The poets of antiquity have many a time described the crowd of clients who were wont to inundate the porticoes of a patrician palace in ancient Rome. A great tent in the desert in these days resembles in its way the luxurious mansions painted by Horace and Juvenal. Gravely seated on a carpet, with that dignified demeanour which is the peculiar privilege of Orientals, the chief of the tribe receives in their turn all who come to invoke his authority. This one complains of a neighbour who has endeavoured to seduce his wife, that one accuses a wealthy man of refusing to pay a debt, another is anxious to recover some cattle that have been stolen from him, while a fourth demands protection for his daughter whom a brutal husband maltreats in the most shameful manner. The first quality in a chief is patience. Assailed on all sides by violent recriminations, he lends an attentive ear to each, and strives to heal the wounds of every description which are disclosed to him. "A man in authority," says an eastern apophthegm, "ought to imitate the physicians who never apply the same remedies to all diseases." In these "beds of justice" that recall the primitive manner in which our ancient kings disposed of the private interests of their subjects, the Arab chief employs the utmost sagacity, the greatest force of character, with which he may have been endowed. To some he gives orders, to others advice: to no one does he refuse the aid of his wisdom and influence. Nor has he need only of the quality that Solomon demanded of the Lord. Wisdom must be combined with generosity and valour. The highest praise that can be awarded is to say of him that "his sabre is always drawn, his hand always open." He must never weary of practising the somewhat ostentatious, and yet at the same time noble and touching, charity, enjoined by the Mussulman law as an obligation on all Believers. His tent must be a refuge for the unfortunate, nor may any one die of hunger in his neighbourhood; for the Prophet hath said: "Allah will never accord his mercy but to the merciful. Believers, give alms, if it be only the half of a date. Whoso gives alms to-day shall be amply recompensed to-morrow."