me many edifying things. Of these, I give out the most curious and least injurious. As the sheikh (squire) of the town, he is generous; as the operator of a silk-reeling factory, he is grasping, niggardly, mean. For, to misgovern well, one must open his purse as often as he forces the purses of others. He was passing by in his carriage this great khawaja , when we were coming out of the pottery. And of a truth, his paunch and double chin and ruddy cheeks seemed to illustrate what the priest told me about his usurious propensities.
“What a contrast between him and the swarthy, leathery, hungry-looking potters. I can not think that Nature has aught to do with these naked inequalities. I can not believe that, to produce one roseate complexion, she must etiolate a thousand. I can not see how, in drinking from the same gushing spring, and breathing the same mountain air, and basking in the same ardent sun, the khawaja gets a double chin and the peasant a double curse. But his collops and his ruddiness are due to the fact that he misgoverns as well as his Pasha and his Sultan. He battens, even like a Tammany chief, on political jobbery, on extortion, on usury. His tree is better manured, so to speak; manured by the widows and tended by the orphans of his little kingdom. In a word, this great khawaja is what I call a political coprophagist. Hence, his suspicious growth, his lustre and lustiness.
“But he is not the only example in the village of this superabundance of health; the priests are many more. For I must not fail to mention that, in addition to its potteries and founderies, the town is blessed with a dozen churches. Every family, a sort of tribe, has its church and priests; and consequently, its feuds with all the others. It is a marvel how the people, in the lethal soot and smoke of strife and dissension, can work and produce anything. Farewell, ye swarthy people! Farewell, O village of bells and potteries! Were it not for the khawaja who misgoverns thee, and the priests who sow their iniquity in thee, thou shouldst have been an ideal town. I look back, as I descend into the wadi, and behold, thou art