l was I born, in the
province of Yaman the Happy. Yet dost thou not speak it as we used to
speak. Thy talk doth lack the music of the sweet tongue of the tribes of
Hamyar which I was wont to hear. Some of the words too seemed changed,
even as among these Amahagger, who have debased and defiled its purity,
so that I must speak with them in what is to me another tongue."[*]

[*] Yarab the son of Kahtan, who lived some centuries
before the time of Abraham, was the father of the ancient
Arabs, and gave its name Araba to the country. In speaking
of herself as "al Arab al Ariba," _She_ no doubt meant to
convey that she was of the true Arab blood as distinguished
from the naturalised Arabs, the descendants of Ismael, the
son of Abraham and Hagar, who were known as "al Arab al
mostaraba." The dialect of the Koreish was usually called
the clear or "perspicuous" Arabic, but the Hamaritic dialect
approached nearer to the purity of the mother Syriac.--L. H.
H.

"I have studied it," I answered, "for many years. Also the language is
spoken in Egypt and elsewhere."

"So it is still spoken, and there is yet an Egypt? And what Pharaoh sits
upon the throne? Still one of the spawn of the Persian Ochus, or are
the Achaemenians gone, for far is it to the days of Ochus."

"The Persians have been gone for Egypt for nigh two thousand years, and
since then the Ptolemies, the Romans, and many others have flourished
and held sway upon the Nile, and fallen when their time was ripe," I
said, aghast. "What canst thou know of the Persian Artaxerxes?"

She laughed, and made no answer, and again a cold chill went through
me. "And Greece," she said; "is there still a Greece? Ah, I loved the
Greeks. Beautiful were they as the day, and clever, but fierce at heart
and fickle, notwithstanding."

"Yes," I said, "there is a Greece; and, just now, it is once more a
people. Yet the Greeks of to-day are not what the Greeks of the old time
were, and Greece herself is but a mockery of the Greece that was."

"So! The Hebrews, are they yet at Jerusalem? And does the Temple that
the wise king built stand, and if so what God do they worship therein?
Is their Messiah come, of whom they preached so much and prophesied so
loudly, and doth He rule the earth?"

"The Jews are broken and gone, and the fragments of their people strew
the world, and Jerusalem is no more. As for the temple that Herod
built----"