Are woven on her Loom of Unity;
For she alone is One in All diverging,
And she alone is absolute and free.'

"Now, I will bring you to a scene most curiously suggestive. Behold
that little knot of daisies pressing around the alone anemone beneath
the spreading leaves of the colocasia. Here is a rout at the Countess
Casiacole's, and these are the debutantes crowding around the
Celebrity of the day. But would they do so if they were sensible of
their own worth, if they knew that their idol, flaunting the crimson
crown of popularity, had no more, and perhaps less, of the pure
essence of life than any of them? But let Celebrity stand there and
enjoy her hour; to-morrow the Ploughman will come.

* * * * *

"The sage, with its spikes of greyish blue flowers, its fibrous,
velvety leaves, its strong, pungent perfume, which is not squandered
or repressed, is the stoic of my native terraces. It responds
generously to the personal touch, and serves the Lebanonese, rich and
poor alike, with a little luxury. Ay, who of us, wandering on foreign
strands, does not remember the warm foot-bath, perfumed with sage
leaves, his mother used to give him before going to bed? Our dear
mothers!"--And here, Khalid goes in raptures and tears about his sorry
experience in Baalbek and the anguish and sorrow of his poor mother.
"But while I stand," he continues, "let me be like the sage, a
live-oak among shrubs, indifferent as the oak or pine to the winds and
storms. And as the sun is setting, find you no solace in the thought,
O Khalid, that some angel herb-gatherer will preserve the perfume in
your leaves, to refresh therewith in other worlds your dear poor
mother?

"My native terraces are rich with faith and love, luxuriant with the
life divine and the wondrous symbols thereof. And the grass here is
not cut and trimmed as in the artificial gardens and the cold dull
lawns of city folk, whose love for Nature is either an experiment, a
sport, a business, or a fad. 'A dilettantism in Nature is barren and
unworthy,' says Emerson. But of all the lovers of Nature, the children
are the least dilettanteish. And every day here I see a proof of this.
Behold them wading to their knees in that lusty grass, hunting the
classic lotus with which to deck their olive branches for the high
mass and ceremony of Palm Sunday. But alas, my lusty grass and my
beautiful wild flowers do not enjoy the morning of Sp