nging 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