The silence of expectation ensues. The Mosque is crowded; and the press of turbans is such that if a pea were dropt from above it would not reach the floor. From the pulpit the great Mohammedan audience, with its red fezes, its green and white turbans, seemed to Khalid like a verdant field overgrown with daisies and poppies. "It is the beginning of Arabia's Spring, the resuscitation of the glory of Islam," and so forth; thus opening with a flourish of flattery like the spouting tricksters whom he so harshly judges. And what shall we say of him? It were not fair quickly to condemn, to cry him down at the start. Perhaps he was thus inspired by the august assembly; perhaps he quailed and thought it wise to follow thus far the advice of his friends. "It was neither this nor that," say our Scribe. "For as he stood in the tribune, the picture of the field of daisies and poppies suggested the picture of Spring. A speaker is not always responsible for the frolics of his fancy. Indeed, an audience of some five thousand souls, all intent upon this opaque, mysterious Entity in the tribune, is bound to reach the very heart of it; for think what five thousand rays focussed on a sensitive plate can do." Thus our Scribe, apologetically. But after the first contact and the vibrations of enthusiasm and flattery that followed, Khalid regains his equilibrium and reason, and strikes into his favourite theme. He begins by arraigning the utilitarian spirit of Europe, the rank materialism which is invading our very temples of worship. God, Truth, Virtue, with them, is no longer esteemed for its own worth, but for what it can yield of the necessities and luxuries of life. And with these cynical materialistic abominations they would be supreme even in the East; they would extinguish with their dominating spirit of trade every noble virtue of the soul. And yet, they make presumption of introducing civilisation by benevolent assimilation, rather dissimulation. For even an Englishman in our country, for instance, is unlike himself in his own. The American, too, who is loud-lunged about democracy and shirt-sleeve diplomacy, wheedles and truckles as good as the wiliest of our pashas. And further he exclaims: