dull silver platters inlaid with gold? Still, curiously enough, he parts with them. They are yours before you are quite sure that you want them, and your blinking English sovereigns are his. Among the earliest discoveries that a European makes in the land beyond Mohammed's portals, is that the contemplative life does not rob a man of his shrewdness. Thirty odd centuries of business experience have made the Arabs keen.

The bazaars are gloomy, for the alleys, along whose sides they stand, are narrow with many windings. Overhead are canopies, roofs, arches, rarely the open sky. Along the Muski itself all is bright and almost European; only in the side streets do you catch the full charm of the Cairo bazaars. To right and left you wander, halting now at some shop where rich carpets from Persia are spread, now at a shallow booth hung with gleaming brass-ware that lures to a purchase. Embroideries are everywhere, and spurious antiquities, guaranteed to the fourth and fifth generation by the pious dealer, fill show-cases in every shop. Book-stores are rare. Only here and there you see a stack of paper-bound volumes in process of re-binding-copies of the Koran, as a rule, ill-printed on wretched paper. For hours you can walk in the bazaars, unwearying. They are the essence of the Orient. The duskyfaced Arabs sit to right and left of you cross-legged in every shop; the sombre-garbed women brush past you with averted eyes; the watercarriers, bent beneath the heavy goat-skins, stand and watch you dully; the children cry a tentative Baksheesh!-the camels lumber, grunting, through the narrow alleys-you have the East at a glance.

In the land of Mohammed there is no great abyss between the trader and the philosopher, every Arab is a little of each; and the great University, the Gami'a el-Azhar, is hard by the bazaars. To the Moslem it is a holy place where he must walk unshod, and the Christian must submit to have his shoes, that have touched the dust of the outside world, covered with the roomy but sanctified slippers that the door-keeper provides. Within is the feeding-ground of Islam the unprogressive. In the great court and in adjoining chambers the students are initiated into the mysteries of Mohammed. They sit in groups.

about their teacher, who expounds in a low voice, or in the inner rooms listen, in classes of a hundred or more, to the quiet, impressive words of some philosopher, bearded, and dignified as the prophets of old. Here and there you may see a solitary student, swaying to and fro with muttering lips. He is learning his Koran by heart, and the dull, thoughtless mechanicalness of it is sickening. An air of deep seriousness is over all. There are no sounds of restless movement or loud voices. Occasionally you may find a group desisting from work to eat their uninviting lunch, or, more frequently, a single figure wrapped in its dark mantle stretched asleep on the floor. There is no excitement, no attitude of expectancy. What the philosopher is saying has been said for a thousand years from that same cathedra; what the student is mumbling to himself is something he does not attempt to understand.

In his universities the European decidedly has the advantage over his inscrutable Arab brother; in the churches, however, the advantage seems to be the other way. There is a comfortable, home-like feeling even about the great "Alabaster Mosque" of Mohammed Ali on the Citadel that our Christian churches never seem to attain. Perhaps it is due to the wealth of soft carpets on the circular floor, or to the brilliant chandelier, that suggests, sacrilegiously, a round table beneath and a convivial gathering. But the Mohammedan mosque has none of the profound impressiveness of a Gothic cathedral, the gray distances, the tall arches, that impress on the mind irresistibly the presence of a power mysterious as themselves. The mosques seem less habitations of an inscrutable deity than ante-chambers to a comfortable and eminently delightful Paradise, where milk and honey flow in abundance, and every man has twenty wives. With such promise in the silken. carpets and soft-tinted walls about him, it is no wonder the Arabs' prayers are fervent. For the certainty of a Mohammedan Paradise to come, there is no man but would be willing to be virtuous now and then. He would not have to exert himself much. Virtue in Arabs is the needle in the hay-stack. But Paradise must have inmates.

The Moslem speaks of Paradise
As if he'd tasted of its beauty,
Believes the Koran's prophecies,—
For hereon rests a Moslem's duty.
But the great author of the scroll

Hunts out, above, our wants and follies,
And sees that, though his thunders roll,

Oft sceptic doubt our true faith sullies.
Therefore he sends from infinite space
A maid, the world anew to deck,
Who comes, and casts with fairy grace
Her lovely fetters round my neck.
Against my breast, my heart she lies,-

My heaven-sent sweet — nought else I know;

Great is my faith in Paradise

For I would ever kiss her so.

Thus speaks Goethe. If we had the choice, beyond the dark river, of wending our way either to the heaven of harp-play and fluttering cherubs, or to that quiet garden where the dusky maidens wait, I wonder how many of us would not linger behind the throng a minute to slip a coin into old Charon's hand and ask him the way to the portals of Mohammed?

Arminius.

THE EVERLASTING HILLS.

Tom, in his black senior's gown, looked serious as he stared out the open window, unconscious of all the guests in the room except the one who sat opposite him on the window seat. She, too, was looking out absently over the Yard, where line after line of gaily colored lanterns stretched back and forth, over myriads of moving heads. Above them the foliage hung dense and rigid, like stage scenery; and a red flashlight at the corner of University cast huge shadows of passing people on the wall.

"I haven't made a step toward getting started in life," Tom was saying earnestly. "I'd be a good deal better off now if I'd stayed at home these two years and kept at my painting. Here at college I've just drifted-history, philosophy, botany, and so on. I liked the philosophy, but what use are the others to an artist? Not so bad as mathematics or Greek, but still they're only tables of dry facts, driven in by men who discourage originality. I'm eager now to start on my real work."

"Do you mean you're sorry you came to Harvard?" Mildred suggested scathingly.

Tom shook his head, smiling. The band outside was playing "And Harvard's Glory Shall Be Our Aim."

"Besides," he said, "if I hadn't come, I should never have roomed with Charley Weston, and never have gone with him to Mount Desert, and never have met you! In that case, I shouldn't care whether I ever succeeded in painting or not."

"Did you have good time at Mount Desert?" she asked innocently, looking out of the window.

"Did I!"

"And yet you aren't going to be there till the end of the summer this year?"

"How can I, Mildred? When a fellow's twenty-two years old, it's time he made a start at real work; don't you think so? And yet I've hardly touched a brush for two years. There hasn't been time for it, with everything else on hand; but now's my chance to begin."

"You can do it perfectly well at Mount Desert. There's just as much to paint there as in the Rocky Mountains."

"That's what I thought last summer, but what chance was there for work? What with sailing, and tennis, and picnics, and mountain trips, I never had a chance to begin. So this time I'm going off where I won't be tempted."

"If I'd known I were intruding on your time-" Mildred began mischievously.

"Oh bosh!" Tom interrupted. "What a time we'll have in September! We'll go out to Duck Island on a picnic; and I'll have my canoe, and we can go up the Sound together. Do you remember the day you and I hid at the top of Thunder Cliff and fooled those New Yorkers about the echo?"

Mildred laughed companionably.

"Oh dear!" she exclaimed, "there's Eleanor nodding that it's time to go."

Tom and Charley stood up to say good-night, for the guests were getting ready to leave.

"I'm going to miss one picture worth painting," said Tom, as he shook hands with Mildred.

A minute later the room was empty. Charley stepped over to the punch-bowl and scooped up the last glass of lemonade.

"Well, old man," he said, "which is it, Mount Desert or the Canadian Rockies ?"

"Rockies for mine," said Tom, with his head out of the window. "What! you haven't changed your mind?"

"No, I haven't." Tom drew his head in and sat on the window seat. "It came harder than I expected, when I saw all the Mount Desert people; but I'm sure it's the best thing."

"By Jove, Tom, I never thought you'd stick it out! And hanged if I see why you have to go so far off, anyway!"

"It's a great place, Charley. The scenery's just what I want, and nothing else will suit. Then I'll be perfectly free and undisturbed. I can camp out and never see a soul except my guide the whole time. There's just one fellow I wish was going to be along with me." He stood up and put his hand on Weston's shoulder. "If only you were coming, we'd tame the wild West together!"

"You can bet I'd like to!" said Charley, seriously. "It's probably part of your artistic temperament, Tom, but I think you're a fool to go alone."

"Oh! I sha'n't mind. I've always wanted to try it; there's nothing. like being alone to stimulate a fellow's imagination."