the body is nothing compared with the health of the

soul."

"I know that too well, O Reverend" (Ya Muhtaram).

"And one must have recourse to the physician in both instances."

"I do not believe in physicians, O Reverend."

"Not even the physician of the soul?"

"You said it, O Reverend."

The mother of Khalid serves the coffee, and whispers to her son a

word. Whereupon Khalid rises and sits on the divan near the Padre.

"But one must follow the religion of one's father," the Jesuit

resumes.

"When one's father has a religion, yes; but when he curses the

religion of his son for not being ferociously religious like

himself--"

"But a father must counsel and guide his children."

"Let the mother do that. Hers is the purest and most disinterested

spirit of the two."

"Then, why not obey your mother, and--"

Khalid suppresses his anger.

"My mother and I can get along without the interference of our

neighbours."

"Yes, truly. But you will find great solace in going to Church and

ceasing your doubts."

Khalid rises indignant.

"I only doubt the Pharisees, O Reverend, and their Church I would

destroy to-day if I could."

"My child--"

"Here is your hat, O Reverend, and pardon me--you see, I can hardly

speak, I can hardly breathe. Good day."

And he walks out of the house, leaving Father Farouche to digest his

ire at his ease, and to wonder, with his three-cornered hat in hand,

at the savage demeanour of the son of their pious porter. "Your son,"

addressing the mother as he stands under the door-lintel, "is not only

an infidel, but he is also crazy. And for such wretches there is an

asylum here and a Juhannam hereafter."

And the poor mother, her face suffused with tears, prostrates herself

before the Virgin, praying, beating her breast, invoking with her

tongue and hand and heart; while Farouche returns to his coop to hatch

under his three-cornered hat, the famous Jesuit-egg of intrigue. That

hat, which can outwit the monk's hood and the hundred fabled devils

under it, that hat, with its many gargoyles, a visible symbol of the

leaky conscience of the Jesuit, that hat, O Khalid, which you would

have kicked out of your house, has eventually succeeded in ousting

YOU, and will do its mighty best yet to send you to the Bosphorus.

Indeed, to serve their purpose, these honest servitors of Jesus will

even act as spies to the criminal Government of Abd'ul-Hamid. Read

Shakib's account.

"About a fortnight after Khalid's banishment from home," he writes, "a

booklet was published in Beirut, setting forth the history of Ignatius

Loyola and the purports and intents of Jesuitism. On the cover it was

expressly declared that the booklet is translated from the English,

and the Jesuits, who are noted for their scholarly attainments, could

have discovered this for themselves without the explicit declaration.

But they did not deem it necessary to make such a discovery then. It

seemed rather imperative to maintain the contrary and try to prove

it. Now, Khalid having received a copy of this booklet from a friend

in Beirut, reads it and writes back, saying that it is not a

translation but a mutilation, rather, of one of Thomas Carlyle's

Latter-Day Pamphlets entitled _Jesuitism_. This letter must have

reached them together with Father Farouche's report on Khalid's

infidelity, just about the time the booklet was circulating in

Baalbek. For in the following Number of their _Weekly Journal_ an

article, stuffed and padded with execrations and anathema, is

published against the book and its anonymous author. From this I quote

the following, which is by no means the most erring and most poisonous

of their shafts.

"'Such a Pamphlet,' exclaims the scholarly Jesuit Editor, 'was never

written by Thomas Carlyle, as some here, from ignorance or malice,

assert. For that philosopher, of all the thinkers of his day, believed

in God and in the divinity of Jesus His Son, and could never descend

to these foul and filthy depths. He never soiled his pen in the

putrescence of falsehood and incendiarism. The author of this

blasphemous and pernicious Pamphlet, therefore, in trying to father

his infidelity, his sedition, and his lies, on Carlyle, is doubly

guilty of a most heinous crime. And we suspect, we know, and for the

welfare of the community we hope to be able soon to point out openly,

who and where this vile one is. Yes, only an atheist and anarchist is

capable of such villainous mendacity, such unutterable wickedness and

treachery. Now, we would especially call upon our readers in Baalbek

to be watchful and vigilant, for among them is one, recently come back

from America, who harbours under his bushy hair the atheism and

anarchy of decadent Europe, etc, etc.'

"And this is followed by secret orders from their Head Office to the

Superior of their Branch in Zahleh, to go on with the work hinted in

the article aforesaid. Let it not be supposed that I make this

statement in jaundice or malice. For the man who was instigated to do

this foul work subsequently sold the secret. And the Kaimkam, my

friend, when speaking to me of the matter, referred to the article in

question, and told me that Khalid was denounced to the Government by

the Jesuits as an anarchist. 'And lest I be compelled,' he continued,

'to execute such orders in his case as I might receive any day, I

advise you to spirit him away at once.'"

But though the Jesuits have succeeded in kicking Khalid out of his

home, they did not succeed, thanks to Shakib, in sending him to the

Bosphorus. Meanwhile, they sit quiet, hatching another egg.

CHAPTER VI

FLOUNCES AND RUFFLES

Now, that there is a lull in the machinations of Jesuitry, we shall

turn a page or two in Shakib's account of the courting of Khalid. And

apparently everything is propitious. The fates, at least, in the

beginning, are not unkind. For the feud between Khalid's father and

uncle shall now help to forward Khalid's love-affair. Indeed, the

father of Najma, to spite his brother, opens to the banished nephew

his door and blinks at the spooning which follows. And such an

interminable yarn our Scribe spins out about it, that Khalid and Najma

do seem the silliest lackadaisical spoonies under the sun. But what we

have evolved from the narration might have for our readers some

curious alien phase of interest.

Here then are a few beads from Shakib's romantic string. When Najma

cooks _mojadderah_ for her father, he tells us, she never fails to

come to the booth of pine boughs with a platter of it. And this to

Khalid was very manna. For never, while supping on this single dish,

would he dream of the mensal and kitchen luxuries of the Hermitage in

Bronx Park. In fact, he never envied the pork-eating Americans, the

beef-eating English, or the polyphagic French. "Here is a dish of

lentils fit for the gods," he would say....

When Najma goes to the spring for water, Khalid chancing to meet her,

takes the jar from her shoulder, saying, "Return thou home; I will

bring thee water." And straightway to the spring hies he, where the

women there gathered fill his ears with tittering, questioning tattle

as he is filling his jar. "I wish I were Najma," says one, as he

passes by, the jar of water on his shoulder. "Would you cement his

brain, if you were?" puts in another. And thus would they gibe and

joke every time Khalid came to the spring with Najma's jar....

One day he comes to his uncle's house and finds his betrothed

ribboning and beading some new lingerie for her rich neighbour's

daughter. He sits down and helps her in the work, writing meanwhile,

between the acts, an alphabetic ideology on Art and Life. But as they

are beading the vests and skirts and other articles of richly laced

linen underwear, Najma holds up one of these and naïvely asks, "Am I

not to have some such, _ya habibi_ (O my Love)?" And Khalid, affecting

like bucolic innocence, replies, "What do we need them for, my heart?"

With which counter-question Najma is silenced, convinced.

Finally, to show to what degree of ecstasy they had soared without

searing their wings or losing a single feather thereof, the following

deserves mention. In the dusk one day, Khalid visits Najma and finds

her oiling and lighting the lamp. As she beholds him under the

door-lintel, the lamp falls from her hands, the kerosene blazes on the

floor, and the straw mat takes fire. They do not heed this--they do

not see it--they are on the wings of an ecstatic embrace. And the

father, chancing to arrive in the nick of time, with a curse and a

cuff, saves them and his house from the conflagration.

Aside from these curious and not insignificant instances, these

radiations of a giddy hidden flame of heart-fire, this melting gum of

spooning on the bark of the tree of love, we turn to a scene in the

Temple of Venus which unfolds our future plans--our hopes and dreams.

But we feel that the Reader is beginning to hanker for a few pieces of

description of Najma's charms. Gentle Reader, this Work is neither a

Novel, nor a Passport. And we are exceeding sorry we can not tell you

anything about the colour and size of Najma's eyes; the shape and

curves of her brows and lips; the tints and shades in her cheeks; and

the exact length of her figure and hair. Shakib leaves us in the dark

about these essentials, and we must needs likewise leave you. Our

Scribe thinks he has said everything when he speaks of her as a huri.

But this paradisal title among our Arabic writers and verse-makers is

become worse than the Sultan's Medjidi decorations. It is bestowed

alike on every drab and trollop as on the very few who really deserve

it. Let us rank it, therefore, with the Medjidi decorations and pass

on.

But Khalid, who has seen enough of the fair, would not be attracted to

Najma, enchanted by her, if she were not endowed with such of the

celestial treasures as rank above the visible lines of beauty. Our

Scribe speaks of the "purity and naïvete of her soul as purest

sources of felicity and inspiration." Indeed, if she were not constant

in love, she would not have spurned the many opportunities in the

absence of Khalid; and had she not a fine discerning sense of real

worth, she would not have surrendered herself to her poor ostracised

cousin; and if she were not intuitively, preternaturally wise, she

would not marry an enemy of the Jesuits, a bearer withal of

infiltrated lungs and a shrunken windpipe. "There is a great advantage

in having a sickly husband," she once said to Shakib, "it lessons a

woman in the heavenly virtues of our Virgin Mother, in patient

endurance and pity, in charity, magnanimity, and pure love." What,

with these sublimities of character, need we know of her visible

charms, or lack of them? She might deserve the title Shakib bestows

upon her; she might be a real huri, for all we know? In that event,

the outward charms correspond, and Khalid is a lucky dog--if some one

can keep the Jesuits away.

This, then, is our picture of Najma, to whom he is now relating, in

the Temple of Venus, of the dangers he had passed and the felicities

of the beduin life he has in view. It is evening. The moon struggles

through the poplars to light the Temple for them, and the ambrosial

breeze caresses their cheeks.

"No," says Khalid; "we can not live here, O my Heart, after we are

formally married. The curse in my breast I must not let you share, and

only when I am rid of it am I actually your husband. By the life of

this blessed night, by the light of these stars, I am inalterably

resolved on this, and I shall abide by my resolution. We must leave

Baalbek as soon as the religious formalities are done. And I wish your

father would have them performed under his roof. That is as good as

going to Church to be the central figures of the mummery of priests.

But be this as You will. Whether in Church or at home, whether by your

father or by gibbering Levites the ceremony is performed, we must hie

us to the desert after it is done. I shall hire the camels and prepare

the necessary set-out for the wayfare a day or two ahead. No, I must

not be a burden to you, my Heart. I must be able to work for you as

for myself. And Allah alone, through the ministration of his great

Handmaid Nature, can cure me and enable me to share with you the joys

of life. No, not before I am cured, can I give you my whole self, can

I call myself your husband. Into the desert, therefore, to some oasis

in its very heart, we shall ride, and there crouch our camels and

establish ourselves as husbandmen. I shall even build you a little

home like your own. And you will be to me an aura of health, which I

shall breathe with the desert air, and the evening breeze. Yes, our

love shall dwell in a palace of health, not in a hovel of disease.

Meanwhile, we shall buy with what money I have a little patch of

ground which we shall cultivate together. And we shall own cattle and

drink camel milk. And we shall doze in the afternoon in the cool shade

of the palms, and in the evening, wrapt in our cloaks, we'll sleep on

the sands under the living stars. Yes, and Najma shall be the

harbinger of dawn to Khalid.--Out on that little farm in the oasis of

our desert, far from the world and the sanctified abominations of the

world, we shall live near to Allah a life of purest joy, of true

happiness. We shall never worry about the hopes of to-morrow and the

gone blessings of yesterday. We shall not, while labouring, dream of

rest, nor shall we give a thought to our tasks while drinking of the

cup of repose: each hour shall be to us an epitome of eternity. The

trials and troubles of each day shall go with the setting sun, never

to rise with him again. But I am unkind to speak of this. For your

glances banish care, and we shall ever be together. Ay, my Heart, and

when I take up the lute in the evening, you'll sing _mulayiah_ to me,

and the stars above us shall dance, and the desert breeze shall house

us in its whispers of love...."

And thus interminably, while Najma, understanding little of all this,

sits beside him on a fallen column in the Temple and punctuates his

words with assenting exclamations, with long eighs of joy and wonder.

"But we are not going to live in the desert all the time, are we?" she

asks.

"No, my Heart. When I am cured of my illness we shall return to

Baalbek, if you like."

"Eigh, good. Now, I want to say--no. I shame to speak about such

matters."

"Speak, _ya Gazalty_ (O my Doe or Dawn or both); your words are like

the scented breeze, like the ethereal moon rays, which enter into this

Temple without permission. Speak, and light up this ruined Temple of

thine."

"How sweet are Your words, but really I can not understand them. They

are like the sweetmeats my father brought with him once from Damascus.

One eats and exclaims, 'How delicious!' But one never knows how they

are made, and what they are made of. I wish I could speak like you,

_ya habibi_. I would not shame to say then what I want."

"Say what you wish. My heart is open, and your words are silvery

moonbeams."

"Do not blame me then. I am so simple, you know, so foolish. And I

would like to know if you are going to Church on our wedding day in

the clothes you have on now."

"Not if you object to them, my Heart."

"Eigh, good! And must I come in my ordinary Sunday dress? It is so

plain; it has not a single ruffle to it."

"And what are ruffles for?"

"I never saw a bride in a plain gown; they all have ruffles and

flounces to them. And when I look at your lovely hair--O let people

say what they like! A gown without ruffles is ugly.--So, you will buy

me a sky-blue silk dress, _ya habibi_ and a pink one, too, with plenty

of ruffles on them? Will you not?"

"Yes, my Heart, you shall have what you desire. But in the desert you

can not wear these dresses. The Arabs will laugh at you. For the women

there wear only plain muslin dipped in indigo."

"Then, I will have but one dress of sky-blue silk for the wedding."

"Certainly, my Heart. And the ruffles shall be as many and as long as

you desire them."

And while the many-ruffled sky-blue dress is being made, Khalid,

inspired by Najma's remarks on his hair, rhapsodises on flounces

and ruffles. Of this striking piece of fantasy, in which are

scintillations of the great Truth, we note the following:

"What can you do without your flounces? How can you live without your

ruffles? Ay, how can you, without them, think, speak, or work? How can

you eat, drink, walk, sleep, pray, worship, moralise, sentimentalise,

or love, without them? Are you not ruffled and flounced when you first

see the light, ruffled and flounced when you last see the darkness?

The cradle and the tomb, are they not the first and last ruffles of

Man? And between them what a panoramic display of flounces! What clean

and attractive visible Edges of unclean invisible common Skirts! Look

at your huge elaborate monuments, your fancy sepulchers, what are they

but the ruffles of your triumphs and defeats? The marble flounces,

these, of your cemeteries, your Pantheons and Westminster Abbeys. And

what are your belfries and spires and chimes, your altars and

reredoses and such like, but the sanctified flounces of your churches.

No, these are not wholly adventitious sanctities; not empty,

superfluous growths. They are incorporated into Life by Time, and they

grow in importance as our Æsthetics become more inutile, as our

Religions begin to exude gum and pitch for commerce, instead of

bearing fruits of Faith and Love and Magnanimity.

"The first church was the forest; the first dome, the welkin; the

first altar, the sun. But that was, when man went forth in native

buff, brother to the lion, not the ox, without ruffles and without

faith. His spirit, in the course of time, was born; it grew and

developed zenithward and nadirward, as the cycles rolled on. And in

spiritual pride, and pride of power and wealth as well, it took to

ruffling and flouncing to such an extent that at certain epochs it

disappeared, dwindled into nothingness, and only the appendages

remained. These were significant appendages, to be sure; not

altogether adscititious. Ruffles these, indeed, endowed, as it were,

with life, and growing on the dead Spirit, as the grass on the grave.

"And is it not noteworthy that our life terrene at certain epochs

seems to be made up wholly of these? That as the great Pine falls, the

noxious weeds, the brambles and thorny bushes around it, grow quicker,

lustier, luxuriating on the vital stores in the earth that were its

own--is not this striking and perplexing, my rational friends? Surely,

Man is neither the featherless biped of the Greek Philosopher, nor the

tool-using animal of the Sage of Chelsea. For animals, too, have their

tools, and man, in his visible flounces, has feathers enough to make

even a peacock gape. Both my Philosophers have hit wide of the mark

this time. And Man, to my way of thinking, is a flounce-wearing

Spirit. Indeed, flounces alone, the invisible ones in particular,

distinguish us from the beasts. For like ourselves they have their

fashions in clothes; their peculiar speech; their own hidden means of

intellection, and, to some extent, of imagination: but flounces they

have not, they know not. These are luxuries, which Man alone enjoys.

"Ah, Man,--thou son and slave of Allah, according to my Oriental

Prophets of Heaven; thou exalted, apotheosised ape, according to my

Occidental Prophets of Science;--how much thou canst suffer, how much

thou canst endure, under what pressure and in what Juhannam depths

thou canst live; but thy flounces thou canst not dispense with for a

day, nor for a single one-twelfth part of a day. Even in thy suffering

and pain, the agonised spirit is wrapped, bandaged, swathed in

ruffles. It is assuaged with the flounces of thy lady's caresses, and

the scalloped intonations of her soft and soothing voice. It is

humbugged into health by the malodorous flounces of the apothecary and

the medicinal ruffles of the doctor.

"Ay, we live in a phantasmagoric, cycloramic economy of flounces and

ruffles. The human Spirit shirks nudity as it shirks pain. Even your

modern preacher of the Simple Life is at best suggesting the moderate

use of ruffles.... Indeed, we can suffer anything, everything, but the

naked and ugly reality. Alas, have I not listened for years to what I

mistook to be the strong, pure voice of the naked Truth? And have I

not discovered, to my astonishment, that the supposed scientific

Nudity is but an indurated thick Crust under which the Lie lies

hidden. Why strip Man of his fancy appendages, his adventitious

sanctities, if you are going to give him instead only a few yards of

shoddy? No, I tell you; this can not be done. Your brambles and thorn

hedges will continue to grow and luxuriate, will even shut from your

view the Temple in the Grove, until the great Pine rises again to

stunt, and ultimately extirpate, them.

"Behold, meanwhile, how the world parades in ruffles before us. What a

bewildering phantasmagoria this: a very Dress Ball of the human race.

See them pass: the Pope of Christendom, in his three hats and heavy

trailing gowns, blessing the air of heaven; the priest, in his alb and

chasuble, dispensing of the blessings of the Pope; the judge, in his

wig and bombazine, endeavouring to reconcile divine justice with the

law's mundane majesty; the college doctor, in cap and gown, anointing

the young princes of knowledge; the buffoon, in his cap and bells,

dancing to the god of laughter; mylady of the pink-tea circle, in her

huffing, puffing gasoline-car, fleeing the monster of ennui; the bride

and bridegroom at the altar or before the mayor putting on their

already heavy-ruffled garments the sacred ruffle of law or religion;

the babe brought to church by his mother and kindred to have the

priest-tailor sew on his new garment the ruffle of baptism; the

soldier in his gaudy uniform; the king in his ermine with a crown and

sceptre appended; the Nabob of Ind in his gorgeous and multi-colored

robes; and the Papuan with horns in his nostrils and rings in his

ears: see them all pass.

"And wilt thou still add to the bewildering variety of the pageant? Or

wilt have another of the higher things of the mind? Lo, the artist

this, wearing his ruffles of hair over his shoulders; and here, too,

is the man of the sombrero and red flannel, which are the latest

flounces of a certain set of New World poets. Directly behind them is

Dame Religion with her heavy ruffled robes, her beribboned and belaced

bodices, her ornaments and sacred gewgaws. And billah, she has

stuffings and paddings, too. And false teeth and foul breath! Never

mind. Pass on, and let her pass. But tarry thou a moment here. Behold

this pyrotechnic display, these buntings and flags; hear thou this

music and these shouts and cheers; on yonder stump is an orator

dispensing to his fellow citizens spread-eagle rhetoric as empty as

yonder drum: these are the elaborate and attractive ruffles of

politics. And among the crowd are genial and honest citizens who have

their own way of ruffling your temper with their coarse flounces of

linsey-woolsey freedom. Wilt thou have more?"

Decidedly not, we reply. For how can we even keep company with Khalid,

who has become such a maniac on flounces? And was this fantastic,

phantasmagoric rhapsody all inspired by Najma's simple remark on his

hair? Fruitful is thy word, O woman!

But being so far away now from the Hermitage in the Bronx, what has

the "cherry in the cocktail" and "the olive in the oyster patty" to do

with all this? Howbeit, the following deserves a place as the

tail-flounce of his Fantasy.

* * * * *

"Your superman and superwoman," says he, with philosophic calm, "may

go Adam-and-Eve like if they choose. But can they, even in that chaste

and splendid nudity, dispense with ruffles and flounces? Pray, tell

me, did not our first parents spoon and sentimentalise in the

Paradise, before the Serpent appeared? And would they not often

whisper unto each other, 'Ah, Adam, ah, Eve!' sighing likewise for

sweeter things? And what about those fatal Apples, those two sour

fruits of their Love?--I tell thee every new-born babe is the

magnificent flesh-flounce of a shivering, trembling, nudity. And I

Khalid, what am I but the visible ruffle of an invisible skirt?

Verily, I am; and thou, too, my Brother. Yea, and this aquaterrestrial

globe and these sidereal heavens are the divine flounces of the

Vesture of Allah."

CHAPTER VII

THE HOWDAJ OF FALSEHOOD

"Humanity is so feeble in mind," says Renan, "that the purest thing

has need of the co-operation of some impure agent." And this, we

think, is the gist of Khalid's rhapsody on flounces and ruffles. But

how is he to reconcile the fact with the truth in his case? For a

single sanctified ruffle--a line of type in the canon law--is likely

to upset all his plans. Yes, a priest in alb and chasuble not only can

dispense with the blessings of his Pope, but--and here is the rub--he

can also withhold such blessings from Khalid. And now, do what he may,

say what he might, he must either revise his creed, or behave, at

least, like a Christian.

Everything is ready, you say? The sky-blue, many-ruffled wedding gown;

the set-out for the wayfare; the camel and donkeys; the little stock

of books; the coffee utensils; the lentils and sweet oil;--all ready?

Very well; but you can not set forth to-morrow, nor three weeks from

to-morrow. Indeed, before the priest can give you his blessings--and

what at this juncture can you do without them?--the dispensations of

the ban must be performed. In other words, your case must now be laid

before the community. Every Sunday, for three such to come, the

intended marriage of Khalid to Najma will be published in the Church,

and whoso hath any objection to make can come forth and make it.

Moreover, there is that little knot of consanguinity to be considered.

And your priest is good enough to come and explain this to you.

Understand him well. "An alm of a few gold pieces," says he, "will

remove the obstacle; the unlawfulness of your marriage resulting from

consanguinity will cease on payment of five hundred piasters."

All of which startles Khalid, stupefies him. He had not, heretofore,

thought of such a matter. Indeed, he was totally ignorant of these

forms, these prohibitions and exemptions of the Church. And the father

of Najma, though assenting, remarks nevertheless that the alms

demanded are much. "Why," exclaims Khalid, "I can build a house for

five hundred piasters."

The priest sits down cross-legged on the divan, lights the cigarette

which Najma had offered with the coffee, and tries to explain.

"And where have you this, O Reverend, about consanguinity, prohibition,

and alms!" Khalid asks.

"Why, my child, in the Canons of our Church, Catholic and Apostolic.

Every one knows that a marriage between cousins can not be effected,

without the sanction of the Bishop."

"But can we not obtain this sanction without paying for it?"

"You are not paying for it, my child; you are only contributing some

alms to the Church."

"You come to us, therefore, as a beggar, not as a spiritual father and

guide."

"That is not good speaking. You misunderstand my purpose."

"And pray, tell me, what is the purpose of prohibiting a marriage

between cousins; what chief good is there in such a ban?"

"Much good for the community."

"But I have nothing to do with the community. I'm going to live with

my wife in the desert."

"The good of your souls is chiefly concerned."

"Ah, the good of our souls!"

"And there are other reasons which can not be freely spoken of here."

"You mean the restriction and prohibition of sexual knowledge between

relatives. That is very well. But let us return to what concerns us

properly: the good of my soul, and the spiritual well-being of the

community,--what becomes of these, when I pay the prescribed alms and

obtain the sanction of the Bishop?"

"No harm then can come to them--they'll be secure."

"Secure, you say? Are they not hazarded, sold by your Church for five

hundred piasters? If my marriage to my cousin be wrong, unlawful, your

Bishop in sanctioning same is guilty of perpetuating this wrong, this

unlawfulness, is he not?"

"But what the Church binds only the Church can loosen."

"And what is the use of binding, O Reverend Father, when a little

sum of money can loosen anything you bind? It seems to me that these

prohibitions of the Church are only made for the purpose of

collecting alms. In other words, you bind for the sake of loosening,

when a good bait is on the hook, do you not? Pardon, O my Reverend

Father, pardon. I can not, to save my soul and yours, reconcile these

contradictions. For if Mother Church be certain that my marriage to my

cousin is contrary to the Law of God, is destructive of my spiritual

well-being, then let her by all means prohibit it. Let her restrain

me, compel me to obey. Ay, and the police ought to interfere in

case of disobedience. In her behalf, in my behalf, in the behalf of my

cousin's soul and mine, the police ought to do the will of God, if

the Church knows what it is, and is certain and honest about it.

Compel me to stop, I conjure you, if you know I am going in the way

of damnation. O my Father, what sort of a mother is she who would sell

two of her children to the devil for a few hundred piasters? No,

billah! no. What is unlawful by virtue of the Divine Law the wealth

of all the Trust-Kings of America can not make lawful. And what is so

by virtue of your Canon Law concerns not me. You may angle, you and

your Church, as long as you please in the murky, muddy waters of

Bind-and-Loosen, I have nothing to do with you."...

* * * * *

But the priests, O Khalid, have yet a little to do with you. Such

arguments about the Divine Law and the Canon Law, about alms and

spiritual beggars, might cut the Gordian knot with your uncle,

but--and whether it be good or bad English, we say it--they cut no ice

with the Church. Yes, Mother Church, under whose wings you and your

cousin were born and bred, and under whose wings you and your cousin

would be married, can not take off for the sweet sake of your black

eyes the ruffles and flounces of twenty centuries. Think well on it,

you who have so extravagantly and not unwisely delivered yourself on

flounces and ruffles. But to think, when in love, were, indeed,

disastrous. O Love, Love, what Camels of wisdom thou canst force to

pass through the needle's eye! What miracles divine are thine! Khalid

himself says that to be truly, deeply, piously in love, one must needs

hate himself. How true, how inexorably true! For would he be always

inviting trouble and courting affliction, would he be always bucking

against the dead wall of a Democracy or a Church, if he did not

sincerely hate himself--if he were not religiously, fanatically in

love--in love with Najma, if not with Truth?

Now, on the following Sunday, instead of publishing the intended

marriage of Khalid and Najma, the parish priest places a ban upon it.

And in this, ye people of Baalbek, is food enough for tattle, and

cause enough for persecution. Potent are the ruffles of the Church!

But why, we can almost hear the anxious Reader asking, if the camels

are ready, why the deuce don't they get on and get them gone? But did

we not say once that Khalid is slow, even slower than the law itself?

Nevertheless, if this were a Novel, an elopement would be in order,

but we must repeat, it is not. We are faithful transcribers of the

truth as we find it set down in Shakib's _Histoire Intime_.

True, Khalid did ask Najma to throw with him the handful of dust, to

steal out of Baalbek and get married on the way, say in Damascus. But

poor Najma goes over to his mother instead, and mingling their tears

and prayers, they beseech the Virgin to enlighten the soul and mind of

Khalid. "Yes, we must be married here, before we go to the desert,"

says she, "for think, O my mother, how far away we shall be from the

world and the Church if anything happens to us."

And they would have succeeded, the mother and cousin of Khalid, in

persuading the parish priest to accept from them the prescribed alms

and perform the wedding ceremony, had not the Jesuits, in the interest

of the Faith and the Church, been dogging Khalid still. For if they

have failed in sending him to the Bosphorus, they will succeed in

sending him elsewhither. And observe how this is done.

After communicating with the Papal Legate in Mt. Lebanon about that

fatal Latter Day Pamphlet of Thomas Carlyle, the Adjutant-General, or

Adjutant-Bird, stalks up there one night in person and lays before the

Rt. Rev. Mgr. his devil's brief in Khalid's case. It has already been

explained that this Pamphlet was fathered on Khalid by the Jesuits.

For if they can not punish the Voice which is still pursuing them--and

in their heart of hearts they must have recognised its thunder, even

in a Translation--they will make the man smart for it who first

mentioned Carlyle in this connection.

"And besides this pernicious booklet," says the Adjutant-Bird, "the

young man's heretical opinions are notorious. He was banished from

home on that account. And now, after corrupting and deluding his

cousin, he is going to marry her despite the ban of the Church.

Something, Monseigneur, ought to be done, and quickly, to protect the

community against the poison of this wretch." And Monseigneur, nodding

his accord, orders his Secretary to write a note to the Patriarch,

enclosing the aforesaid devil's brief, and showing the propriety, nay,

the necessity of excommunicating Khalid the Baalbekian. The

Adjutant-Bird, with the Legate's letter in his pocket, skips over to

the Patriarch on the other hill-top below, and after a brief

interview--our dear good Ancient of the Maronites must willy-nilly

obey Rome--the fate of Khalid the Baalbekian is sealed.

Indeed, the upshot of these Jesuitic machinations is this: on the very

day when Khalid's mother and cousin are pleading before the parish

priest for justice, for mercy,--offering the prescribed alms,

beseeching that the ban be revoked, the marriage solemnised,--a

messenger from the Bishop of the Diocese enters, kisses his

Reverence's hand, and delivers an imposing envelope. The priest

unseals it, unfolds the heavy foolscap sheet therein, reads it with a

knitting of the brow, a shaking of the beard, and, clapping one hand

upon the other, tells the poor pleaders to go home.

"It is all finished. There is no more hope for you and your cousin."

And he shows the Patriarchal Bull, and explains.

Whereupon, Najma and Khalid's mother go out weeping, wailing, beating

their breasts and cheeks, calling upon Allah to witness their sorrow

and the outrageous tyranny of the priests.

"What has my son done to be excommunicated? Hear it, ye people, hear

it. And be just to me and my son. What has he done to deserve the

anathema of the Church? What has he done?" And thus frantic, mad, she

runs through the main street of the town, making wild gestures and

clamours,--publishing, as it were, the Patriarchal Bull, before it was

read by the priest on the following day, and tacked on the door of the

Church.

Of this Bull, tricked with the stock phrases of the Church of the

Middle Ages, such as "anathema be he," or "banned be he," who

speaks with, deals with, and so forth, we have a copy before us.

But our readers will not pardon us, we fear, if further space and

consideration be here given to its contents. Suffice it to say,

however, that Khalid comes to church on that fatal day, takes the

foolscap sheet down from the door, and, going with it to the

town-square, burns it there before the multitudes.

And it came to pass, when the Bull is burned in the town-square of

Baalbek, in the last year of the reign of Abd'ul-Hamid, some among the

multitudes shout loud shouts of joy, and some cast stones.

Then, foul, vehement speaking falleth between the friends and the

enemies of him who wrought evil in the sight of the Lord;

And every one thereupon brandisheth a stick or taketh up a stone and

the battle ensueth.

Now, the mighty troops of the Sultan of the Ottomans come forth like

the Yaman wind and stand in the town-square like rocks;

And the battle rageth still, and the troops who are come forth to part

the fighting multitudes, having gorged themselves at the last meal,

can not as much as speak their part:

And it came to pass, when the clubs and spades are veiled and the

battle subsideth of itself, the good people return to their respective

callings and trades;

But the perverse recalcitrants which remain--and Khalid the Baalbekian

is among them--are taken by the aforesaid overfed troops to the City

Hall and thence to the _velayet_ prison in Damascus.

And here endeth our stichometrics of the Battle of the Bull.

Now, Shakib may wear out his shoes this time, his tongue, too, and his

purse, but to no purpose. Behold, your friend the _kaimkam_ is gloomy

and impassive as a camel; what can you do? Whisper in his ear? The

Padres have done that before you. Slip a purse into his pocket? They

have done that, too, and overdone it long since. Yes, the City Hall of

every city in the Empire is an epitome of Yildiz Kiosk. And your

_kaimkams_, and _valis_, and _viziers_, have all been taught in the

same Text-Book, at the same Political School, and by the same

Professor. Let Khalid rest, therefore and ponder these matters in

silence. For in the City Hall and during the month he passes in the

prison of Damascus, we are told, he does not utter a word. His

partisans in prison ask to be taught his creed, and among these are

some Mohammadans: "We'll burn the priests and their church yet and

follow you. By our Prophet Mohammad we will ..." Khalid makes no

reply. Even Shakib, when he comes to visit him, finds him dumb as a

stone, slain by adversity and disease. Nothing can be done now. The

giant excommunicated, incommunicative soul, struggling in a prison of

sore flesh, we must leave, alas, with his friends and partisans to

pass his thirty days and nights in the second prison of stone.

Now, let us return to the Jesuits, who, having worsted Khalid, or the

Devil in Khalid, as they charitably put it, will also endeavour to do

somewhat in the interest of his intended bride. For the Padres, in

addition to their many crafts and trades, are matrimonial brokers of

honourable repute. And in their meddling and making, their baiting and

mating, they are as serviceable as the Column Personal of an American

newspaper. Whoso is matrimonially disposed shall whisper his mind at

the Confessional or drop his advertisement in the pocket of the

visiting Columns of their Bride-Dealer, and he shall prosper. She as

well as he shall prosper.

Now, Father Farouche is commissioned to come all the way from Zahleh

to visit the brother of Abu-Khalid their porter, and bespeak him in

the interest of his daughter. All their faculties of persuasion shall

be exerted in behalf of Najma. She must be saved at any cost. Hence

they volunteer their services. And while Khalid is lingering in prison

at Damascus, they avail themselves of the opportunity to further the

suit of their pickle-herring candidate for Najma's love.

The Reverend Farouche, therefore, holds a secret conference with her

father.

"No," says he, "God would never have forgiven you for giving your

daughter to one utterly destitute of morality, religion, money, and

health. But praise Allah! the Church has come to her rescue. She shall

be saved, wrested from the hands of Iblis. Yes, Holy Church, through

us, will guide her to find a god-fearing life-companion; one worthy of

her charms, her virtues, her fine qualities of heart and mind. The

young man we recommend is rich, respected in the community; is an

official of the Government with a third-class Medjidi decoration and

the title of Bey; and is free from all diseases. Moreover, he is a

good Catholic. Consider these advantages. A relation this, which no

father would reject, if he loves his daughter and is solicitous of her

future well-being. Speak to her, therefore, and let us know soon your

mind."

And our Scribe, in relating of this, loses his temper.--"An Official

of the Government, a Bey with a third-class Medjidi decoration

from the Sultan! As if Officialdom could not boast of a single

scoundrel--as if any rogue in the Empire, with a few gold coins in his

purse, were not eligible to the Hamidian decorations! And a

third-class decoration! Why, I have it on good authority that

these Medjidi Orders were given to a certain Patriarch in a bushel to

distribute among his minions...."

But to our subject. Abu-Najma does not look upon it in this light. A

decorated and titled son-in-law were a great honour devoutly to be

wished. And some days after the first conference, the Padre Farouche

comes again, bringing along his Excellency the third-class Medjidi

Bey; but Najma, as they enter and salaam, goes out on the terrace roof

to weep. The third time the third-class Medjidi Dodo comes alone. And

Najma, as soon as she catches a glimpse of him, takes up her earthen

jar and hies her to the spring.

"O the hinny! I'll rope noose her (hang her) to-night," murmurs the

father. But here is his Excellency with his Sultan's green button in

his lapel. Abu-Najma bows low, rubs his hands well, offers a large

cushion, brings a _masnad_ (leaning pillow), and blubbers out many

unnecessary apologies.

"This honour is great, your Excellency--overlook our shortcomings--our

_beit_ (one room house) can not contain our shame--it is not becoming

your Excellency's high rank--overlook--you have condescended to honour

us, condescend too to be indulgent.--My daughter? yes, presently. She

is gone to church, to mass, but she'll return soon."

But Najma is long gone; returns not; and the third-class Dodo

will call again to-morrow. Now, Abu-Najma brings out his rope,

soaps it well, nooses and suspends it from the rafter in the

ceiling. And when his daughter returns from the spring, he takes

her by the arm, shows her the rope, and tells her laconically

to choose between his Excellency and this. Poor Najma has not

the courage to die, and so soon. Her cousin Khalid is in prison,

is excommunicated--what can she do? Run away? The Church will

follow her--punish her. There's something satanic in Khalid--the

Church said so--the Church knows. Najma rolls these things in her

mind, looks at her father beseechingly. Her father points to the

noose. Najma falls to weeping. The noose serves well its purpose.

For hereafter, when the Dodo comes decorated, SHE has to offer him the

cushion, bring him the _masnad_, make for him the coffee. And

eventually, as the visits accumulate, she goes with him to the

dress-maker in Beirut. The bridal gown shall be of the conventional

silk this time; for his Excellency is travelled, and knows and

reverences the fashion. But why prolong these painful details?

"Allah, in the mysterious working of his Providence," says Shakib,

"preordained it thus: Khalid, having served his turn in prison, Najma

begins her own; for a few days after he was set free, she was placed

in bonds forged for her by the Jesuits. Now, when Khalid returned from

Damascus, he came straightway to me and asked that we go to see Najma

and try to prevail upon her, to persuade her to go with him, to run

away. They would leave on the night-train to Hama this time, and

thence set forth towards Palmyra. I myself did not know what had

happened, and so I approved of his plan. But alas! as we were coming

down the main Street to Najma's house, we heard the sound of tomtoms

in the distance and the shrill ulluluing of women. We continued apace

until we reached the by-way through which we had to pass, and lo, we

find it choked by the _zeffah_ (wedding procession) of none but she

and the third-class Medjidi...."

* * * * *

But we'll no more of this! Too tragic, too much like fiction it

sounds, that here abruptly we must end this Chapter.

CHAPTER VIII

THE KAABA OF SOLITUDE

Disappointed, distraught, diseased,--worsted by the Jesuits,

excommunicated, crossed in love,--but with an eternal glint of

sunshine in his breast to open and light up new paths before him,

Khalid, after the fatal episode, makes away from Baalbek. He suddenly

disappears. But where he lays his staff, where he spends his months of

solitude, neither Shakib nor our old friend the sandomancer can say.

Somewhither he still is, indeed; for though he fell in a swoon as he

saw Najma on her caparisoned palfrey and the decorated Excellency

coming up along side of her, he was revived soon after and persuaded

to return home. But on the following morning, our Scribe tells us,

coming up to the booth, he finds neither Khalid there, nor any of his

few worldly belongings. We, however, have formed a theory of our own,

based on certain of his writings in the K. L. MS., about his

mysterious levitation; and we believe he is now somewhither whittling

arrows for a coming combat. In the Lebanon mountains perhaps. But we

must not dog him like the Jesuits. Rather let us reverence the privacy

of man, the sacredness of his religious retreat. For no matter where

he is in the flesh, we are metaphysically certain of his existence.

And instead of filling up this Chapter with the bitter bickerings of

life and the wickedness and machination of those in power, let us

consecrate it to the divine peace and beauty of Nature. Of a number of

Chapters in the Book of Khalid on this subject, we choose the one

entitled, My Native Terraces, or Spring in Syria, symbolising the

natural succession to Khalid's Winter of destiny. In it are signal

manifestations of the triumph of the soul over the diseases and

adversities and sorrows of mortal life. Indeed, here is an example of

faith and power and love which we reckon sublime.

* * * * *

"The inhabitants of my terraces and terrace walls," we translate,

"dressed in their Sunday best, are in the doorways lounging or peeping

idly through their windows. And why not? It is Spring, and to these

delicate, sweet little creatures, Spring is the one Sunday of the

year. Have they not hugged the damp, dark earth long enough? Hidden

from the wrath of Winter, have they not squatted patiently round the

primitive, smokeless fire of the mystic depths? And now, the rain

having partly extinguished the inner, hidden flame, they come out to

bask in the sun, and drink deeply of the ambrosial air. They come,

almost slain with thirst, to the Mother Fountain. They come out to

worship at the shrine of the sweet-souled, God-absorbed Rabia of

Attar. In their bright, glowing faces what a delectable message from

the under world of romance and enchantment! Their lips are red with

the kisses of love, in whose alembics, intangible, unseen, the dark

and damp of the earth are translated into warmth and colour and shade.

Ay, these dear little children, unfolding their soft green scrolls and

reading aloud such odes on Modesty and Beauty, are as inspiring as the

star-crowned night. And every chink in my terrace walls seems to

breathe a message of sweetness and light and love.

"Know you not the anecdote about the enchanting Goddess Rabia, as

related by Attar in his _Biographies of Sufi Mystics and Saints_? Here

it is. Rabia was asked if she hated the devil, and she replied, 'No.'

Asked again why, she said, 'Being absorbed in love, I have no time to

hate.' Now, all the inhabitants of my terraces and fields seem to echo

this sublime sentiment of their Goddess. The air and sunshine, nay,

the very rocks are imbued with it. See, how the fissures in the

boulders yonder seem to sympathise with the gaps in the terrace walls:

the cyclamen leaves in the one are salaaming the cyclamen flowers in

the other. O, these terraces would have delighted the heart of the

American naturalist Thoreau. He could not have desired stone walls

with more gaps in them. But mind you, these are not dark, ugly,

hollow, hopeless chinks. Behind every one of them lurks a mystery. Far

back in the niches I can see the busts of the poets who wrote the

poems which these beautiful wild flowers are reading to me. Yes, the

authors are dead, and what I behold now are the flowers of their

amours. These are the offspring of their embraces, the crystallised

dew of their love. Yes, this one single, simple act of love brings

forth an infinite variety of flowers to celebrate the death of the

finite outward shape and the eternal essence of life perennial. In

complete surrender lies the divineness of things eternal. This is the

key-note of the Oriental mystic poets. And I incline to the belief

that they of all bards have sung best the song of love. In rambling

through the fields with these beautiful children of the terraces, I

know not what draws me to Al-Fared, the one erotic-mystic poet of

Arabia, whose interminable rhymes have a perennial charm. Perhaps such

lines as these,--

'All that is fair is fairer when she rises,

All that is sweet is sweeter when she is here;

And every form of beauty she surprises

With one brief word she whispers in its ear:

'Thy wondrous charms, O let them not deceive thee;

They are but borrowed from her for a while;

Thine outward guise and loveliness would grieve thee,

If in thine inmost soul she did not smile.

'All colours, forms, into each other merging,

Are woven on her Loom of Unity;

For she alone is One in All diverging,

And she alone is absolute and free.'

"Now, I will bring you to a scene most curiously suggestive. Behold

that little knot of daisies pressing around the alone anemone beneath

the spreading leaves of the colocasia. Here is a rout at the Countess

Casiacole's, and these are the débutantes crowding around the

Celebrity of the day. But would they do so if they were sensible of

their own worth, if they knew that their idol, flaunting the crimson

crown of popularity, had no more, and perhaps less, of the pure

essence of life than any of them? But let Celebrity stand there and

enjoy her hour; to-morrow the Ploughman will come.

* * * * *

"The sage, with its spikes of greyish blue flowers, its fibrous,

velvety leaves, its strong, pungent perfume, which is not squandered

or repressed, is the stoic of my native terraces. It responds

generously to the personal touch, and serves the Lebanonese, rich and

poor alike, with a little luxury. Ay, who of us, wandering on foreign

strands, does not remember the warm foot-bath, perfumed with sage

leaves, his mother used to give him before going to bed? Our dear

mothers!"--And here, Khalid goes in raptures and tears about his sorry

experience in Baalbek and the anguish and sorrow of his poor mother.

"But while I stand," he continues, "let me be like the sage, a

live-oak among shrubs, indifferent as the oak or pine to the winds and

storms. And as the sun is setting, find you no solace in the thought,

O Khalid, that some angel herb-gatherer will preserve the perfume in

your leaves, to refresh therewith in other worlds your dear poor

mother?

"My native terraces are rich with faith and love, luxuriant with the

life divine and the wondrous symbols thereof. And the grass here is

not cut and trimmed as in the artificial gardens and the cold dull

lawns of city folk, whose love for Nature is either an experiment, a

sport, a business, or a fad. 'A dilettantism in Nature is barren and

unworthy,' says Emerson. But of all the lovers of Nature, the children

are the least dilettanteish. And every day here I see a proof of this.

Behold them wading to their knees in that lusty grass, hunting the

classic lotus with which to deck their olive branches for the high

mass and ceremony of Palm Sunday. But alas, my lusty grass and my

beautiful wild flowers do not enjoy the morning of Spring. Here, the

ploughman comes, carrying his long plough and goad on his shoulder,

and with him his wife lugging the yoke and his boy leading the oxen.

Alas, the sun shall not set on these bright, glowing, green terraces,

whose walls are very ramparts of flowers. There, the boy with his

scythe is paving the way for his father's plough; the grass is mowed

and given to the oxen as a bribe to do the ugly business. And all for

the sake of the ugly mulberries, which are cultivated for the ugly

silk-worms. Come, let us to the heath, where the hiss of the scythe

and the 'ho-back' and 'oho' of the ploughman are not heard.

"But let us swing from the road. Come, the hedges of Nature are not as

impassable as the hedges of man. Through these scrub oaks and wild

pears, between this tangle of thickets, over the clematis and

blackberry bush,--and here we are under the pines, the lofty and

majestic pines. How different are these natural hedges, growing in

wild disorder, from the ugly cactus fences with which my neighbours

choose to shut in their homes, and even their souls. But my business

now is not with them. There are my friends the children again

gathering the pine-needles of last summer for lighting the fire of the

silk-worm nursery. And down that narrow foot-path, meandering around

the boulders and disappearing among the thickets, see what big loads

of brushwood are moving towards us. Beneath them my swarthy and hardy

peasants are plodding up the hill asweat and athirst. When I first

descended to the wadi, one such load of brushwood emerging suddenly

from behind a cliff surprised and frightened me. But soon I was

reminded of the moving forest in Macbeth. The man bowed beneath the

load was hidden from view, and the boy directly behind was sweating

under a load as big as that of his father. '_Awafy!_' (Allah give you

strength), I said, greeting them. 'And increase of health to you,'

they replied. I then asked the boy how far down do they have to go for

their brushwood, and laying down his load on a stone to rest, he

points below, saying, 'Here, near the river.' But this 'Here, near the

river' is more than four hours' walk from the village.--Allah preserve

you in your strength, my Brothers. And they pass along, plodding

slowly under their overshadowing burdens. A hard-hearted Naturalist,

who goes so deep into Nature as to be far from the vital core even as

the dilettante, might not have any sympathy to throw away on such

occasions. But of what good is the love of Nature that consists only

in classification and dissection? I carry no note-book with me when I

go down the wadi or out into the fields. I am content if I bring back

a few impressions of some reassuring instance of faith, a few

pictures, and an armful of wild flowers and odoriferous shrubs. Let

the learned manual maker concern himself with the facts; he is content

with jotting down in his note-book the names and lineage of every

insect and every herb.

"But Man? What is he to these scientific Naturalists? If they meet a

stranger on the road, they pass him by, their eyes intent on the

breviary of Nature, somewhat after the fashion of my priests, who are

fond of praying in the open-air at sundown. No, I do not have to prove

to my Brothers that my love of Nature is but second to my love of

life. I am interested in my fellow men as in my fellow trees and

flowers. 'The beauty of Nature,' Emerson again, 'must always seem

unreal and mocking until the landscape has human figures, that are as

good as itself.' And 'tis well, if they are but half as good. To me,

the discovery of a woodman in the wadi were as pleasing as the

discovery of a woodchuck or a woodswallow or a woodbine. For in the

soul of the woodman is a song, I muse, as sweet as the rhythmic

strains of the goldfinch, if it could be evoked. But the soul plodding

up the hill under its heavy overshadowing burden, what breath has it

left for song? The man bowed beneath the load, the soul bowed beneath

the man! Alas, I seem to behold but moving burdens in my country. And

yet, my swarthy and shrunken, but firm-fibred people plod along,

content, patient, meek; and when they reach the summit of the hill

with their crushing burdens, they still have breath enough to troll a

favourite ditty or serenade the night.

'I come to thee, O Night,

I'm at thy feet;

I can not see, O Night,

But thy breath is sweet.'

"And so is the breath of the pines. Here, the air is surcharged with

perfume. In it floats the aromatic soul of many a flower. But the

perfume-soul of the pines seems to tower over all others, just as its

material shape lifts its artistic head over the oak, the cercis, and

the terabinth. And though tall and stately, my native pines are not

forbidding. They are so pruned that the snags serve as a most

convenient ladder. Such was my pleasure mounting for the green cones,

the salted pinons of which are delicious. But I confess they seem to

stick in the stomach as the pitch of the cones sticks on the hands.

This, however, though it remains for days, works no evil; but the

pinons in the stomach, and the stomach on the nerves,--that is a

different question.

"The only pines I have seen in the United States are those in front of

Emerson's house in Concord; but compared with my native trees, they

are scrubby and mean. These pine parasols under which I lay me,

forgiving and forgetting, are fit for the gods. And although closely

planted, they grow and flourish without much ado. I have seen spots

not exceeding a few hundred square feet holding over thirty trees, and

withal stout and lusty and towering. Indeed, the floor of the Tent

seems too narrow at times for its crowded guests; but beneath the

surface there is room for every root, and over it, the sky is broad

enough for all.

"Ah, the bewildering vistas through the variegated pillars, taking in

a strip of sea here, a mountain peak there, have an air of enchantment

from which no human formula can release a pilgrim-soul. They remind

me--no; they can not remind me of anything more imposing. But when I

was visiting the great Mosques of Cairo I was reminded of them. Yes,

the pine forests are the great mosques of Nature. And for art-lovers,

what perennial beauty of an antique art is here. These majestic

pillars arched with foliage, propping a light-green ceiling, from

which cones hang in pairs and in clusters, and through which curiously

shaped clouds can be seen moving in a cerulean sky; and at night,

instead of the clouds, the stars--the distant, twinkling, white and

blue stars--what to these are the decorations in the ancient mosques?

There, the baroques, the arabesques, the colourings gorgeous, are

dead, at least inanimate; here, they palpitate with life. The moving,

swelling, flaming, flowing life is mystically interwoven in the

evergreen ceiling and the stately colonnades. Ay, even the horizon

yonder, with its planets and constellations rising and setting ever,

is a part of the ceiling decoration.

"Here in this grand Mosque of Nature, I read my own Korân. I, Khalid,

a Beduin in the desert of life, a vagabond on the highway of thought,

I come to this glorious Mosque, the only place of worship open to me,

to heal my broken soul in the perfumed atmosphere of its celestial

vistas. The mihrabs here are not in this direction nor in that. But

whereso one turns there are niches in which the living spirit of

Allah is ever present. Here, then, I prostrate me and read a few

Chapters of MY Holy Book. After which I resign myself to my eternal

Mother and the soft western breezes lull me asleep. Yea, and even like

my poor brother Moslem sleeping on his hair-mat in a dark corner of

his airy Mosque, I dream my dream of contentment and resignation and

love.

"See the ploughman strutting home, his goad in his hand, his plough on

his shoulder, as if he had done his duty. Allah be praised, the

flowers in the terrace-walls are secure. That is why, I believe, my

American brother Thoreau liked walls with many gaps in them. The sweet

wild daughters of Spring can live therein their natural life without

being molested by the scythe or the plough. Allah be praised a hundred

times and one."

CHAPTER IX

SIGNS OF THE HERMIT

Although we claim some knowledge of the Lebanon mountains, having

landed there in our journey earthward, and having since then, our

limbs waxing firm and strong, made many a journey through them, we

could not, after developing, through many readings, Khalid's spiritual

films, identify them with the vicinage which he made his Kaaba. On

what hill, in what wadi, under what pines did he ruminate and

extravagate, we could not from these idealised pictures ascertain. For

a spiritual film is other than a photographic one. A poet's lens is

endowed with a seeing eye, an insight, and a faculty to choose and

compose. Hence the difficulty in tracing the footsteps of Fancy--in

locating its cave, its nest, or its Kaaba. His pine-mosque we could

find anywhere, at any altitude; his vineyards, too, and his glades;

for our mountain scenery, its beauty alternating between the placid

and the rugged--the tame terrace soil and the wild, forbidding

majesty--is allwhere almost the same. But where in these rocky and

cavernous recesses of the world can we to-day find the ancient Lebanon

troglodyte, whom Khalid has seen, and visited in his hut, and even

talked with? It is this that forces us to seek his diggings, to trace,

if possible, his footsteps.

In the K. L. MS., as we have once remarked and more than once hinted,

we find much that is unduly inflated, truly Oriental; much that is

platitudinous, ludicrous, which we have suppressed. But never could we

question the Author's veracity and sincerity of purpose. Whether he

crawled like a zoöphyte, soared like an eagle, or fought, like Ali,

the giants of the lower world, he is genuine, and oft-times amusingly

truthful. But the many questionable pages on this curious subject of

the eremite, what are we to do with them? If they are imaginary, there

is too much in this Book against quackery to daunt us. And yet, if

Khalid has found the troglodyte, whom we thought to be an extinct

species, he should have left us a few legends about it.

We have visited the ancient caverns of the Lebanon troglodytes in the

cliffs overhanging the river of Wadi Kadeesha, and found nothing there

but blind bats, and mosses, and dreary vacuity. No, not a vestage of

the fossil is there, not a skull, not a shinbone. We have also

inquired in the monasteries near the Cedars, and we were frankly told

that no monk to-day fancies such a life. And if he did, he would not

give his brother monks the trouble of carrying his daily bread to a

cave in those forbidden cliffs. And yet, Simeon Stylites, he of the

Pillar, who remained for thirty years perched on the top of it, was a

Syrian shepherd. But who of his descendants to-day would as much as

pass one night on the top of that pillar? Curious eleemosynary phases

of our monkish system, these modern times reveal.

On our way from a journey to the Cedars, while engaged in the present

Work, we passed through a pine forest, in which were some tangled

bushes of the clematis. The muleteer stops near one of these and

stoops to reach something he had seen therein. No treasure-trove,

alas, as he supposed; but merely a book for which he lacerated his

hands and which he cursed and handed to us, saying, "This must be the

breviary of some monk."

No, it was an English book, and of American origin, and of a kind

quite rare in America. Indeed, here were a find and surprise as

agreeable as Khalid's sweetbrier bush. Henry Thoreau's _Week_! What a

miracle of chance. Whose this mutilated copy of the _Week_, we

thought? Who in these mountains, having been in America, took more

interest in the Dreamer of Walden Woods than in peddling and trading?

We walk our mule, looking about in vague, restless surprise, as if

seeking in the woods a lost companion, and lo, we reach a monarch pine

on which is carved the name of--Khalid! This book, then, must be his;

the name on the pine tree is surely his own; we know his hand as well

as his turn of mind. But who can say if this be his Kaaba, this his

pine-mosque? Might he not only have passed through these glades to

other parts? Signs, indeed, are here of his feet and hands, if not of

his tent-pegs. And what signifies his stay? No matter how long he

might have put up here, it is but a passage, deeply considered: like

Thoreau's passage through Walden woods, like Mohammad's through the

desert.

This leisure hour is the nipple of the soul. And fortunate they who

are not artificially suckled, who know this hour no matter how brief,

who get their nipple at the right time. If they do not, no pabulum

ever after, will their indurated tissues assimilate. Do you wonder why

the world is full of crusty souls? and why to them this infant

hour, this suckling while, is so repugnant? But we must not intrude

more of such remarks about mankind. Whether rightly suckled or not,

we manage to live; but whether we do so marmot-like or Maronite-like,

is not the question here to be considered. To pray for your bread

or to burrow in the earth for it, is it not the same with most people?

Given a missionary with a Bible in his hip-pocket or a peasant with

a load of brushwood on his back and the same gastric coefficient, and

you will have in either case a resulting expansion for six feet of

coffin ground and a fraction of Allah's mercy. Our poor missionary,

is it worth while to cross the seas for this? Marmot-like or

Maronite-like--but soft you know! Here is our peasant with his

overshadowing load of brushwood. And there is another, and another.

They are carrying fuel to the lime-pit ahead of us yonder. What

brow-sweat, what time, what fire, what suffering and patient toil,

the lime-washing, or mere liming, of our houses and sepulchres,

requires. That cone structure there, that artificial volcano, with its

crackling, flaming bowels and its fuliginous, coruscating crater,

must our hardy peasants feed continually for twenty days and nights.

But the book and the name on the pine, we would know more of these

signs, if possible. And so, we visit the labourers of the kiln. They

are yödling, the while they work, and jesting and laughing. The

stokers, with flaming, swollen eyes, their tawny complexion waxing a

brilliant bronze, their sweat making golden furrows therein, with

their pikes and pitchforks busy, are terribly magnificent to behold.

Here be men who would destroy Bastilles for you, if it were nominated

in the bond. And there is the monk-foreman--the kiln is of the

monastery's estate--reading his breviary while the lime is in making.

Indeed, these sodalities of the Lebanons are not what their vows and

ascetic theologies would make them. No lean-jowled, hungry-looking

devotees, living in exiguity and droning in exinanition their

prayers,--not by any means. Their flesh-pots are not a few, and

their table is a marvel of ascetism! And why not, if their fat

estates--three-quarter of the lands here is held in mortmain by the

clergy--can yield anything, from silk cocoons to lime-pits? They

will clothe you in silk at least; they will lime-wash your homes and

sepulchres, if they cannot lime-wash anything else. Thanks to them

so long as they keep some reminiscence of business in their heads

to keep the Devil out of it.

The monk-foreman is reading with one eye and watching with the other.

"Work," cries he, "every minute wasted is stolen from the abbey. And

whoso steals, look in the pit: its fire is nothing compared with

Juhannam." And the argument serves its purpose. The labourers hurry

hither and thither, bringing brushwood near; the first stoker pitches

to the second, the second to the third, and he feeds the flaming,

smoking, coruscating volcano. "_Yallah!_" (Keep it up) exclaims the

monk-foreman. "Burn the devil's creed," cries one. "Burn hell," cries

another. And thus jesting in earnest, mightily working and enduring,

they burn the mountains into lime, they make the very rocks yield

somewhat.--Strength and blessings, brothers.

After the usual inquiry of whence and whither, his monkship offers the

snuff-box. "No? roll you, then, a cigarette," taking out a plush pouch

containing a mixture of the choicest native roots. These, we were

told, are grown on the monastery's estate. We speak of the cocoon

products of the season.

"Beshrew the mulberries!" exclaims the monk. "We are turning all our

estates into fruit orchards and orangeries. The cultivation of the

silk-worm is in itself an abomination. And while its income to-day is

not as much as it was ten years ago, the expenditure has risen

twofold. America is ruining our agriculture; and soon, I suppose, we

have to send to China for labourers. Why, those who do not emigrate

demand twice as much to-day for half the work they used to do five

years ago; and those who return from America strut about like country

gentlemen deploring the barrenness of their native soil."

And one subject leading to another, for our monk is a glib talker, we

come to the cheese-makers, the goatherds. "Even these honest rustics,"

says he, "are becoming sophisticated (_mafsudin_). Their cheese is no

longer what it was, nor is their faith. For Civilisation, passing by

their huts in some shape or other, whispers in their ears something

about cleverness and adulteration. And mistaking the one for the

other, they abstract the butter from the milk and leave the verdigris

in the utensils. This lust of gain is one of the diseases which come

from Europe and America,--it is a plague which even the goatherd

cannot escape. Why, do you know, wherever the cheese-monger goes these

days ptomaine poison is certain to follow."

"And why does not the Government interfere?" we ask.

"Because the Government," replies our monk in a dry, droll air and

gesture, "does not eat cheese."

And the monks, we learned, do not have to buy it. For this, as well as

their butter, olive oil, and wine, is made on their own estates, under

their own supervision.

"Yes," he resumes, placing his breviary in his pocket and taking out

the snuff-box; "not long ago one who lived in these parts--a young man

from Baalbek he was, and he had his booth in the pine forest

yonder--bought some cheese from one of these muleteer cheese-mongers,

and after he had eaten of it fell sick. It chanced that I was passing

by on my way to the abbey, when he was groaning and retching beneath

that pine tree. It was the first time I saw that young man, and were I

not passing by I know not what would have become of him. I helped him

to the abbey, where he was ministered to by our physician, and he

remained with us three days. He ate of our cheese and drank of our

wine, and seemed to like both very much. And ever since, while he was

here, he would come to the abbey with a basket or a tray of his own

make--he occupied himself in making wicker-baskets and trays--and ask

in exchange some of our cheese and olive oil. He was very intelligent,

this fellow; his eyes sometimes were like the mouth of this pit, full

of fire and smoke. But he was queer. The clock in him was not wound

right--he was always ahead or behind time, always complaining that we

monks did not reckon time as he did. Nevertheless, I liked him much,

and often would I bring him some of our cookery. But he never accepted

anything without giving something in exchange."

Unmistakable signs.

"And his black turban," continues the monk, "over his long flowing

hair made him look like our hermit." (Strange coincidence!) "On your

way here have you not stopped to visit the hermit? Not far from the

abbey, on your right hand coming here, is the Hermitage."

We remember passing a pretty cottage surrounded by a vineyard in that

rocky wilderness; but who would mistake that for a troglodyte's cave?

"And this young man from Baalbek," we ask, "how did he live in this

forest?"

"Yonder," points the monk, "he cleared and cleaned for himself a

little space which he made his workshop. And up in the pines he

constructed a platform, which he walled and covered with boughs. And

when he was not working or walking, he would be there among the

branches, either singing or asleep. I used to envy him that nest in

the pines."

"And did he ever go to church?"

"He attended mass twice in our chapel, on Good Friday and on Easter

Sunday, I think."

"And did he visit the abbey often?"

"Only when he wanted cheese or olive oil." (Shame, O Khalid!) "But he

often repaired to the Hermitage. I went with him once to listen to his

conversation with the Hermit. They often disagreed, but never

quarrelled. I like that young man in spite of his oddities of thought,

which savoured at times of infidelity. But he is honest, believe me;

never tells a lie; and in a certain sense he is as pious as our

Hermit, I think. Roll another cigarette."

"Thank you. And the Hermit, what is your opinion of him?"

"Well, h'm--h'm--go visit him. A good man he is, but very simple. And

between us, he likes money too much. H'm, h'm, go visit him. If I were

not engaged at present, I would accompany you thither."

We thank our good monk and retrace our steps to the Hermitage, rolling

meanwhile in our mind that awful remark about the Hermit's love of

money. Blindness and Plague! even the troglodyte loves and worships

thee, thou silver Demiurge! We can not believe it. The grudges of

monks against each other often reach darker and more fatal depths.

Alas, if the faith of the cheese-monger is become adulterated, what

shall we say of the faith of our monkhood? If the salt of the

earth--but not to the nunnery nor to the monkery, we go. Rather let us

to the Hermitage, Reader, and with an honest heart; in earnest, not in

sport.

CHAPTER X

THE VINEYARD IN THE KAABA

This, then, is the cave of our troglodyte! Allah be praised, even the

hermits of the Lebanon mountains, like the prophets of America and

other electric-age species, are subject to the laws of evolution. A

cottage and chapel set in a vineyard, the most beautiful we have yet

seen, looms up in this rocky wilderness like an oasis in a desert. For

many miles around, the vicinage presents a volcanic aspect, wild,

barren, howlingly dreary. At the foot of Mt. Sanneen in the east,

beyond many ravines, are villages and verdure; and from the last

terrace in the vineyard one overlooks the deep chasm which can boast

of a rivulet in winter. But in the summer its nakedness is appalling.

The sun turns its pocket inside out, so to speak, exposing its

boulders, its little windrows of sands, and its dry ditches full of

dead fish spawn. And the cold, rocky horizon, rising so high and near,

shuts out the sea and hides from the Hermit the glory of the sundown.

But we can behold its effects on Mt. Sanneen, on the clouds above us,

on the glass casements in the villages far away. The mountains in the

east are mantled with etherial lilac alternating with mauve; the

clouds are touched with purple and gold; the casements in the distance

are scintillating with mystical carbuncles: the sun is setting in the

Mediterranean,--he is waving his farewell to the hills.

We reach the first gate of the Hermitage; and the odour peculiar to

monks and monkeries, a mixed smell of mould and incense and burning

oil, greets us as we enter into a small open space in the centre of

which is a Persian lilac tree. To the right is a barbed-wire fence

shutting in the vineyard; directly opposite is the door of the chapel;

and near it is a wicket before which stands a withered old woman.

Against the wall is a stone bench where another woman is seated. As we

enter, we hear her, standing at the wicket, talking to some one behind

the scene. "Yes, that is the name of my husband," says she. "Allah

have mercy on his soul," sighs an exiguous voice within; "pray for

him, pray for him." And the woman, taking to weeping, blubbers out,

"Will thirty masses do, think your Reverence?" "Yes, that will cheer

his soul," replies the oracle.

The old woman thereupon enters the chapel, pays the priest or

serving-monk therein, one hundred piasters for thirty masses, and

goes away in tears. The next woman rises to the gate. "I am the

mother of--," she says. "Ah, the mother of--," repeats the exiguous

voice. "How are you? (She must be an old customer.) How is your

husband? How are your children? And those in America, are they

well, are they prosperous? Yes, yes, your deceased son. Well,

h'm--h'm--you must come again. I can not tell you anything yet.

Come again next week." And she, too, visits the chapel, counts out

some money to the serving-monk, and leaves the Hermitage, drying

her tears.

The Reader, who must have recognised the squeaking, snuffling,

exiguous voice, knows not perhaps that the Hermit, in certain moments

of _inkhitaf_ (abstraction, levitation) has glimpses into the

spirit-world and can tell while in this otherworldliness how the

Christian souls are faring, and how many masses those in Purgatory

need before they can rejoin the bosom of Father Abraham. And those who

seek consolation and guidance through his occult ministrations are

mostly women. But the money collected for masses, let it here be said,

as well as the income of the vineyard, the Hermit touches not. The

monks are the owners of the occult establishment, and they know better

than he what to do with the revenue. But how far this ancient

religious Medium can go in the spirit-world, and how honest he might

be in his otherworldliness, let those say who have experience in

spookery and table-rapping.

Now, the women having done and gone, the wicket is open, and the

serving-monk ushers us through the dark and stivy corridor to the

rear, where a few boxes marked "Made in America"--petroleum boxes,

these--are offered us as seats. Before the door of the last cell are a

few potsherds in which sweet basil plants are withering from thirst.

Presently, the door squeaks, and one, not drooping like the plants,

comes out to greet us. This is Father Abd'ul-Messiah (Servitor of the

Christ), as the Hermit is called. Here, indeed, is an up-to-date

hermit, not an antique troglodyte. Lean and lathy, he is, but not

hungry-looking; quick of eye and gesture; quick of step, too. He seems

always on the alert, as if surrounded continually with spirits. He is

young, withal, or keeps so, at least, through the grace and

ministration of Allah and the Virgin. His long unkempt hair and beard

are innocent of a single white line. And his health? "Through my five

and twenty years of seclusion," said he, "I have not known any

disease, except, now and then, in the spring season, when the sap

begins to flow, I am visited by Allah with chills and fever.--No; I

eat but one meal a day.--Yes; I am happy, Allah be praised, quite

happy, very happy."

And he lifts his eyes heavenward, and sighs and rubs his hands in

joyful satisfaction. To us, this Servitor of the Christ seemed not to

have passed the climacteric. But truly, as he avowed, he was entering

the fifth lustrum beyond it. Such are the advantages of the ascetic

life, and of such ascetics the Kingdom of Heaven. A man of sixty can

carry twenty years in his pocket, and seem all honesty, and youth, and

health, and happiness.

We then venture a question about the sack-cloth, a trace of which was

seen under his tunic sleeve. And fetching a deep sigh, he gazes on the

drooping sweet basils in silence. No, he likes not to speak of these

mortifications of the flesh. After some meditation he tells us,

however, that the sack-cloth on the first month is annoying,

torturing. "But the flesh," he continues naïvely, "is inured to it,

as the pile, in the course of time, is broken and softened down." And

with an honest look in his eyes, he smiled and sighs his assurance.

For his Reverence always punctuates his speech with these sweet sighs

of joy. The serving-monk now comes to whisper a word in his ear, and

we are asked to "scent the air" a while in the vineyard.

This lovely patch of terrace-ground the Hermit tills and cultivates

alone. And so thoroughly the work is done that hardly a stone can be

seen in the soil. And so even and regular are the terrace walls that

one would think they were built with line and plummet. The vines are

handsomely trimmed and trellised, and here and there, to break the

monotony of the rows, a fig, an apricot, an almond, or an olive,

spreads its umbrageous boughs. Indeed, it is most cheering in the

wilderness, most refreshing to the senses, this lovely vineyard, the

loveliest we have seen.

Father Abd'ul-Messiah might be a descendant of Simeon of the Pillar

for all we know; but instead of perching on the top of it, he breaks

it down and builds with its stones a wall of his vineyard. Here he

comes with his serving-monk, and we resume the conversation under the

almond tree.

"You should come in the grape season to taste of my fruits," says he.

"And do you like the grape?" we ask.

"Yes, but I prefer to cultivate it."

"Throughout the season," the serving-monk puts in, "and though the

grapes be so plentiful, he tastes them not."

"No?"

The Hermit is silent; for, as we have said, he is reluctant in making

such confessions. Virtue, once bragged about, once you pride yourself

upon it, ceases to be such.

In his vineyard the Hermit is most thorough, even scientific. One

would think that he believed only in work. No; he does not sprinkle

the vines with holy water to keep the grubs away. Herein he has sense

enough to know that only in _kabrit_ (sulphur) is the phylactery which

destroys the phylloxera.

"And what do you do when you are not working in your vineyard or

praying?"

"I have always somewhat to do, always. For to be idle is to open the

door for Iblis. I might walk up and down this corridor, counting the

slabs therein, and consider my time well spent." Saying which he rises

and points to the sky. The purple fringes of the clouds are gone to

sable; the lilac tints on the mountains are waxing grey; and the

sombre twilight with his torch--the evening star had risen--is

following in the wake of day; 'tis the hour of prayer.

But before we leave him to his devotion, we ask to be permitted to see

his cell. Ah, that is against the monastic rules. We insist. And with

a h'm, h'm, and a shake of the head, he rubs his hands caressingly and

opens the door. Yes, the Reader shall peep into this eight by six

cell, which is littered all around with rubbish, sacred and profane.

In the corner is a broken stove with a broken pipe attached,--broken

to let some of the smoke into the room, we are told. "For smoke,"

quoth the Hermit, quoting the Doctor, "destroys the microbes--and

keeps the room warm after the fire goes out."

In the corner opposite the stove is a little altar with the

conventional icons and gewgaws and a number of prayer books lying

pell-mell around. Nearby is an old pair of shoes, in which are stuck a

few candles and St. Anthony's Book of Contemplations. In the corner

behind the door is a large cage, a pantry, suspended middleway between

the floor and ceiling, containing a few earthen pots, an oil lamp, and

a jar, covered with a cloth. Between the pantry and the altar, on a

hair-mat spread on the floor, sleeps his Reverence. And his bed is not

so hard as you might suppose, Reader; for, to serve your curiosity, we

have been rude enough to lift up a corner of the cloth, and we found

underneath a substantial mattress! On the bed is his book of accounts,

which, being opened, when we entered, he hastened to close.

"You keep accounts, too, Reverence?"

"Indeed, so. That is a duty devolved on every one with mortal

memory."

Let it not be supposed, however, that he has charge of the crops. In

his journal he keeps the accounts of his masses? And here be evil

sufficient for the day.

This, then, is the inventory of Abd'ul-Messiah's cell. And we do

not think we have omitted much of importance. Yes; in the fourth

corner, which we have not mentioned, are three or four petroleum cans

containing provisions. From one of these he brings out a handful of

dried figs, from another a pinch of incense, which he gives us as a

token of his love and blessing. One thing we fain would emphasise,

before we conclude our account. The money part of this eremitic

business need not be harshly judged; for we must bear in mind that

this honest Servitor of Christ is strong enough not to have his

will in the matter. And remember, too, that the abbey's bills of

expenses run high. If one of the monks, therefore, is blessed with a

talent for solitude and seclusion, his brother monks shall profit

by it. Indeed, we were told, that the income of the Hermitage, that

is, the sum total in gold of the occult and the agricultural

endeavours of Abd'ul-Messiah, is enough to defray the yearly

expenditures of the monkery. Further, we have nothing to say on the

subject. But Khalid has. And of his lengthy lucubration on _The Uses

of Solitude_, we cull the following:

"Every one's life at certain times," writes he, "is either a Temple, a

Hermitage, or a Vineyard: every one, in order to flee the momentary

afflictions of Destiny, takes refuge either in God, or in Solitude, or

in Work. And of a truth, work is the balm of the sore mind of the

world. God and Solitude are luxuries which only a few among us

nowadays can afford. But he who lives in the three, though his life be

that of a silk larva in its cocoon, is he not individually considered

a good man? Is he not a mystic, though uncreative, centre of goodness?

Surely, his influence, his Me alone considered, is living and benign,

and though it is not life-giving. He is a flickering taper under a

bushel; and this, _billah_, were better than the pissasphaltum-souls

which bushels of quackery and pretence can not hide. But alas, that a

good man by nature should be so weak as to surrender himself entirely

to a lot of bad men. For the monks, my brother Hermit, being a silk

worm in its cocoon, will asphyxiate the larva after its work is done,

and utilise the silk. Ay, after the Larva dies, they pickle and

preserve it in their chapel for the benefit of those who sought its

oracles in life. Let the beef-packers of America take notice; the

monks of my country are in the market with 'canned hermits!'

"And this Larva, be it remembered, is not subject to decay; a saint

does not decompose in the flesh like mortal sinners. One of these, I

have been told, dead fifty years ago and now canonised, can be seen

yet in one of the monasteries of North Lebanon, keeping well his flesh

and bones together--divinely embalmed. It has been truly said that the

work of a good man never dies; and these leathery hermits continue in

death as in life to counsel and console the Faithful.

"In the past, these Larvæ, not being cultivated for the market,

continued their natural course of development and issued out of their

silk prisons full fledged moths. But those who cultivate them to-day

are in sore need. They have masses and indulgences to sell; they have

big bills to pay. But whether left to grow their wings or not, their

solitude is that of a cocoon larva, narrow, stale, unprofitable to the

world. While that of a philosopher, a Thoreau, for instance, might be

called Nature's filter; and one, issuing therefrom benefited in every

sense, morally, physically, spiritually, can be said to have been

filtered through Solitude."

"The study of life at a distance is inutile; the study of it at close

range is defective. The only method left, therefore, and perhaps the

true one, is that of the artist at his canvas. He works at his picture

an hour or two, and retires a little to study and criticise it from a

distance. It is impossible to withdraw entirely from life and pretend

to take an interest in it. Either like my brother Hermit in these

parts, a spiritual larva in its cocoon, or like a Thoreau, who during

his period of seclusion, peeped every fortnight into the village to

keep up at least his practice of human speech. Else what is the use of

solitude? A life of fantasy, I muse, is nearer to the heart of Nature

and Truth than a life in sack-cloth and ashes....

"And yet, deeply considered, this eremitic business presents another

aspect. For does not the eremite through his art of prayer and

devotion, seek an ideal? Is he not a transcendentalist, at least in

the German sense of the word? Is not his philosophy above all the

senses, as the term implies, and common sense included? For through

Mother Church, and with closed eyes, he will attain the ideal, of

which my German philosopher, through the logic-mill, and with eyes

open, hardly gets a glimpse.

"The devout and poetic souls, and though they walk among the crowd,

live most of their lives in solitude. Through Mother Sorrow, or Mother

Fancy, or Mother Church, they are ever seeking the ideal, which to

them is otherwise unattainable. And whether a howler of Turabu or a

member of the French Academy, man, in this penumbra of faith and

doubt, of superstition and imagination, is much the same. 'The higher

powers in us,' says Novalis, 'which one day, as Genii, shall fulfil

our will, are for the present, Muses, which refresh us on our toilsome

course with sweet remembrances.' And the jinn, the fairies, the

angels, the muses, are as young and vivacious to-day as they were in

the Arabian and Gaelic Ages of Romance.

"But whether Mother Church or Poetry or Philosophy or Music be the

magic-medium, the result is much the same if the motive be not

religiously sincere, sincerely religious, piously pure, lofty, and

humane. Ay, my Larva-Hermit, with all his bigotry and straitness of

soul, stands higher than most of your artists and poets and musicians

of the present day. For a life sincerely spent between the Temple and

the Vineyard, between devotion and honest labour, producing to one man

of all mankind some positive good, is not to be compared with the life

which oscillates continuously between egoism and vanity, quackery and

cowardice, selfishness and pretence, and which never rises, do what it

may, above the larva state....

"Let every one cultivate with pious sincerity some such vineyard

as my Hermit's and the world will not further need reform. For

through all the vapour and mist of his ascetic theology, through the

tortuous chasm of his eremitic logic, through the bigotry and crass

superstition of his soul, I can always see the Vineyard on the one

side of his cell, and the Church on the other, and say to myself:

Here be a man who is never idle; here be one who loves the leisure

praised by Socrates, and hates the sluggishness which Iblis decks and

titivates. And if he crawls between his Church and his Vineyard, and

burrows in both for a solution of life, nay, spins in both the cocoon

of his ideal, he ought not to be judged from on high. Come thou near

him; descend; descend a little and see: has he not a task, and

though it be of the taper-under-the-bushel kind? Has he not a faith

and a sincerity which in a Worm of the Earth ought to be reckoned

sublime? 'If there were sorrow in heaven,' he once said to me, 'how

many there would continuously lament the time they wasted in this

world?'

"O my Brothers, build your Temples and have your Vineyards, even

though it be in the rocky wilderness."

[Illustration]

BOOK THE THIRD

IN KULMAKAN

[Illustration]

TO GOD[1]

_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 Vedas,

another in the Zend-Avesta, another in the Bible, another in the

Korân. 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.

-----

[1] Arabic Symbol.

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?"