"Look here," he said confidentially, "I want you to listen and tell me what those fellows are talking about. I can't catch a word they say, but as near as I can make out from the way they act that fellow with the goatee is describing some new kind of torpedo boat. It goes through the water at about thirty miles an hour, having three or four screw propellers. When it comes within striking distance of the enemy--bang! they cut her loose and the projectile goes whizzing to the mark, and when it meets with any resistance there is a big explosion and everything within a quarter of a mile is blown to flindereens. Now, that's the plot, as near as I can follow it from watchin' that short guy make motions. You listen to them and tell me if I am right." The head waiter listened and then translated to us as follows:--"He is saying to his friend that he slept very well last evening and got up feeling good, but was somewhat annoyed at breakfast time because the egg was not cooked to suit him." "How about all these gymnastics?" asked the surprised Mr. Peasley. "Why does he hop up and down, side step and feint and wiggle his fingers and all that monkey business?" "Quite so," replied the head waiter. "He is describing the egg." [Illustration: "_He is describing the egg._"] What a people--to take five cents worth of cheap information and garland it with twenty dollars' worth of Delsarte and rhetoric! Talk is one of the few things of which there is a superabundance in the Levant. In nearly all particulars the Arab is economical and abstemious. He eats sparingly and cheaply, wears just enough clothing to keep from violating the municipal ordinances, smokes conservatively, so as to get the full value of his tobacco, and lives in a house which is furnished with three or four primitive utensils. But when it comes to language, he is the most reckless spendthrift in the world. He uses up large bales of conversation. Suppose that three porters at a railway station are to take a trunk from a car and put it on a truck and wheel it out to a cab. The talk made necessary by this simple operation would fill several pages in the Congressional Record. All three talk incessantly, each telling the others what to do and finding fault because they don't do it his way. One seems to be superintendent, the second is foreman, and the third is boss.