The Days of Mohammed

t is e

's strength: bu

t like a

kesp

let us look at Amzi as he sat on

hless heat of Mecca had charmed him. He had immediately purchased a house and fu

illed with softest down. Low divans invited repose, and heavy curtains of yellow silk shut out the too bright glare of day. The ceiling, after the Persian fashion, was inlaid with mirrors, fitted in in

dew in the early morning sun; and near the window a jujube tree stretched its dark, shining leaves and yellow fruit temptingly near. Acacias with sweet-scented yellow blossoms, oleanders glowing with rosy bloom, and a thicket of silver-leaved castors se

position of luxurious ease at the window. Between his plump fingers he held the amber stem of a handsomely carved pipe. He looked scarcely older than when on that memorable jour

f barren, ashen Mecca. Then he looked restlessly back over the lan

piled and surged in waves of amber and purple, leaving the tree tops like islands on a vapory sea. To the left the seared and scori?-covered crest of Mount Ohod rose, dark and scowling, like a grim sentinel on the borders of an Elysian valley. In the rear lay the plain of El Munakhah, and the rush of

the desert land never omits it from his idea of paradise, save in his conception of the highe

y bazars, its fair-skinned people, and its low, yellow, flat-roofed houses, each w

was the atmosphere that Amzi could distinguish the huge, white dromedaries, and catch an occasi

sthetic temperament, an intense love of the beautiful. Yet he began to feel lonely in this town of his adopti

ion over him he scarcely dared to acknowledge even to himself. The emptiness and idleness of his own life was beginning to pall upo

, who had followed him to Medina, but was wandering about as usual, returni

er than of old, his eyes were as large and blue, and his bright hair fell in the same soft curls above his regular and clear-cu

Amzi's feet and put his head on his knee

umah been?" he

ng out foolishly. Dumah

where

us blows, and the date-palms wave

, then, foolishl

robes, and they will bring him in as a prince,-the wicke

quickly, and thr

med here?

els I see in my dreams do not smile, they look away and vanish when I thi

f people, pressing about Mohammed and Abu Beker, each of whom was dressed in a white garment, a

ing himself a lower place,

narch, surrounded by an army of blind devotees, believers

until Mohammed's home was erected. It was at Amzi's house, too, that the nuptials of Mohamme

e a mosque built, and, from it, morning

Mohammed is the prophet of God! Come to

and more living than the old, dead, superstitious idolatry to which they were in bondage; yet, had they known it, teachings whose choicest gems were but crumbs

to condemnation of the

n the "only begotten Son of God" as a divine factor of the Trinity. Jesus he recognized as a prophet, not as God's own Son; and, while he borrowed incessantly from the Scriptures, he refused to accept them, declaring that they had become perverted, and that th

philanthropy and an earnest solicitude for the salvation of his countrymen from the depths of moral and spiritual degradation into which they had

nd sober merchantmen, men with gray heads, fiery youths, proselytes from the tribes of the desert, even women, flocked to him every

g, as he had waited all his life, to see the truth, yet too indolent to set out bravely in the quest. He preferred to look on from a

ause, the want of a rich spiritual life, that empty hollowness which pleasu

re himself a follower of the prophet,

He had an instinctive dislike of Mohammed, whose assumptions of superior

stone to which a cord was attached. Put

always, will you not? Because Dumah might die, a

ed Amzi, and Dumah le

iar words traced upon the soft stone,-the words

begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him

d put the table