th, you can readily gauge an
Arab's expressions, and regulate your own accordingly. But whenever I have
attempted to strike the key-note myself, I generally found that it was
below, rather than above, the Oriental pitch.

The Shekh had already informed me that the King of Ashantee, whom he had
visited, possessed twenty-four houses full of gold, and that the Sultan of
Houssa had seventy thousand horses always standing saddled before his
palace, in order that he might take his choice, when he wished to ride
out. By this he did not mean that the facts were precisely so, but only
that the King was very rich, and the Sultan had a great many horses. In
order to give the Shekh an idea of the great wealth and power of the
American Nation, I was obliged to adopt the same plan. I told him,
therefore, that our country was two years' journey in extent, that the
Treasury consisted of four thousand houses filled to the roof with gold,
and that two hundred thousand soldiers on horseback kept continual guard
around Sultan Fillmore's palace. He received these tremendous statements
with the utmost serenity and satisfaction, carefully writing them in his
book, together with the name of Sultan Fillmore, whose fame has ere this
reached the remote regions of Timbuctoo. The Shekh, moreover, had the
desire of visiting England, and wished me to give him a letter to the
English Sultan. This rather exceeded my powers, but I wrote a simple
certificate explaining who he was, and whence he came, which I sealed with
an immense display of wax, and gave him. In return, he wrote his name in
my book, in the Mughrebbin character, adding the sentence: "There is no
God but God."

This evening the forbidden subject of politics crept into our quiet
community, and the result was an explosive contention which drowned even
the braying of the agonizing trumpets outside. The gentlemanly Frenchman
is a sensible and consistent republican, the old _filateur_ a violent
monarchist, while Absalom, as I might have foreseen, is a Red, of the
schools of Proudhon and Considerant. The first predicted a Republic in
France, the second a Monarchy in America, and the last was in favor of a
general and total demolition of all existing systems. Of course, with such
elements, anything like a serious discussion was impossible; and, as in
most French debates, it ended in a bewildering confusion of cries and
gesticulations. In the midst of it, I was struck by the cordiality with
whic