The Book of Khalid

r see and understand the significance of the hidden seed of things, which in time must develop or die. A garter dropt in the ballroom of Royalty gives birth to an Order o

ap and bells, if he would be heard nowadays. Indeed, the play is always the thing; the frivolous is the most essential, if only as a disguise.––For look you, are we not too prosperous to consider seriously

eir entertaining trivialities and fatuities. We remember that even Gibbon interrupts the turgid flow of his spirit to tell us in his Autobiography that he really could, and often did, enjoy a game of cards in the evening. And Rousseau, in a suppurative passion, whispers to us in his Confessions that he even kissed the linen of Madame de Warens' bed when he was alone in her room.

n New York. But this is not altogether satisfactory to the present Editor, who, unlike the Author of the Khedivial Library MS., must keep the reader in mind. 'Tis very well to endeavour to unfold a few of the mysteries of one's palingenesis, but why conceal from us his origin? For is it not important, is it not the fashion at least, that one writing his own history should first expatiate on the humble origin of his ancestors and the distant obscure source of his genius? And having done this, should he not then tell us how he behaved in his boyhood; whether or not he made anklets of his mother's dough for his litt

? Still, we doubted. And one evening we were detained by the sandomancer, or sand-diviner, who was sitting cross-legged on the sidewalk in front of the mosque. "I know your mind," said he, before we had made up our mind to consult him. And mumbling his "abracadabra" over the sand spread on a cloth before him, he took up his bamboo-stick an

er,––where the etiolated intellectualities of Cairo flock after midnight,

ring us his chobok of hasheesh; "smoke t

ry one thereupon had something to say on the subject. The contagion could not be checked. A

the wilderness of New York for

l yesterday and bough

rks can not c

l England gets af

ew phthisic-stri

mong all the virgins of Egypt we c

build American Skyscrapers with their st

the less reassuring. For Khalid, it seems, is not a myth. No; we

ate friend and disciple, will br

r he is the drummer of ou

of gunjah, (hasheesh) was become stifling. So, we lay our chobok down; and, thanking th

awing his inspiration from a glass of whiskey and soda. Nay, he was drowning

my friend, you would not then see me here. Indeed, I should be with him, and though he be in th

the Pyramid, the Origin and the End. And in the grill-room, over a glass of whiskey and soda, we presume to solve in few words the eternal mystery. But that is not wh

t is greater than the pyramids, and the sea is greater than the desert, and the heavens are greater than the sea. And yet, there is not in all these that immortal intelligence, that living, palpitating soul, which you find in a great book. A man who conceives and writes a great book, my friend, has done 11 more work than all the helots that laboured on these pyramidal futilities. That is why I find no exaggeration in Khalid's words. For when he loafs, he does so in good e

r the starry-night, the poet who might be just sharing the sunshine with

friend that, not being of india-rubber, we could

nd Shakib is overjoyed. He offers

e. For you can not properly understand him, unless you read the Histoire Intime, wh

abic with fancy French, explains.––"The lining, the

link his name with that of his illustrious Master in this Book

h arm, the Poet came. We were stunned as he stood in the d

ntime," said he, laying

lighted with a happy idea. We will hire a few boys to read it, we thought, and mar

wn the other bundle, "is the original man

e thought, to p

sued next Autu

nate

l get to work o

rc

glish Translation in t

chair in breath

pear simultaneously bo

k will be translated into a universal language, and that very soon. For whic

troubles! Translate it, O Fire, into your language! Which work the Fire did in two minutes. And the dancing, leaping, s

now we can show, and though he is a native of Asia, the land of the Prophets, and though he conceals from us his origin aft