But the dwelling, too, of that soul is sorely undermined. And so, his leal and loving friend Shakib takes him later to the best physician in the City, who after the tapping and auscultation, shakes his head, writes his prescriptions, and advises Khalid to keep in the open air as much as possible, or better still, to return to his native country.
The last portion of the advice, however, Khalid can not follow at present. For he will either return home on his own account or die in New York.
“If I can not in time save enough money for the Steamship Company,” he said to Shakib, “I can at least leave enough to settle the undertaker’s bill. And in either case, I shall have paid my own passage out of this New World. And I shall stand before my Maker in a shroud, at least, which I can call my own.”
To which Shakib replies by going to the druggist with the prescriptions. And when he returns to the cellar with a package of four or five medicine bottles for rubbing and smelling and drinking, he finds Khalid sitting near the stove—we are now in the last month of Winter—warming his hands on the flames of the two last books he read. Emile and Hero-Worship go the way of all the rest. And there he sits, meditating over Carlyle’s crepitating fire and Rousseau’s writhing, sibilating flame. And it may be he thought of neither. Perhaps he was brooding over the resolution he had made, and the ominous shaking of the doctor’s head. Ah, but his tutelar deities are better physicians, he thought. And having made his choice, he will pitch the medicine bottles into the street, and only follow the doctor’s advice by keeping in the open air.
Behold him, therefore, with a note in hand, applying to Shakib, in a formal and businesslike manner, for a loan; and see that noble benefactor and friend, after gladly giving the money, throw the note into the fire. And now, Khalid is neither dervish nor philosopher, but a man of