of
the verminous hostelry is shut in his face. He is left to starve
on the western shore of the Mediterranean.

Ay, even the droll humour and stolidity of Khalid, are shaken,
aroused, by the ghoulish greed, the fell inhumanity of these sharpers.
And Shakib from his cage of fancy lets loose upon them his hyenas of
satire. In a squib describing the bats and the voyage he says: "The
voyage to America is the Via Dolorosa of the emigrant; and the Port of
Beirut, the verminous hostelries of Marseilles, the Island of Ellis in
New York, are the three stations thereof. And if your hopes are not
crucified at the third and last station, you pass into the Paradise of
your dreams. If they are crucified, alas! The gates of the said
Paradise will be shut against you; the doors of the hostelries will be
slammed in your face; and with a consolation and a vengeance you will
throw yourself at the feet of the sea in whose bosom some charitable
Jonah will carry you to your native strands."

And when the emigrant has a surplus of gold, when his capital is such
as can not be dissipated on a suit of shoddy, a fortnight's lodging,
and a passage across the Atlantic, the ingenious ones proceed with the
Fourth Act of _Open Thy Purse_. "Instead of starting in New York as a
peddler," they say, unfolding before him one of their alluring
schemes, "why not do so as a merchant?" And the emigrant opens his
purse for the fourth time in the office of some French manufacturer,
where he purchases a few boxes of trinketry,--scapulars, prayer-beads,
crosses, jewelry, gewgaws, and such like,--all said to be made in the
Holy Land. These he brings over with him as his stock in trade.

Now, Khalid and Shakib, after passing a fortnight in Marseilles, and
going through the Fourth Act of the Sorry Show, find their dignity as
merchants rudely crushed beneath the hatches of the Atlantic steamer.
For here, even the pleasure of sleeping on deck is denied them. The
Atlantic Ocean would not permit of it. Indeed, everybody has to slide
into their stivy bunks to save themselves from its rising wrath. A
fortnight of such unutterable misery is quite supportable, however, if
one continues to cherish the Paradise already mentioned. But in this
dark, dingy smelling hole of the steerage, even the poets cease to
dream. The boatmen of Beirut and the sharpers of Marseilles we could
forget; but in this grave among a hundred and more of its kind, set
over and across each other, nei