icturesque manner, as
we shall relate. And a few were given to Shakib, of which that Dream
of Cyclamens was preserved.

And Khalid's motto was, "One book at a time." He would not encumber
himself with books any more than he would with shoes. But that the
mind might not go barefoot, he always bought a new book before
destroying the one in hand. Destroying? Yes; for after reading or
studying a book, he warms his hands upon its flames, this Khalid, or
makes it serve to cook a pot of _mojadderah_. In this extraordinary
and outrageous manner, barbarously capricious, he would baptise the
ideal in the fire of the real. And thus, glowing with health and
confidence and conceit, he enters another Park from which he escapes
in the end, sad and wan and bankrupt. Of a truth, many attractions and
distractions are here; else he could not forget the peddling-box and
the light-heeled, heavy-haunched women of Battery Park. Here are
swings for the mind; toboggan-chutes for the soul; merry-go-rounds for
the fancy; and many devious and alluring paths where one can lose
himself for years. A sanitarium this for the hebephreniac. And like
all sanitariums, you go into it with one disease and come out of it
with ten. Had Shakib been forewarned of Khalid's mind, had he even
seen him at the gate before he entered, he would have given him a few
hints about the cross-signs and barbed-cordons therein. But should he
not have divined that Khalid soon or late was coming? Did _he_ not
call enough to him, and aloud? "Get thee behind me on this dromedary,"
our Scribe, reading his Al-Mutanabbi, would often say to his comrade,
"and come from this desert of barren gold, if but for a day,--come out
with me to the oasis of poesy."

But Khalid would only ride alone. And so, he begins his course of
self-education. But how he shall manage it, in this cart-before-the-horse
fashion, the reader shall know. Words before rules, ideas before
systems, epigrams before texts,--that is Khalid's fancy. And that
seems feasible, though not logical; it will prove effectual, too, if one
finally brushed the text and glanced at the rules. For an epigram,
when it takes possession of one, goes farther in influencing his
thoughts and actions than whole tomes of ethical culture science. You
know perhaps how the Arabs conquered the best half of the world with an
epigram, a word. And Khalid loves a fine-sounding, easy-flowing word; a
word of supple joints, so to speak; a word that you