f the Desert, hard lovers,
hard haters, veiled as all mysteries are veiled.

You turn but a spur in the mountains: you dip into a valley smoking with
the dews of the morning; or come up a mesa,--and a winged horseman spurs
past, hair tied back by red scarf, pantaloons of white linen, sash of
rainbow colors; and you are amid the dwellings of men. Strings of red
chile like garlands of huge red corals hang against the sun-baked brick
or clay. Curs come out and bark at the heels of your horse--that is why
the Oriental always called an enemy "a dog." Pottery makers look up from
their kiln fires of sheep manure, at you, the remote passerby. The
basket workers weave and weave like the Three Fates of Life. One old
woman is so aged and wizened and infirm that she must sit inside her
basket to carry out the pattern of what life is to her; and the sunlight
strikes back from the heat-baked walls in a glare that stabs the eye;
and you hear the tinkle of the bells from the watering pools.

Then, suddenly, for the first time, you see It.

You have turned a spur of the Mountains, dipped into a valley, come up
on the Mesa into the sunlight, and there It is--the eternal mountains
with their eternal lavender veil round the valley like the tiered seats
of a coliseum, the mist like a theater drop curtain where you may paint
your own pictures of fancy, and in the midst of the great amphitheater
rises an island rock; and on the island rock is a grotto; and in the
grotto is the figure of the Mother of Christ--in purplish blue, of
course, as betokens eternal purity--and below the island of rock in the
midst of the amphitheater something swims into your ken that is neither
of Heaven nor earth. White, glaringly white as the very spotlessness of
Heaven, twin-towered as befitting the dual nature of man, flesh and
spirit; pointed in its towers and minarets and belfries, betokening the
reaching of the spirit of Man up to God; lions between the arches of the
roofed piazzas, as betokening the lion-hearted spirit of Man fighting
his enemies of Flesh and Spirit up to God!

Palms before arched white walls shut out the world--Peace and Seclusion
and Purity!

You dip into a valley, the scent of the cedars in your nostrils and
lungs, the peace of God in your heart. Then you come up to a high mesa
and you see the vision of the white symbol swimming between earth and
sky but always pointing skyward.

Where are you, anyway: in Persia amid floating palaces