e not mentioned, are three or four petroleum cans
containing provisions. From one of these he brings out a handful of
dried figs, from another a pinch of incense, which he gives us as a
token of his love and blessing. One thing we fain would emphasise,
before we conclude our account. The money part of this eremitic
business need not be harshly judged; for we must bear in mind that
this honest Servitor of Christ is strong enough not to have his
will in the matter. And remember, too, that the abbey's bills of
expenses run high. If one of the monks, therefore, is blessed with a
talent for solitude and seclusion, his brother monks shall profit
by it. Indeed, we were told, that the income of the Hermitage, that
is, the sum total in gold of the occult and the agricultural
endeavours of Abd'ul-Messiah, is enough to defray the yearly
expenditures of the monkery. Further, we have nothing to say on the
subject. But Khalid has. And of his lengthy lucubration on _The Uses
of Solitude_, we cull the following:

"Every one's life at certain times," writes he, "is either a Temple, a
Hermitage, or a Vineyard: every one, in order to flee the momentary
afflictions of Destiny, takes refuge either in God, or in Solitude, or
in Work. And of a truth, work is the balm of the sore mind of the
world. God and Solitude are luxuries which only a few among us
nowadays can afford. But he who lives in the three, though his life be
that of a silk larva in its cocoon, is he not individually considered
a good man? Is he not a mystic, though uncreative, centre of goodness?
Surely, his influence, his Me alone considered, is living and benign,
and though it is not life-giving. He is a flickering taper under a
bushel; and this, _billah_, were better than the pissasphaltum-souls
which bushels of quackery and pretence can not hide. But alas, that a
good man by nature should be so weak as to surrender himself entirely
to a lot of bad men. For the monks, my brother Hermit, being a silk
worm in its cocoon, will asphyxiate the larva after its work is done,
and utilise the silk. Ay, after the Larva dies, they pickle and
preserve it in their chapel for the benefit of those who sought its
oracles in life. Let the beef-packers of America take notice; the
monks of my country are in the market with 'canned hermits!'

"And this Larva, be it remembered, is not subject to decay; a saint
does not decompose in the flesh like mortal sinners. One of these, I
have been told,