ough voluminous and comprehensive, was sometimes
strange to native English ears. He had read the Bible in a German
mission school, and spoke of 'Billiam's donkey' and 'the mighty
Simson' where we should speak of Balaam's ass and Samson. He called
the goatskins used for carrying water 'beastly skins,' and sometimes
strengthened a mild sentence with an expletive.

I do not think he ever went so far in this way as another dragoman
who, riding out from Haifa one fine morning with an English lady,
pointed to Mount Carmel and observed:

'Bloody fine hill, madam!'

He knew how to adapt his language to his audience. But it is curious
that a man whose speech in Arabic was highly mannered, in English
should have cultivated solecisms. That he did cultivate them as an
asset of his stock-in-trade I can affirm, for he would invent absurd
mistakes and then rehearse them to me, with the question: 'Is that
funny? Will that make the English laugh?'

For clergymen he kept a special manner and a special store of jokes.
When leading such through Palestine he always had a Bible up before
him on the saddle; and every night would join them after dinner and
preach a sermon on the subject of the next day's journey. This he
would make as comical as possible for their amusement, for clergymen,
he often used to say to me, are fond of laughter of a certain kind.

One English parson he bedevilled utterly by telling him the truth--or
the accepted legend--in such a form that it seemed false or mad to
him.

As they were riding out from Jaffa towards Jerusalem, he pointed to
the mud-built village of Latrun and said:

'That, sir, is the place where Simpson catch the foxes.'

'Ah?' said the clergyman. 'And who was Simpson?'

'He was a very clever gentleman, and liked a bit of sport.'

'Was he an Englishman?'

'No, sir; he was a Jew. He catch a lot of foxes with some traps; he
kill them and he take their skins to Jaffa to the tailor, and he tell
the tailor: "Make me one big skin out of these little ones." The
tailor make one thundering big fox's skin, big enough for Simpson to
get inside of it. Then Simpson, he put on that skin one night, and go
and sit out in the field and make the same noise what the little foxes
make. The little foxes come out of their holes to look; they see one
big fox sitting there, and they not know it's really Simpson. They
come quite near and Simpson catch hold of their tails and tie their
tails together. Then they ma