peddlery which hitherto have been his sole means of support. His little stock of crosses, rosaries, scapulars, false jewellery, mother-of-pearl gewgaws, and suchlike, which he has on the little shelf in the cellar, he takes down one morning—but we will let our Scribe tell the story.
“My love for Khalid,” he writes, “has been severely tried. We could no longer agree about anything. He had become such a dissenter that often would he take the wrong side of a question if only for the sake of bucking. True, he ceased to frequent the cellar of secondhand Jerry, and the lectures of the infidels he no longer attended. We were in accord about atheism, therefore, but in riotous discord about many other things, chief among which was the propriety, the necessity, of doing something to replenish his balance at the banker. For he was now impecunious, and withal importunate. Of a truth, what I had I was always ready to share with him; but for his own good I advised him to take up the peddling-box again. I reminded him of his saying once, ‘Peddling is a healthy and profitable business.’ ‘Come out,’ I insisted, ‘and though it be for the exercise. Walking is the whetstone of thought.’
“One evening we quarrelled about this, and Im-Hanna sided with me. She rated Khalid, saying, ‘You’re a good-for-nothing loafer; you don’t deserve the mujaddara you eat.’ And I remember how she took me aside that evening and whispered something about books, and Khalid’s head, and Mar-Kizhayiah. Indeed, Im-Hanna seriously believed that Khalid should be taken to Mar-Kizhayiah. She did not know that New York was full of such institutions. Her scolding, however, seemed to have more effect on Khalid than my reasoning. And consenting to go out with me, he got up the following morning, took down his stock from the shelf, every little article of it—he left nothing there—and packed all into his peddling-box. He then squeezed into the bottom drawer, which he had filled with scapulars, the bottle with a little of the Stuff in it. For we were in accord about this, that in New York whiskey is better than arak. And we both took a nip now and then. So I thought the bottle was in order.