thy guide; acquaint thyself with one or two of her laws ere thou runnest
And to what extent did this fantastic mystic son of a Phoenician acquaint himself with Nature’s laws, we do not know.
But truly, he was already running wild in the great cosmopolis of New York. From his stivy cellar he issues forth into the plashing, plangent currents of city life. Before he does this, however, he rids himself of all the encumbrances of 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,