ts, William II.,
the present Emperor of Germany, who is a descendant of the Crusading
Princes, and a Knight of the Brandenburg branch of the order of St.
John, came to Damascus in 1898; and one of the first things he did
there was to visit the tomb of Saladin, and lay on it a wreath of
flowers. It was a generous and beautiful and well-deserved tribute to
the memory of a truly great man, from whom the Christian nations of his
times learned much of their chivalry and truthfulness to their pledged
word.

A THANKFUL OLD MAN

Two old men, who had been friends in early youth, met after an interval
of many years. A cordial greeting ensued, and then one of them asked
the other: "How old are you now?" He said: "Thank God, I am in good
health." "Are you well-off in worldly goods?" "Thank God, I am in
debt to no man." "Have you any special trouble of mind?" "Thank God,
I have no young children." "Have you any enemies?" "Thank God, I have
no near relations."

THE THREE SORTS OF HAPPY MEN

In two verses of poetry, Al-Mutanabbi, one of the greatest Arabian
poets and philosophers, reduces the number of happy men to three
classes. They have been paraphrased and put into English verse by a
friend, as follows:

To three life seems a summer sky:
The first who has no mind to know
The heights and depths of life below,
Nor ever asks the reason why.

The second he to whom life's sum
Is self at ease; who never lets
The past disturb with dark regrets,
Nor hopes and fears from days to come.

The third who, led by fancies crude,
In scorn of truth, deceived at heart,
Makes fruitless dreams his better part,
And hollow hopes the highest good.

CYNICAL VIEWS OF LIFE

Abu'l-Ala was another great poet-philosopher. He lost his sight from
small-pox early in life, was a cynic and pessimist, and may have often
been copied by Omar Khayyam. He refers to his affliction and to the
fact that he lived and died an unmarried man (so as to have no
children) in a well-known verse:

"Here am I--wronged by my father
Who gave me birth--while I have done wrong to no one."

Some of his poetry has been put into English quatrains by Ameen F.
Rihany, in imitation of Omar Khayyam's _Rubaiyat_, and the following,
from the _Quatrains of Abu'l-Ala_, are a few striking examples:

"What boots it, in my creed, that man should moan
In Sorrow's Night, or sing in Pleasure's Dawn?
In vain the doves all coo on y