ould give and that I should receive.'
Ingratitude is selfishness, and selfishness is the worship of oneself,
the setting of oneself higher than man and goodness and God. And when
man perishes and the angel Al Sijil, the recorder, rolls up his scroll,
what is written therein is written; and Israfil shall call men to
judgment, and the scrolls shall be unfolded, and he that has taken of
others and not given in return, but has ungratefully forgotten and put
away the remembrance of the kindness received, shall be counted among
the unbelievers and the extortioners and the unjust, and shall broil in
raging flames. By the hairs of the prophet's beard, whose name is
blessed."

I had not seen Isaacs so thoroughly roused before upon any subject. The
flush had left his face and given place to a perfect paleness, and his
eyes shone like coals of fire as he looked upward in pronouncing the
last words. I said to myself that there was a strong element of
religious exaltation in all Asiatics, and put his excitement down to
this cause. His religion was a very beautiful and real thing to him,
ever present in his life, and I mused on the future of the man, with his
great endowments, his exquisite sensitiveness, and his high view of his
obligations to his fellows. I am not a worshipper of heroes, but I felt
that, for the first time in my life, I was intimate with a man who was
ready to stand in the breach and to die for what he thought and believed
to be right. After a pause of some minutes, during which we had ridden
beyond the last straggling bungalows of the town, he spoke again,
quietly, his temporary excitement having subsided.

"I feel very strongly about these things," he said, and then stopped
short.

"I can see you do, and I honour you for it. I think you are the first
grateful person I have ever met; a rare and unique bird in the earth."

"Do not say that."

"I do say it. There is very little of the philosophy of the nineteenth
century about you, Isaacs. Your belief in the obligations of gratitude
and in the general capacity of the human race for redemption, savours
little of 'transcendental analysis.'"

"You have too much of it," he answered seriously. "I do not think you
see how much your cynicism involves. You would very likely, if you are
the man I take you for, be very much offended if I accused you of not
believing any particular dogma of your religion. And yet, with all your
faith, you do not believe in God."

"I c