e asks, "that the inhabitants of this New World are
better off than those of the Old?--Can you imagine mankind living in a
huge cellar of a world and you and I pumping the water out of its
bottom?--I can see the palaces on which you waste your rhymes, but
mankind live in them only in the flesh. The soul I tell you, still
occupies the basement, even the sub-cellar. And an inundated cellar at
that. The soul, Shakib, is kept below, although the high places are
vacant."

And his partner sputters out his despair; for instead of helping to
pump out the water, Khalid stands there gazing into it, as if by some
miracle he would draw it out with his eyes or with his breath. And the
poor Poet cries out, "Pump! the water is gaining on us, and our shop
is going to ruin. Pump!" Whereupon the lazy, absent-minded one resumes
pumping, while yearning all the while for the plashing stone-rollers
and the purling eaves of his home in Baalbek. And once in a
pinch,--they are labouring under a peltering rain,--he stops as is his
wont to remind Shakib of the Arabic saying, "From the dripping ceiling
to the running gargoyle." He is labouring again under a hurricane of
ideas. And again he asks, "Are you sure we are better off here?"

And our poor Scribe, knee-deep in the water below, blusters out
curses, which Khalid heeds not. "I am tired of this job," he growls;
"the stone-roller never drew so much on my strength, nor did
muleteering. Ah, for my dripping ceiling again, for are we not now
under the running gargoyle?" And he reverts into a stupor, leaving the
world to the poet and the pump.

For five years and more they lead such a life in the cellar. And they
do not move out of it, lest they excite the envy of their compatriots.
But instead of sleeping on the floor, they stretch themselves on the
counters. The rising tide teaches them this little wisdom, which keeps
the doctor and Izraeil away. Their merchandise, however,--their
crosses, and scapulars and prayer-beads,--are beyond hope of recovery.
For what the rising tide spares, the rascally flyaway peddlers carry
away. That is why they themselves shoulder the box and take to the
road. And the pious old dames of the suburbs, we are told, receive
them with such exclamations of joy and wonder, and almost tear their
coats to get from them a sacred token. For you must remember, they are
from the Holy Land. Unlike their goods, they at least are genuine. And
every Saturday night, after beating th