Flunkeydom, we hope He will end well. Such is the penalty of revolt against the dominating spirit of one’s people and ancestors, that only once in a generation is it attempted, and scarcely with much success. In fact, the first who revolts must perish, the second, too, and the third, and the fourth, until, in the course of time and by dint of repetition and resistance, the new species of the race can overcome the forces of environment and the crushing influence of conformity. This, we know, is the biological law, and Khalid must suffer under it. For, as far as our knowledge extends, he is the first Syrian, the ancient Lebanon monks excepted, who revolted against the ruling spirit of his people and the dominant tendencies of the times, both in his native and his adopted Countries.
Yes, the ethos of the Syrians (for once we use Khalid’s philosophic term), like that of the Americans, is essentially money-seeking. And whether in Beirut or in New York, even the moralists and reformers, like the hammals and grocers, will ask themselves, before they undertake to do anything for you or for their country, “What will this profit us? How much will it bring us?” And that is what Khalid once thought to oppose and end. Alas, oppose he might—and End He Must. How can an individual, without the aid of Time and the Unseen Powers, hope to oppose and end, or even change, this monstrous mass of things? Yet we must not fail to observe that when we revolt against a tendency inimical to our law of being, it is for our own sake, and not the race’s, that we do so. And we are glad we are able to infer, if not from the K.L. MS. , at least from his Letters, that Khalid is beginning to realise this truth. Let us not, therefore, expatiate further upon it.
If the reader will accompany us now to the cellar to bid our Syrian friends farewell, we promise a few things of interest. When we first came here some few years ago in Winter, or to another such underground dwelling, the water rose ankle-deep over the floor, and the mould and stench were enough to knock an ox dead. Now, a scent of attar of roses