e come to the grand arcade in which the
multitudes on both sides are pressed against the walls and into the
stalls by the bullying Dragoons. We drive through until we reach the
arch, where some Khalif of the Omayiahs used to take the air. And
descending from the carriage, we walk a few paces between two rows of
book-shops, and here we are in the court of the grand Mosque Omayiah.

We elbow our way through the pressing, distressing multitudes,
following Ahmed Bey into the Mosque, while the Army Officer mounts a
platform in the court and dispenses to the crowd there of his Turkish
blatherskite. We stand in the Mosque near the heavy tapestried square
which is said to be the sarcophagus of St. John. Already a Sheikh is
in the pulpit preaching on the excellences of liberty, chopping out
definitions of equality, and quoting from Al-Hadith to prove that all
men are Allah's children and that the most favoured in Allah's sight
is he who is most loving to his brother man. He then winds up with an
encomium on the heroes of the day, curses vehemently the reactionaries
and those who curse them not (the Mosque resounds with "Curse the
reactionists, curse them all!"), tramples beneath his heel every spy
and informer of the New Era, invokes the great Allah and his Apostle
to watch over the patriots and friends of the Ottoman nation, to
visit with grievous punishment its enemies, and--descends.

The silence of expectation ensues. The Mosque is crowded; and the
press of turbans is such that if a pea were dropt from above it would
not reach the floor. From the pulpit the great Mohammedan audience,
with its red fezes, its green and white turbans, seemed to Khalid like
a verdant field overgrown with daisies and poppies. "It is the
beginning of Arabia's Spring, the resuscitation of the glory of
Islam," and so forth; thus opening with a flourish of flattery like
the spouting tricksters whom he so harshly judges. And what shall we
say of him? It were not fair quickly to condemn, to cry him down at
the start. Perhaps he was thus inspired by the august assembly;
perhaps he quailed and thought it wise to follow thus far the advice
of his friends. "It was neither this nor that," say our Scribe. "For
as he stood in the tribune, the picture of the field of daisies and
poppies suggested the picture of Spring. A speaker is not always
responsible for the frolics of his fancy. Indeed, an audience of some
five thousand souls, all intent upon this opaque