nothing at all. As he stood before me, he looked quite grandly tragic;
and swore he only wanted to run outside and die; that was all.

I wish you could have heard (and understood) my _soirees, au clair de la
lune_, with Sheykh Yussuf and Sheykh Abdurrachman. How Abdurrachman and
I wrangled, and how Yussuf laughed, and egged us on. Abdurrachman was
wroth at my want of faith in physic generally, as well as in particular,
and said I talked like an infidel, for had not God said, 'I have made a
medicine for every disease?' I said, 'Yes, but He does not say that He
has told the doctors which it is; and meanwhile I say, _hekmet Allah_,
(God will cure) which can't be called an infidel sentiment.' Then we got
into alchemy, astrology, magic and the rest; and Yussuf vexed his friend
by telling gravely stories palpably absurd. Abdurrachman intimated that
he was laughing at _El-Ilm el-Muslimeen_ (the science of the Muslims),
but Yussuf said, 'What is the _Ilm el-Muslimeen_? God has revealed
religion through His prophets, and we can learn nothing new on that
point; but all other learning He has left to the intelligence of men, and
the Prophet Mohammed said, "All learning is from God, even the learning
of idolaters." Why then should we Muslims shut out the light, and want
to remain ever like children? The learning of the Franks is as lawful as
any other.' Abdurrachman was too sensible a man to be able to dispute
this, but it vexed him.

I am tired of telling all the _plackereien_ of our poor people, how three
hundred and ten men were dragged off on Easter Monday with their bread
and tools, how in four days they were all sent back from Keneh, because
there were no orders about them, and made to _pay their boat hire_. Then
in five days they were sent for again. Meanwhile the harvest was cut
green, and the wheat is lying out unthreshed to be devoured by birds and
rats, and the men's bread was wasted and spoiled with the hauling in and
out of boats. I am obliged to send camels twenty miles for charcoal,
because the Abab'deh won't bring it to market any more, the tax is too
heavy. Butter too we have to buy secretly, none comes into the market.
When I remember the lovely smiling landscape which I first beheld from my
windows, swarming with beasts and men, and look at the dreary waste now,
I feel the 'foot of the Turk' heavy indeed. Where there were fifty
donkeys there is but one; camels, horses, all are gone; not only the
hor