serfs--in short, the present industrial system has little to boast of in comparison with Mohammed’s attitude toward serfdom. One other inhuman custom--the ancient practice of female infanticide--was summarily abolished by him; and a tale survives that well illustrates the horror he felt concerning such deeds. Two men, about to yield themselves to the claims of Islam, chanced to question the Prophet about his views on child-murder. “Our mother Muleika was full of good deeds and charity; but she buried a little daughter alive. What is her condition now?” they inquired. “The burier and the buried both in hell,” replied Mohammed, upon which his guests became very angry and started to leave. “Come back,” he requested, “mine own mother, too, is there with yours.” But even this inducement failed to convince them, and so they returned into the outer darkness. III Old age, meanwhile, crept gently though inexorably upon the Prophet; but its stealthy approach seemed only to quicken the strength of his arm and the matchless fertility of his intellect. His groveling acolytes, completely bewitched by the magical power of his colossal personality, had exalted him to such a dazzling deification that, had Allah Himself chosen to appear in the streets of Medina, He might easily have passed unnoticed amid the encomiums that were daily showered upon His Apostle--or, rather, Allah might carelessly have been classified with the famous Three Pretenders who, by their conjuring tricks and fake miracles, excited the wrathful amusement of the Prophet in the last year of his earthly life. In fact, it has been pointed out as a matter for deep regret that, while the Koran allows Allah only ninety-nine separate and distinct appellations, His Prophet, at the zenith of his career, was addressed by no fewer than two hundred and one individual titles, including a round score of those that had been applied to Allah Himself.