When the Shaykh Mohammed sits with me, or I climb up into his little shop for the purpose of receiving a lesson from him, he is quite at his ease, reading when he likes, or making me read, and generally beginning each lecture with some such preamble as this[FN#34]:- "Aywa! aywa! aywa![FN#35]"-Even so, even so, even so! we take refuge with Allah from Satan the Stoned! In the name of Allah, the Compassionate, the Merciful, and the Blessings of Allah upon our Lord Mohammed, and his Family and his Companions one and all! Thus saith the author, may Almighty Allah have mercy upon him! ‘Section I. of chapter two, upon the orders of prayer,' &c." He becomes fiercely sarcastic when I differ from him in opinion, especially upon a point of grammar, or the theology over which his beard has grown grey. "Subhan' Allah! (Allah be glorified![FN#36]) What words are these? If thou be right, enlarge thy turband,[FN#37]" (i.e., set up as a learned man), "and throw away thy [p.72]drugs, for verily it is better to quicken men's souls than to destroy their bodies, O Abdullah!" Oriental-like, he revels in giving good counsel. "Thou art always writing, O my brave![FN#38]" (this is said on the few occasions when I venture to make a note in my book), "what evil habit is this? Surely thou hast learned it in the lands of the Frank. Repent!" He loathes my giving medical advice gratis. "Thou hast two servants to feed, O my son! The doctors of Egypt never write A, B, without a reward. Wherefore art thou ashamed? Better go and sit upon the mountain[FN#39] at once" (i.e., go to the desert), "and say thy prayers day and night!" And finally, he is prodigal of preaching upon the subject of household expenses. "Thy servant did write down two pounds of flesh yesterday! What words are these, O he?[FN#40] Dost thou never say, ‘Guard us, Allah, from the sin of extravagance?'" He delights also in abruptly interrupting a serious subject when it begins to weigh upon his spirits. For instance, Now the waters of ablution being of seven different kinds, it results that-hast thou a wife?-No?-Then verily thou must buy thee a female slave, O youth! This conduct is not right, and men will say of thee-Repentance: I take refuge with Allah[FN#41]-‘of a truth his mouth watereth for the spouses of other Moslems.'" [p.73]But sometimes he nods over a difficult passage under my very eyes, or he reads it over a dozen times in the wantonness of idleness, or he takes what school-boys call a long "shot" most shamelessly at the signification. When this happens I lose my temper, and raise my voice, and shout, "Verily there is no power nor might save in Allah, the High, the Great!" Then he looks at me, and with passing meekness whispers- "Fear Allah, O man!"