Our native hotel, built in Eastern fashion about a court, with only
blank outside walls, was no place in which to pass a long invalidism,
and three days later my father had me carried to the steamer, and,
crossing to Gibraltar, we traveled by easy railroad trips to Leipzig.
We had left our belongings with Jastrow, and he begged us, on our
arrival, to become members of his household, which we were only too
glad to do for a time. His joy over my return was most touching, and he
and Humzel both seemed to regard me very much as if I were the creation
of their own brains, who was to bring them immortal fame in time. My
father had long before counseled me to be a pursuer of knowledge, and
not of money; telling me the winning of the latter narrowed the
intellect and stunted the finer qualities of one’s nature, making all
men natural enemies, while the acquisition of the former broadened
one’s mind, developed the nobility within, and engendered love of one’s
associates. These two men illustrated his theory, and had my tendency
been avaricious I think their unselfish love and example would have
made me otherwise. And yet, how dare I claim to be free from
sordidness, when all my thoughts and hopes and daily life are now bent
on winning money?
My leg was far too troublesome to permit me to sit at a desk, but my
father insisted on being my scribe; and thus, lying on a lounge, I
began part of the work I had so long planned, taking up for my first
book the Turkish irruption, the crusades against the Saracens, and
their subsequent history. Thinking so much of you, both as the child
who had won my boyish heart and as the beautiful woman whose face had
fascinated and moved me so deeply, I do not know how, except for my
work, I should have lived through those long and weary months of
enforced inaction while my leg so slowly knit.
More as recreation from this serious endeavor than as supplementary
labor, I gathered the articles I had written for the Deutsche Rundshau
and the Revue des Deux Mondes from time to time in our travels, and
with new material from my journal I worked the whole into a popular
account of what we had seen and done. While I still used a
walking-stick I was reading proof of the German edition, and my English
replica, rather than translation, was under negotiation through my
publisher for London and New York editions. My father, who busied
himself with a French version, insisted that the book would be a great
success, and the articles under my assumed name had been so well
noticed that I was myself hopeful of what better work in book form
might do for my reputation; for against his advice, I had determined to
abandon my pseudonym.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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