But viewing this and having none, and trudging moodily along toward his waiting-place in front of the mosque, Ibn was truly depressed and out of sorts. The world was not right. Age and poverty should command more respect. To be sure, in his youth perhaps he had not been all that he might have been, but still, for that matter, had many others so been? Were not all men weak, after their kind, or greedy or uncharitable? By Allah, they were, and as he had reason to know! Waidi, the water-seller? A thief really, no whit better than himself, if the world but knew. Hussein, the peddler of firewood; Haifa, the tobacco tramp—a wretched and swindling pack, all, not a decent loin- or shoulder-cloth among them, possessed of no better places of abode than his own really, yet all, even as the richest of men, had their khat, could go to their coffee places this night and enjoy it for a few anna. Even they! And he! In Hodeidah there was still another class, the strictly business or merchant class, who, unlike men of wealth or the keepers of the very small shops, wound up their affairs at four in the afternoon and returning to their homes made a kind of public show of their ease and pleasure in khat from then on until the evening prayers. Charpoys, water-pipes and sweetmeats were brought forth into the shade before the street door. The men of the household and their male friends sprawled sociably on the charpoys, the ingredients for the promotion of goodly fellowship ready to their hands. A graybeard or two might sit among them expounding from the sacred book, or conversation lively in character but subdued in tone entertained the company. Then the aged, the palsied, even the dying of the family, their nearest of kin, were brought down on their beds from the top of the house to partake of this feast of reason and flow of wit. Inside the latticed windows the women sat, munching the second-best leaves and listening to the scraps of wisdom that floated up to them from the company below. It was from this hour on that Ibn found it most difficult to endure life. To see the world thus gay while he was hungry was all but too much. After noting some of this he wandered wearily down the winding market street which led from the mosque to the waterfront, and where in view of the sea were a few of the lowest coffee-houses, frequented by coolies, bhisties and hadjis. Here in some one of them, though without a single pice in his hand, he proposed to make a final effort before night should fall, so that thereafter in some one of them, the very lowest of course, he himself might sit over the little khat he would (if fortunate) be permitted to purchase, and a little kishr. Perhaps in one of these he would receive largess from one of these lowest of mabraz masters or his patrons, or be permitted to tell an old and hoarse and quavering tale. His voice was indeed wretched.