"There were no reviewers in my day," answered Shakspeare. "I have been plagued enough with commentators, Heaven knows! but with reviewers, thank God, I have had nothing to do. Why, my dear sir, I should have died under the operation." Shakspeare was going on, but the last call to evening prayer, which a bell-mouthed muezzin was bellowing from a neighbouring minaret, put a stop to his oratory by wakening me from my dream. It was a beautiful evening; the sun was just going down over far Arabia; the sky was purpled with the last rays of his departing splendour, the evening breath of the rose pervaded all the air, and the ear of heaven was filled with the reposing hum of creation. I offered up my prayers with the rest, and then stood gazing at the great orb of light as he sunk to his magnificent repose. The moment that the last bright spot of his disk had disappeared, the eastern world was all darkness. No soft twilight in that climate smooths the transition from the warm light of day to the depth of night; but to compensate, the stars shine more brightly and come quicker upon the track of day, and in a moment a thousand beaming lights broke out in the heaven as if they were jealous that the sun had shone so long; while on the earth, too, the fire-flies kept hovering about as if the sky "rained its lesser stars upon our globe." Men have strange presentiments sometimes, and we have a great many great instances of them in a great many great men. Now whether it was a presentiment that I should meet the Man in the Moon that evening, which made me linger out of the city, I cannot tell at this interval of time. But so it was that I did linger, and got wandering about down in the valley till the moon rose clear and mild, and weaving her silver beams with the dark blue of the sky, it became all one tissue of gentle light. Just at that moment, on a bank where the moonbeams appeared all gathered together, I saw a little old man with a dog by his side and a lantern in his hand--take him altogether, not at all unlike Diogenes. Wherever I go I adopt the country that I happen to be in, lest at a pinch it should have nothing to say to me, not as most men do, by halves, growling like a bear all the time they do it; no, but altogether as a man does a wife, for better, for worse--laws, manners, superstitions, and prejudices. Now, had I followed this excellent custom in the present instance, I ought, in Persia, to have imagined my old man to be a Ghole _instanter_, or, at best, a Siltrim; but somehow forgetting a few thousand years, I could not get his likeness to Diogenes out of my head, and walking up to him, I asked him if he were looking for an honest man, adding, that if he were, I should be happy to help him, for that I wanted one too. "No," said the old man, "I am looking for sticks." "Sticks!" echoed I, "you will find none on this side of the valley--you must cross the stream, and amongst those bushes you will find sticks enough."