The expression, so offensive to English ears, Inshallah Bukra—Please God, tomorrow—always said about what should be done to-day, is here common as in Egypt or in India. This procrastination belongs more or less to all Orientals. But Arabia especially abounds in the Tawakkal al’ Allah, ya Shaykh!—Place thy reliance upon Allah, O Shaykh!—enjoined when a man should depend upon his own exertions. Upon the whole, however, though alive to the infirmities of the Madani character, I thought favourably of it, finding among this people more of the redeeming point, manliness, [p.22]than in most Eastern nations with whom I am acquainted. The Arabs, like the Egyptians, all marry. Yet, as usual, they are hard and facetious upon that ill-treated subject—matrimony. It has exercised the brain of their wits and sages, who have not failed to indite notable things concerning it. Saith “Harikar al-Hakim” [(]Dominie Do-All) to his nephew Nadan (Sir Witless), whom he would dissuade from taking to himself a wife, “Marriage is joy for a month and sorrow for a life, and the paying of settlements and the breaking of back (i.e. under the load of misery), and the listening to a woman's tongue!” And again we have in verse:— “They said ‘marry!’ I replied, ‘far be it from me To take to my bosom a sackful of snakes. I am free—why then become a slave? May Allah never bless womankind!’” And the following lines are generally quoted, as affording a kind of bird’s-eye view of female existence:— “From 10 (years of age) unto 20, A repose to the eyes of beholders.[FN#35] From 20 unto 30, Still fair and full of flesh. From 30 unto 40, A mother of many boys and girls. From 40 unto 50, An old woman of the deceitful. From 50 unto 60, Slay her with a knife. From 60 unto 70, The curse of Allah upon them, one and all!” Another popular couplet makes a most unsupported assertion:— “They declare womankind to be heaven to man, I say, ‘Allah, give me Jahannam, and not this heaven.’” Yet the fair sex has the laugh on its side, for these railers at Al-Madinah as at other places, invariably marry. The