As a matter of fact, we are at the best hotel in Damascus, and the hotel people are racking their bodies and risking their souls to give us the best they know. A traveller cannot get better than the best--even in heaven. Travelling alone in any strange land, he is more likely to get the worst. Yet the real traveller will make the best of what he finds, and do better when he finds he can. But these malcontents of ours have been pampered and spoiled by that steamer until they expect nothing short of perfection--_their_ kind of perfection--wherever they set foot. They are so disturbed over the fact that the bill-of-fare is unusual and not adjusted to their tastes that they are not enjoying the sights, and want to clear out, forthwith. They have been in Damascus a little more than a day; they want to go now. This old race has stood it five thousand years or more. These ship-dwellers can't stand it two days without complaint. I don't want to be severe, but such travellers tire me. I suppose the bill-of-fare in heaven won't please them. I hope not, if I'm invited to remain there--any length of time, I mean. The rest of us are having great enjoyment. We like everything, and we eat most of it. There are any number of dried fruits and nuts and fine juicy oranges always on the table, strung down the centre--its full length. And even if the meats are a bit queer, they are by no means bad. We whoop up the bill-of-fare, and go through it forward and backward and diagonally, working from both ends toward the centre, and back again if we feel like it. We have fruit and nuts piled by our plates and on our plates all through the meal. _We_ don't get tired of Damascus. We could stay here and start a famine. What _will_ these grumblers do in heaven, where very likely there isn't a single dish they ever heard of before? In the matter of wines, however, I am conservative. You see, Mohammed forbade the use of spirituous beverages by the faithful, and liquor forms no part of their long, symphonic rhyme. They don't drink it themselves; they only make it for visitors. It would require no command of the Prophet to make me abstain from it. I have tried their vintage. I tried one brand called the "Wine of Ephesus." The name conjured visions; so did the wine, but they were not the same visions. The name suggested banquets in marble halls, where gentlemen and ladies of the old days reclined on rich divans and were served by slaves on bended knee. The wine itself--the taste of it, I mean--suggested a combination of hard cider and kerosene, with a hurry call for the doctor. I was coy about the wines of the East after that, but by-and-by I tried another brand--a different color with a different name. This time it was "Nectar of Heliopolis." They had curious ideas of nectar in Heliopolis. Still, it was better than the Wine of Ephesus. Hair-oil is always better than kerosene in a mixture like that--but not much better. The flavor did not invite debauch.