“It is accordingly a stout clown from Mogah, scantily dressed in working wear, and who has been occupied for the last half hour in tracing sundry diagrams on the ground before him with a thick peach-tree switch, thus to pass his time till his betters shall have been served. He now edges forward, and taking his seat in front of the door, calls my attention with an ‘I say, doctor.’ Whereon I suggest to him that his bulky corporation not being formed of glass or any other transparent material, he has by his position entirely intercepted whatever little light my recess might enjoy. He apologizes, and shuffles an inch or two sideways. Next I inquire what ails him, not without some curiosity to hear the answer, so little does the herculean frame before me announce disease. Whereto Do’eymis, or whatever may be his name, replies, ‘I say, I am all made up of pain.’ This statement, like many others, appears to me rather too general to be exactly true. So I proceed in my interrogatory: ‘Does your head pain you?’ ‘No.’ (I might have guessed that; these fellows never feel what our cross-Channel friends entitle ‘_le mal des beaux esprits_.’) ‘Does your back ache?’ ‘No.’ ‘Your arms?’ ‘No.’ ‘Your legs?’ ‘No.’ ‘Your body?’ ‘No.’ ‘But,’ I conclude, ‘if neither your head nor your body, back, arms, or legs pain you, how can you possibly be such a composition of suffering?’ ‘I am all made up of pain, doctor,’ replies he, manfully intrenching himself within his first position. The fact is, that there is really something wrong with him, but he does not know how to localize his sensations. So I push forward my inquiries, till it appears that our man of Mogah has a chronic rheumatism; and on ulterior investigation, conducted with all the skill that Barakat and I can jointly muster, it comes out that three or four months before he had an attack of the disease in its acute form, accompanied by high fever, since which he has never been himself again. “This might suffice for the diagnosis, but I wish to see how he will find his way out of more intricate questions; besides, the townsmen sitting by, and equally alive to the joke with myself, whisper, ‘Try him again.’ In consequence, I proceed with, ‘What was the cause of your first illness?’ ‘I say, doctor, its cause was God,’ replies the patient. ‘No doubt of that,’ say I; ‘all things are caused by God: but what was the particular and immediate occasion?’ ‘Doctor, its cause was God, and secondly, that I ate camel’s flesh when I was cold,’ rejoins my scientific friend. ‘But was there nothing else?’ I suggest, not quite satisfied with the lucid explanation just given. ‘Then, too, I drank camel’s milk; but it was all, I say, from God, doctor,’ answers he.