And here we must interpose a little of our skepticism, if but to gratify an habitual craving in us. We do not doubt that Khalid's self-sufficiency is remarkable; that his courage--on paper--is quite above the common; that the grit and stay he shows are wonderful; that his lofty aspirations, so indomitable in their onwardness, are great: but we only ask, having thus fortified his soul, how is he to fortify his stomach? He is going to work, to be a menial, to earn a living by honest means? Ah, Khalid, Khalid! Did you not often bestow a furtive glance on some one else's checkbook? Did you not even exercise therein your skill in calculation? If the bank, where Shakib deposits his little saving, failed, would you be so indomitable, so dogged in your resolution? Would you not soften a trifle, loosen a whit, if only for the sake of your blood-circulation? Indeed, Shakib has become a patron to Khalid. Shakib the poet, who himself should have a patron, is always ready to share his last dollar with his loving, though cantankerous friend. And this, in spite of all the disagreeable features of a friendship which in the Syrian Colony was become proverbial. But Khalid now takes up the newspapers and scans the Want Columns for hours. The result being a clerkship in a lawyer's office. Nay, an apprenticeship; for the legal profession, it seems, had for a while engaged his serious thoughts. And this of all the professions is the one on which he would graft his scion of lofty morality? Surely, there be plenty of fuel for a conflagration in a lawyer's office. Such rows of half-calf tomes, such piles of legal documents, all designed to combat dishonesty and fraud, "and all immersed in them, and nourished and maintained by them." In what a sorry condition will your Morality issue out of these bogs! A lawyer's clerk, we are informed, can not maintain his hold on his clerkship, if he does not learn to blink. That is why Khalid is not long in serving papers, copying summonses, and searching title-deeds. In this lawyer's office he develops traits altogether foreign to his nature. He even becomes a quidnunc, prying now and then into the personal affairs of his superiors. Ay, and he dares once to suggest to his employer a new method of dealing with the criminals among his clients. Withal, Khalid is slow, slower than the law itself. If he goes out to serve a summons he does not return for a day. If he is sent to search title-deeds, he does not show up in the office for a week. And often he would lose himself in the Park surrounding the Register's Office, pondering on his theory of immanent morality. He would sit down on one of those benches, which are the anchors of loafers of another type, his batch of papers beside him, and watch the mad crowds coming and going, running, as it were, between two fires. These puckered people are the living, moving chambers of sleeping souls.