er with thee; I am
waygone; I must sit me a spell beneath this pine--and weep. O Khalid,
wretched that thou art, can the primitive soul of this muleteer be
better than thine? Can there be a sounder intuitiveness, a healthier
sense of love, a grander sympathy, beneath that striped aba, than
there is within thy cloak? Wilt thou not beat thy cheeks in ignominy
and shame, when a stranger thinks of thy mother, and reverently, ere
thou dost? No matter how low in the spiritual circles she might be, no
matter how high thou risest, her prayer and her love are always with
thee. If she can not rise to thee on the ladder of reason, she can
soar on the wings of affection. Yea, I prostrate myself beneath this
pine, bury my forehead in its dust, thanking Allah for my mother. Oh,
I am waygone, but joyous. The muleteer hath illumined thee, O
Khalid.--

"There, the snow birds are passing by, flitting to the lowland. The
sky is overcast; there is a lull in the wind. Hark, I hear the piping
of the shepherd and the tinkling bell of the wether. Yonder is his
flock; and there sits he on a rock blowing his doleful reed. I am
almost slain with thirst. I go to him, and cheerfully does he milk for
me. I do not think Rebekah was kinder and sweeter in Abraham's
servant's eyes than was this wight in mine. 'Where dost thou sleep?'
I ask, 'Under this rock,' he replies. And he shows me into the cave
beneath it, which is furnished with a goat-skin, a masnad, and a
little altar for the picture of the Virgin. Before this picture is an
oil lamp, ever burning, I am told. 'And this altar,' quoth the
shepherd, 'was my mother's. When she died she bequeathed it to me. I
carry it with me in the wilderness, and keep the oil burning in her
memory.' Saying which he took to weeping. Even the shepherd, O Khalid,
is sent to rebuke thee. I thank him, and resume my march.

"At eventide, descending from one hilltop to another, I reach a
village of no mean size. It occupies a broad deep steep, in which the
walnut and poplar relieve the monotony of the mulberries. I hate the
mulberry, which is so suggestive of worms; and I hate worms, and
though they be of the silk-making kind. I hate them the more, because
the Lebanon peasant seems to live for the silk-worms, which he tends
and cultivates better than he does his children.

"When I stood on the top of the steep, the village glittering with a
thousand lights lay beneath like a strip of the sidereal sky. It made
me feel