xalted, and vent themselves in verse and in tunes, when you approach to
the places encumbered by the haunting of evil spirits, which must excite
in you that joyous feeling which others experience when approaching the
land of their human ancestry."

"By my father's beard, I think thou hast the right," said the Saracen,
rather amused than offended by the freedom with which the Christian had
uttered his reflections; "for, though the Prophet (blessed be his name!)
hath sown amongst us the seed of a better faith than our ancestors
learned in the ghostly halls of Tugrut, yet we are not willing, like
other Moslemah, to pass hasty doom on the lofty and powerful elementary
spirits from whom we claim our origin. These Genii, according to our
belief and hope, are not altogether reprobate, but are still in the way
of probation, and may hereafter be punished or rewarded. Leave we this
to the mollahs and the imauns. Enough that with us the reverence for
these spirits is not altogether effaced by what we have learned from the
Koran, and that many of us still sing, in memorial of our fathers' more
ancient faith, such verses as these."

So saying, he proceeded to chant verses, very ancient in the language
and structure, which some have thought derive their source from the
worshippers of Arimanes, the Evil Principle.

AHRIMAN.

Dark Ahriman, whom Irak still
Holds origin of woe and ill!
When, bending at thy shrine,
We view the world with troubled eye,
Where see we 'neath the extended sky,
An empire matching thine!

If the Benigner Power can yield
A fountain in the desert field,
Where weary pilgrims drink;
Thine are the waves that lash the rock,
Thine the tornado's deadly shock,
Where countless navies sink!

Or if he bid the soil dispense
Balsams to cheer the sinking sense,
How few can they deliver
From lingering pains, or pang intense,
Red Fever, spotted Pestilence,
The arrows of thy quiver!

Chief in Man's bosom sits thy sway,
And frequent, while in words we pray
Before another throne,
Whate'er of specious form be there,
The secret meaning of the prayer
Is, Ahriman, thine own.

Say, hast thou feeling, sense, and form,
Thunder thy voice, thy garments storm,
As Eastern Magi say;
With sentient soul of hate and wrath,
And wings to sweep thy deadly path,
An