ver can
doubt. I fear that men will still continue to kill each other, for
various causes, privately and publicly. But thank God it is not likely
to be done often, if ever again, in the name of Religion!

The medley of things seen and half understood has left patterns
damascened upon my memory with intricate clearness: immense droves of
camels coming up from the wilderness to be sold in the market; factories
of inlaid woodwork and wrought brasswork in which hundreds of young
children, with beautiful and seeming-merry faces, are hammering and
filing and cutting out the designs traced by the draughtsmen who sit at
their desks like schoolmasters; vast mosques with rows of marble
columns, and floors covered with bright-coloured rugs, and files of men,
sometimes two hundred in a line, with a leader in front of them, making
their concerted genuflections toward Mecca; costly interiors of private
houses which outwardly show bare white-washed walls, but within welcome
the stranger to hospitality of fruits, coffee, and sweetmeats, in
stately rooms ornamented with rich tiles and precious marbles, looking
upon arcaded courtyards fragrant with blossoming orange-trees and
musical with tinkling fountains; tombs of Moslem warriors and
saints,--Saladin, the Sultan Beibars, the Sheikh Arslan, the philosopher
Ibn-el-Arabi, great fighters now quiet, and restless thinkers finally
satisfied; public gardens full of rose-bushes, traversed by clear, swift
streams, where groups of women sit gossiping in the shade of the trees
or in little kiosques, the Mohammedans with their light veils not
altogether hiding their olive faces and languid eyes, the Christians
and Jewesses with bare heads, heavy necklaces of amber, flowers behind
their ears, silken dresses of soft and varied shades; cafes by the
river, where grave and important Turks pose for hours on red velvet
divans, smoking the successive cigarette or the continuous nargileh. Out
of these memory-pictures of Damascus I choose three.

* * * * *

The Lady and I are climbing up from the great Mosque of the Ommayyades
into the Minaret of the Bride, at the hour of 'Asr, or afternoon prayer.
As we tread the worn spiral steps in the darkness we hear, far above,
the chant of the choir of muezzins, high-pitched, long-drawn, infinitely
melancholy, calling the faithful to their devotions.

"_Allah akbar! Allah akbar! Allah is great! I testify there is no God
but Allah, a