The Book of Khalid

And Khalid, packing his few worldly belongings in one of his reed baskets, gives the rest to his neighbours, leaves his booth in the pines to the swallows, and bids the monks an...

Old Arabic books, printed in Bulaq, generally have a broad margin wherein a separate work, independent of the text, adds gloom to the page. We have before us one of these tomes...

We remember seeing once a lithographic print representing a Christmas legend of the Middle Ages, in which a detachment of the Heavenly Host--big, ugly, wild-looking angels--are...

It is Voltaire, we believe, who says something to the effect that one's mind should be in accordance with one's years. That is why an academic education nowadays often fails of...

"In the morning of the eventful day," it is set forth in the _Histoire Intime_, "I was in Khalid's room writing a letter, when Ahmed Bey comes in to confer with him. They remain...

Is it not an ethnic phenomenon that a descendant of the ancient Phoenicians can not understand the meaning and purport of the Cash Register in America? Is it not strange that th...

Heretofore, Khalid and Shakib have been inseparable as the Pointers. They always appeared together, went the rounds of their peddling orbit together, and together were subject t...

"Humanity is so feeble in mind," says Renan, "that the purest thing has need of the co-operation of some impure agent." And this, we think, is the gist of Khalid's rhapsody on f...

Now, that there is a lull in the machinations of Jesuitry, we shall turn a page or two in Shakib's account of the courting of Khalid. And apparently everything is propitious. Th...

This, then, is the cave of our troglodyte! Allah be praised, even the hermits of the Lebanon mountains, like the prophets of America and other electric-age species, are subject...

"I'm not starving for pleasure," Khalid once said to Shakib; "nor for the light free love of an exquisite caprice. Those little flowers that bloom and wither in the blush of daw...

"Why this exaggerated sense of thine importance," Khalid asks himself in the K. L. MS., "when a little ptomaine in thy cheese can poison the source of thy lofty contemplations?...

For two years and more Khalid's young mind went leaping from one swing to another, from one carousel or toboggan-chute to the next, without having any special object in view, wi...

Not in our make-up, to be sure,--not in the pose which is preceded by the tantaras of a trumpet,--do the essential traits in our character first reveal themselves. But truly in...

From the house of law the dervish Khalid wends his way to that of science, and from the house of science he passes on to that of metaphysics. His staff in hand, his wallet hung...

The City of Baal, or Baalbek, is between the desert and the deep sea. It lies at the foot of Anti-Libanus, in the sunny plains of Coele-Syria, a day's march from either Damascus...

"Even Carlyle can be longwinded and short-sighted on occasions. 'Once in destroying the False,' says he, 'there was a certain inspiration.' And always there is, to be sure, my M...

Disappointed, distraught, diseased,--worsted by the Jesuits, excommunicated, crossed in love,--but with an eternal glint of sunshine in his breast to open and light up new paths...

Deficiencies in individuals, as in States, have their value and import. Indeed, that sublime impulse of perfectibility, always vivacious, always working under various forms and...

If we remember that the name of Khalid's cousin is Najma (Star), the significance to himself of the sign spoken of in the last Chapter, is quite evident. But what it means to ot...

To graft the strenuosity of Europe and America upon the ease of the Orient, the materialism of the West upon the spirituality of the East,--this to us seems to be the principal...

In their baggy, lapping trousers and crimson caps, each carrying a bundle and a rug under his arm, Shakib and Khalid are smuggled through the port of Beirut at night, and safely...

Although we claim some knowledge of the Lebanon mountains, having landed there in our journey earthward, and having since then, our limbs waxing firm and strong, made many a jou...

The most important in the history of nations and individuals was once the most trivial, and vice versa. The plebeian, who is called to-day the man-in-the-street, can never see a...

"And whence the subtle thrill of joy in suffering for the Truth," asks Khalid. "Whence the light that flows from the wounds of martyrs? Whence the rapture that triumphs over the...

Breathless but scathless, we emerge from the mazes of metaphysics and psychology where man and the soul are ever playing hide-and-seek; and where Khalid was pleased to display a...

What the Arabs always said of Andalusia, Khalid and Shakib said once of America: a most beautiful country with one single vice--it makes foreigners forget their native land. But...

Whom do you think I met yesterday? Why, nothing gave me greater pleasure ever since I have been here than this: I was crossing the Square on my way to the Club, when some one pl...

Had not Khalid in his retirement touched his philosophic raptures with a little local colouring, had he not given an account of his tramping tour in the Lebanons, the hiatus in...

To whom, if not to you, before all, should I send the first word of peace, the first sign of the resurrection? To my mother? To my cousin Najma? Well, yes. But if I write to the...

No; I do not approve of your idea of associating with that young Mohammedan editor. You know what is said about the tiger and its spots. Besides, I had another offer from a Chri...

I had made up my mind to go to Cairo, and I was coming up to say farewell to you and mother. For I like not Beirut, where one in winter must go about in top-boots, and in a dust...