pandemonium of Civilisation. Even now, as I sit on this trunk waiting for the hour of departure, I have a foretaste of the joy of being away from the insidious cries of hawkers, the tormenting bells of the rag-man, the incessant howling of children, the rumbling of carts and wagons, the malicious whir of cable cars, the grum shrieks of ferry boats, and the thundering, reverberating, smoking, choking, blinding abomination of an elevated railway. A musician might extract some harmony from this chaos of noises, this jumble of sounds. But I—extract me quickly from them!”
Ay, quickly please, especially for our sake and the Reader’s.
Now, the dinner is finished, the rug is folded and presented to our landlord with our salaams, the trunks are locked and roped, and our Arabs will silently steal away. And peacefully, too, were it not that an hour before sailing a capped messenger is come to deliver a message to Shakib.
There is a pleasant dilative sensation in receiving a message on board a steamer, especially when the messenger has to seek you among the Salon passengers. Now, Shakib dilates with pride as he takes the envelope in his hand; but when he opens it, and reads on the enclosed card, “ Mr. Isaac Goldheimer wishes you a bon voyage,” he turns quickly on his heels and goes on deck to walk his wrath away.
For this Mr. Goldheimer is the very landlord who received the Turkish rug. Reflect on this, Reader. Father Abraham would have walked with us to the frontier to betoken his thanks and gratitude.
“But this modern Jew and his miserable card,” exclaims Shakib in his teeth, as he tears and throws it in the water—“who asked him to send it, and who would have sued him if he didn’t?”