"At eventide, descending from one hilltop to another, I reach a village of no mean size. It occupies a broad deep steep, in which the walnut and poplar relieve the monotony of the mulberries. I hate the mulberry, which is so suggestive of worms; and I hate worms, and though they be of the silk-making kind. I hate them the more, because the Lebanon peasant seems to live for the silk-worms, which he tends and cultivates better than he does his children. "When I stood on the top of the steep, the village glittering with a thousand lights lay beneath like a strip of the sidereal sky. It made me feel I was above the clouds, even above the stars. The gabled houses overtopping each other, spreading in clusters and half-circles, form here an aigrette, as it were, on the sylvan head of the mountain, there a necklace on its breast, below a cestus brilliant with an hundred lights. I descend into the village and stop before the first house I reach. The door is wide open; and the little girl who sees me enter runs in fright to tell her mother. Straightway, the woman and her son, a comely and lusty youth, come out in a where-is-the-brigand manner, and, as they see me, stand abashed, amazed. The young man who wore a robe-de-chambre and Turkish slippers worked in gold, returns my salaam courteously and invites me up to the divan. There is a spark of intelligence in his eyes, and an alien affectation in his speech. I foresaw that he had been in America. He does not ask me the conventional questions about my religious persuasion; but after his inquiries of whence and whither, he offers me an Egyptian cigarette, and goes in to order the coffee. It did not occur to him that I was his guest for the night.-- "Ah me, I no longer know how to recline on a cushion, and a rug under my feet seems like a sheet of ice. But with my dust and mud I seem like Diogenes trampling upon Plato's pride. I survey the hall, which breathes of rural culture and well-being, and in which is more evidence of what I foresaw. On the wall hung various photographs and oil prints, among which I noticed those of the King and Queen of England, that of Theodore Roosevelt, a framed cartoon by an American artist, an autographed copy of an English Duke's, and a large photograph of a banquet of one of the political Clubs of New York. On the table were a few Arabic magazines, a post-card album, and a gramophone! Yes, mine host was more than once in the United States. And knowing that I, too, had been there, he is anxious to display somewhat of his broken English. His father, he tells me, speaks English even as good as he does, having been a dragoman for forty years.