PIONEER 153

FULL CIRCLE 158

A FRIEND OF MAN 164

THE LISTENER 171

THE DARK SECRET 176

THE SCHOLAR AND THE PIRATE 180

A SET OF THREE 191

A LESSON 196

ON BELLONA'S HEM (SECOND SERIES)--

A REVEL IN GAMBOGIA 201

THE MISFIRE 207

A LETTER 212

A MANOR IN THE AIR 219

RIVALRY 223

A FIRST COMMUNION IN THE WAR ZONE 229

THE ACE OF DIAMONDS 234

THE REWARD OF OUR BROTHER THE POILU 239

NOTE 245

=A BOSWELL OF BAGHDAD=

A BOSWELL OF BAGHDAD

I.--INTRODUCTORY

A curious and very entertaining work lies before me, or, to be more
accurate, ramparts me, for it is in four ponderous volumes, capable,
each, even in less powerful hands than those of the Great Lexicographer,
of felling a bookseller. At these volumes I have been sipping, beelike,
at odd times for some years, and I now propose to yield some of the
honey--the season having become timely, since the great majority of the
heroes of its thousands of pages hail from Baghdad; and Baghdad, after
all its wonderful and intact Oriental past, is to-day under Britain's
thumb.

The title of the book is _Ibn Khallikan's Biographical Dictionary_,
translated from the Arabic by Bn Mac Guckin de Slane, and printed in
Paris for the Oriental Translation Fund of Great Britain and Ireland,
1842-71, some centuries after it was written, for its author was dead
before Edward II ascended the English throne. Who would expect Sir
Sidney Lee to have had so remote an exemplar?

Remote not only in time but in distance. For although we may go to the
East for religions and systems of philosophy that were old and proved
worthy centuries before Hellenism or Christianity, yet we do not usually
find there models for our works of reference. Hardly does Rome give us
those. But there is an orderliness and thoroughness about Ibn
Khallikan's methods which the _Dictionary of National Biography_ does
not exceed. The Persian may be more lenient to floridity ("No flowers,
by request," was, it will be remembered, the first Engl