Howbeit, Khalid has other ideas which the old man admires, and which he would carry out if the police would not interfere.
“If I were the owner of this shop,” thus the neophite to the master, “I would advertise it with a bonfire of pamphlets. I would take a few hundreds from that mound there and give them the match right in front of that Church, or better still before the Stock Exchange. And I would have two sandwich-men stand about the bonfire, as high priests of the Temple, and chant the praises of secondhand Jerry and his secondhand bookshop. This will be the sacrifice which you will have offered to the god of Trade right in front of his sanctuary that he might soften the induration in the breasts of these worthy citizens, your rich neighbours. And if he does not, why, shut up shop or burn it up, and let us go out peddling together.”
We do not know, however, whether old Jerry ever adopted Khalid’s idea. He himself is an Oriental in this sense; and the business is good enough to keep up, so long as Khalid comes. He is supremely content.
Indeed, Shakib asseverates in round Arabic, that the old man of the cellar got a good portion of Khalid’s balance, while balancing Khalid’s mind. Nay, firing it with free-thought literature.
Are we then to consider this cellar as Khalid’s source of spiritual illumination? And is this genial old heretic an American avatar of the monk Bahira?
For Khalid is gradually becoming a man of ideas and crotchets. He is beginning to see a purpose in all his literary and spiritual rambles. His mental nebulosity is resolving itself into something concrete, which shall weigh upon him for a while and propel him in the direction of Atheism and Demagogy.