est. Suleyman, on his side, had, at setting out, possessed a
plan to make their tour the most delightful one imaginable. He hoped
by visiting selected spots and people to give it sequence and
significance. In a word, he was an artist in travel, wishing to
provide them with delicious memories, while they were English and
omnivorous of facts and scenes. When he learnt from various rebuffs
that they would not confide themselves to him, he lost all pleasure in
the tour. It was a listless and disgusted upper servant, most unlike
the man I knew, whom I found in gorgeous raiment sitting by the cook's
fire in the gardens of Damascus, which were then a wilderness of
roses.

He did not explain matters to me all at once. When I reproached him
for neglecting friends of mine, he answered only: 'It is the will of
Allah, who made men of different kinds, some sweet, some loathsome.'
But my arrival mended things a little. At least, my English friends
professed to see a great improvement in the conduct of Suleyman and
all the servants. I think it was because the poor souls knew that they
had someone now to whom they could express their grievances, someone
who would condescend to talk with them; for nothing is more foreign to
the Oriental scheme of life than the distance at which English people
keep their servants. In the democratic East all men are equal, as far
as rights of conversation are concerned. It is a hardship for the
Oriental to serve Europeans, and only the much higher and more
certain wages bring him to it.

My English friends had few good words to say for any of their Arab
servants; but I found they had conceived a perfect hatred for the
cook, who had undoubtedly a villainous appearance. He was a one-eyed
man with a strong cast in his surviving eye. A skull-cap, which had
once been white, concealed his shaven poll, and his long pointed ears
stood out upon it. He wore a shirt of indigo impaired by time, over
which, when riding, he would throw an ancient Frankish coat, or, if it
chanced to rain, a piece of sacking. His legs were bare, and he wore
scarlet slippers. To see him riding on an ass hung round with cooking
tins, at the head of the procession of the beasts of burden, suggested
to the uninformed spectator that those beasts of burden and their
loads had all been stolen.

I spoke about him to Suleyman one day when in my company he had
regained his wonted spirits, telling him of the extreme dislike my
friends had taken