g your mammoth carcase on
a dung-hill--and devouring your spiritual children. Yes,
America is now in the false dawn, and as sure as America
lives, the true dawn must follow.

"Pardon, Shakib. I did not mean to end my letter in a rhapsody.
But I am so wrought, so broken in body, so inflamed in spirit. I
hope to see you soon. No, I hope to see myself with you on board
of a Transatlantic steamer."

And is not Khalid, like his spiritual Mother, floundering, too, in the
false dawn of life? His love of Nature, which was spontaneous and
free, is it not likely to become formal and scientific? His love of
Country, which begins tremulously, fervently in the woods and streams,
is it not likely to end in Nephelococcygia? His determination to work,
which was rudely shaken at a push-cart, is it not become again a
determination to loaf? And now, that he has a little money laid up,
has he not the right to seek in this world the cheapest and most
suitable place for loafing? And where, if not in the Lebanon hills,
"in which it seemed always afternoon," can he rejoin the Lotus-Eaters
of the East? This man of visions, this fantastic, rhapsodical--but we
must not be hard upon him. Remember, good Reader, the poker which he
would thrust down his windpipe to broaden it a little. With asthmatic
fits and tuberous infiltrations, one is permitted to commune with any
of Allah's ministers of grace or spirits of Juhannam. And that divine
spark of primal, paradisical love, which is rapidly devouring all
others--let us not forget that. Ay, we mean his cousin Najma. Of
course, he speaks, too, of his nation, his people, awaking, lisping,
beginning to speak, waiting for him, the chosen Voice! Which reminds
us of how he was described to us by the hasheesh-smokers of Cairo.

In any event, the Reader will rejoice with us, we hope, that Khalid
will not turn again toward Bohemia. He will agree with us that,
whether on account of his health, or his love, or his mission, it is
well, in his present fare of mind and body, that he is returning to
the land "in which it seemed always afternoon."

CHAPTER IV

THE LAST STAR

Is it not an ethnic phenomenon that a descendant of the ancient
Phoenicians can not understand the meaning and purport of the Cash
Register in America? Is it not strange that this son of Superstition
and Trade can not find solace in the fact that in this Pix of Business
is the Host of the Demiurgic Dollar? Indeed, the