FREE BOOKS

Author's List




PREV.   NEXT  
|<   31   32   33   34   35   36   37   38   39   40   41   42   43   44   45   46   47   48   49   50   51   52   53   54   55  
56   57   58   59   60   61   62   63   64   65   66   67   68   69   70   71   72   73   74   75   76   77   78   79   80   >>   >|  
serter had a long start; but they rode with a will when they did go. If anything on earth looks more absurd than a ridden camel galloping away in the moonlight, with his neck stretched out in front of him and his four ungainly legs in the air all together, it is three more camels doing the same thing. They looked like a giant's washing blown off the line flapping before a high wind, and made hardly more noise. The whack-whack-whack of sticks on the beasts' rumps was as distinct as pistol-shots, but you hardly heard the galloping footfall. Grim went on about his business, for changing loads in the dark is a job that needs attention, unless you choose to have a good beast lose heart before morning and lie down in the middle of the road. A camel in pain from a badly cinched girth will endure it without argument for just so long; after which he quits, and not all the whacking or persuading in the world will get him up again. At the end of twenty minutes we were under way once more. Peace closed down on us, and we swayed along under the stars in majestic silence. There have been better nights since, I think; but until then that was the most glorious experience of a lifetime. It is my peculiar delight to read and relive ancient history, and of all history books the Old Testament is vastly the most absorbing--far and away the most accurate. There is a school of fools who set themselves up to scoff at its facts, but every new discovery only confirms the old record; and here were we sauntering through the night on camels over hills where the fathers of history fought for the first beginnings of each man's right to do his own thinking in his own way. After a while Ali Baba gave his camel bell to his oldest son Mujrim, and forced his beast up beside mine, seeming to think silence might ruin the nerve of such a raw hand as myself. Or perhaps it was pride of race and country that impelled him. Even the meanest Arab thrills with emotion when he contemplates his ancient heritage, just as he rages at the prospect of seeing the Jews return to it, and Ali Baba, though a prince of thieves, was surely not a man without a heart. But the trouble with Arab as distinguished from Jewish history is that too little of it was written down, and too much of it invented to prove a theory--much like the stuff they put between the covers of school history books--so Ali Baba's lecture, although gorgeous fiction in its way, hardly enric
PREV.   NEXT  
|<   31   32   33   34   35   36   37   38   39   40   41   42   43   44   45   46   47   48   49   50   51   52   53   54   55  
56   57   58   59   60   61   62   63   64   65   66   67   68   69   70   71   72   73   74   75   76   77   78   79   80   >>   >|  



Top keywords:
history
 

silence

 

ancient

 

school

 
camels
 
galloping
 

beginnings

 
fought
 

fathers

 

oldest


Mujrim

 

thinking

 
accurate
 

Testament

 
vastly
 
absorbing
 

confirms

 

record

 
forced
 

sauntering


discovery

 

Jewish

 

distinguished

 
written
 

trouble

 
prince
 

thieves

 

surely

 

serter

 

invented


lecture

 

gorgeous

 
fiction
 

covers

 

theory

 

return

 
heritage
 
contemplates
 

prospect

 

emotion


thrills

 

country

 

impelled

 

meanest

 
relive
 

choose

 
attention
 

morning

 
cinched
 

endure