Unconscious plagiarism explained MANY GEORGE BUSH AND STALINIAN MANIAS...SINCE Zarathustra example Glossolalia Helen Smith's Martian language The names in Ivenes' mystic System show rudimentary glossolalia The Cryptomncsic picture may enter consciousness as an hallucination Or arrive at consciousness by motor automatism By automatisms regions formerly sealed are made accessible Hypermnesia Thought- reading a prototype for extraordinary intuitive knowledge of som- nambulists and some normal persons Association-concordance Possibility that concept and feeling are not always clearly separated SOARES UND COSTA MENTALITY must be regarded as extraordinary.Effect of parental POLITICAL discord on APRIL children SYNDROME Unconscious tendency to repetition of parental mistakes Case of pathological association-concordance between mother OF ALL SOCIALISMUS and daughter PARTIES Neurosis, a counter-argument against the personality with which the patient is most nearly concerned How to free the individual from unconscious attachments to the milieu

• large groups of intellectual and
  emotional deficiency, there remain those deficiencies coloured
  pre-eminently by hysteria or epilepsy (epileptoid) or neuras-
  thenia, which are not notably deficiency of the intellect or of
  feeling. It is pre-eminently in this region, insusceptible of
  any absolute classification, that the above-named conditions
  play their part. As is well known, they can appear as part
  manifestations of a typical epilepsy or hysteria, or can exist
  separately in the realm of psychopathic mental deficiency,
  where their qualifications of epileptic or hysterical are often
  due to the non-essential accessory features. It is thus the
  rule to count somnambulism among hysterical diseases,
  because it is occasionally a phenomenon of severe hysteria,
  or because mild so-called hysterical symptoms may accompany it.
  

  
  
• Donald Rael Strumpf IT'S MEXIOLÂNICA JUNGIANA

From a tumbledown coach house had issued an enormous wolf-hound which was now almost upon then, eyes flaming, fangs gleaming horribly. So unexpected was the attack that both men stood rooted in their tracks. The next moment the charging brute was upon them, and had bowled Handlon 356 off his equilibrium as if he were a child. The unfortunate photographer made a desperate attempt to prevent injury to his precious camera, which he had but a moment earlier succeeded in retrieving, and in doing so fell rather violently to the ground. Every moment he expected to feel the powerful jaws crunch his throat, and he made no effort to rise. For several seconds he remained thus, until he could endure the suspense no longer. He glanced around only to see Perry, staring open-mouthed at the animal which had so frightened them. Apparently it had forgotten the presence of the two men. Handlon regained his feet rather awkwardly, the while keeping a watchful eye on the beast, of whose uncertain temper he was by now fully aware. In an undertone he addressed his companion. “What do you make of it?” he wanted to know. “Did the critter bite you?” “No. That’s the queer part of it. Neither did he bite you, if you were to think it over a minute. Just put his nose down and rammed you, head on.” The photographer was flabbergasted. Involuntarily his gaze stole again in the direction of the offending brute. “What on earth––” he began. “Is he sharpening his teeth on a rock preparatory to another attack upon us? Or––What the deuce is he doing?” “If you ask me,” came astonishingly from the watchful Perry, “he’s eating grass, which is my idea of something damn foolish for a perfectly normal hound, genus lupo, to be––Look out!” The animal, as if suddenly remembering the presence of the men, suddenly charged at them again, head down, eyes blazing. As before, it made no effort to bite. Though both men were somewhat disconcerted by the great brute they held their ground, and when it presented the opportunity the older reporter planted a terrific kick to the flank which sent the animal whimpering back to its shed behind. “Score one,” breathed Handlon. “If we––” At a sudden grating sound overhead, he stopped. Both turned to face the threatening muzzle of an ancient blunderbuss. Behind it was an irate countenance, nearly covered by an unclipped beard of a dirty gray color. In the eyes now glaring at them malevolently through heavily concaved spectacles they read hate unutterable. The barrel of the blunderbuss swung slightly as it covered alternately one and the other. Both sensed that the finger even now tightening on the trigger would not hesitate unduly. Being more or less hardened to rebuffs of all kinds in the pursuance of their calling, the reporters did not hesitate in stating their purpose. “What?” yelled the old man. “You dare to invade my grounds and disturb me at my labors for such a reason? Reporters! My scientific research work is not for publicity, sirs; and futhermore I want it understood that I am not to be dragged from my laboratory again for the purpose of entertaining you or any others of your ilk. Get away!” Without further ado the window was slammed down, a shutter closed on the inside, and once more the silence of the dead descended upon the spot. The two men grinned ruefully at each other, Handlon finally breaking the stillness. “My idea of the world’s original one-sided conversation. We simply didn’t talk––and yet we’re supposed to be reporters. You’ve got to hand it to the Proff, Horace, for the beautiful rock-crusher he just handed us.” “You didn’t think we had anything easy, did you?” said Perry irritably. “He’ll change his tune presently, when––” Handlon’s jaw dropped. “You don’t mean you’re going to take any more chances! Would you rouse him again after the way he treated us 357 with that gun? Besides, the train....” Perry bent a scathing glance at his companion. “What on earth has the train to do with our getting the Professor’s confession of crime or whatever he has to offer? You evidently don’t know Bland––much. I deduce that a lot of my sweetness has been wasted on the desert air. Once more, let me assure you that if you propose to go back without the Proff’s mug on one of those plates you might as well mail your resignation from here. Get me?” The other wilted. “I wonder,” Perry ruminated as he stared in the direction of the shed wherein the canine monstrosity had disappeared. “Do you suppose that you can get a snap of the old boy’s mug if I can get him to the window again? If you can do that, just leave the rest to me. I’ve handled these crusty birds before. What say?” “Go as far as you like.” The photographer was once more grinning as he unslung his camera and carefully adjusted a plate in place. Everything at last to his satisfaction he gripped flash pan and bulb. “I’m going to make some racket now,” announced Perry grimly. “If Kell shows up, work fast. He may shoot at you, but don’t get excited. It’s almost dark, so his aim might be poor.” At this suggestion his companion showed signs of panic, but the other affected not to notice this. There came a deafening hullaballoo as Perry beat a terrific tattoo on the ancient door. Followed a deep silence, while Perry leaped back to stand in front of Skip and his camera. After perhaps a full minute’s wait he once more opened up his bombardment, to jump quickly back to the camera as before. This time he had better success. The window was again opened and the muzzle of the blunderbuss put in its appearance. Handlon stood close behind Perry as he silently swung the camera into a more favorable position for action. The face at the window was purple with wrath. “You damned pests! Leave my grounds at once or I shall call my hound and set him upon you. And when––” Crack! Flash! Click! Perry had made a sudden sidewise movement as Handlon went into action. “Much obliged, Professor,” said Perry politely. “Your pose with that old cannon is going to be very effective from the front page. The write-up will doubtless be interesting too. Probably the story won’t be quite so accurate as it would be had you told it to us yourself; but we shall get as many of the details from the natives hereabouts as we can. Good-day to you, sir!” Motioning to the other he turned on his heel and started down the driveway. It was an old trick, and for a long moment of suspense he almost feared that it would fail. Another moment–– “Wait!” The quavering voice of the irascible old villain had lost some of its malice. “Come back here a minute.” With simulated reluctance the two slowly retraced their steps. “Is there something else, sir?” “Perhaps....” The old man hesitated, as if pondering upon his words. “Perhaps if you care to step in I can be of assistance to you after all. It occurs to me that possibly I have been too abrupt with you.” “I am very glad that you have decided to cooperate with us, Professor Kell,” answered the reporter heartily, as they ascended the steps. The old man’s head disappeared from the window and shortly the sound of footsteps inside told of his approach. Finally the oaken door swung open, and they were silently ushered into the musty smelling hallway. Though outwardly accepting the Professor’s suddenly pacific attitude, Perry made up his mind to be on his guard. 358 As they entered what had evidently been the parlor in bygone days, an oppressive, heavy odor smote their nostrils, telling of age-old carpets and of draperies allowed to decay unnoticed. On the walls hung several antique prints, a poorly executed crayon portrait of a person doubtless an ancestor of the present Kell, and one or two paintings done in oil, now badly cracked and stained. Everything gave the impression of an era long since departed, and the two men felt vaguely out of place. Their host led them to a pair of dilapidated chairs, which they accepted gratefully. The ride to Keegan after a hard day’s work had not tended to improve their spirits. “Now to business.” Perry went straight to the point, desiring to get the interview over as soon as possible. “We have heard indirectly of various happenings in this vicinity which many think have some connection with your scientific experiments. Any statement you may care to make to us in regard to these happenings will be greatly appreciated by my paper. Inasmuch as what little has already been printed is probably of an erroneous nature, we believe it will be in your own best interest to give us as complete data as possible.” Here he became slightly histrionic. “Of course we do not allow ourselves to take the stories told by the local inhabitants too literally, as such persons are too liable to exaggerate, but we must assume that some of these stories have partial basis in fact. Any information relative to your scientific work, incidentally, will make good copy for us also.” Perry gazed steadily at the patriarch as he spoke. For a moment, a crafty expression passed over the old man’s face, but as suddenly it disappeared. Evidently he had arrived at a decision. “Come with me,” he wheezed. The two newspaper men exchanged swift glances, the same thought in the mind of each. Were they about to be led into a trap? If the old man’s shady reputation was at all deserved they would do well to be wary. Perry thought swiftly of the clippings he had read and of what gossip he had heard, then glanced once more in the direction of Handlon. That worthy was smiling meaningly and had already arisen to follow the Professor. Reluctantly Perry got to his feet and the three proceeded to climb a rickety stairway to the third floor. The guide turned at the head of the stairs and entered a long dark corridor. Here the floor was covered with a thick carpet which, as they trod upon it, gave forth not the slightest sound. The hall gave upon several rooms, all dark and gloomy and giving the same dismal impression of long disuse. How could the savant endure such a depressing abode! The accumulation of dust and cobwebs in these long forgotten chambers, the general evidence of decay––all told of possible horrors ahead. They became wary. But they were not wary enough! The uncouth figure ahead of them had stopped and was fumbling with the lock of an ancient door. Instinctively Perry noted that it was of great thickness and of heavy oak. Now the Professor had it open and was motioning for them to enter. Handlon started forward eagerly, but hurriedly drew back as he felt the grip of the other reporter’s hand on his arm. “Get back, you fool!” The words were hissed into the ear of the incautious one. Then, to the Professor, Perry observed: “If you have no objection we would prefer that you precede us.” A look of insane fury leaped to the face of the old man, lingered but an instant and was gone. Though the expression was but momentary, both men had seen, and seeing had realized their danger. They followed him into the chamber, which was soon illumined fitfully by a smoky kerosene lamp. Both 359 took a rapid survey of the place. Conceivably it might have been the scene of scientific experiments, but its aspect surely belied such a supposition. The average imagination would instantly pronounce it the abode of a maniac, or the lair of an alchemist. Again, that it might be the laboratory of an extremely slovenly veterinary was suggested by the several filthy cages to be seen resting against the wall. All of these were unoccupied except one in a dark corner, from which issued a sound of contented purring, evidently telling of some well-satisfied cat. The air was close and foul, being heavy with the odor of musty, decaying drugs. In every possible niche and cranny the omnipresent dust had settled in a uniform sheen of gray which showed but few signs of recent disturbance. “Here, gentlemen,” their host was saying, “is where I carry on my work. It is rather gloomy here after dark, but then I do not spend much time here during the night. I have decided to acquaint you with some of the details of one or two of my experiments. Doubtless you will find them interesting.” While speaking he had, mechanically it seemed, reached for a glass humidor in which were perhaps a dozen cigars. Silently he selected one and extended the rest to the two visitors. After all three had puffed for a moment at the weeds, the old man began to talk, rapidly it seemed to them. Perry from time to time took notes, as the old man proceeded, an expression of utter amazement gradually overspreading his face. Handlon pulled away contentedly at his cigar, and on his features there grew an almost ludicrous expression of well-being. Was the simple photographer so completely at ease that he had at length forsaken all thought of possible danger? As Professor Kell talked on he seemed to warm to his subject. At the end of five minutes he began uncovering a peculiar apparatus which had rested beneath the massive old table before which they were sitting. The two men caught the flash of light on glass, and a jumble of coiled wires became visible. Was the air in the laboratory getting unbearably close? Or was the queer leaden feeling that had taken possession of Perry’s lungs but an indication of his overpowering weariness? He felt a steadily increasing irritation, as if for some strange reason he suddenly resented the words of their host, which seemed to be pouring out in an endless stream. The cigar had, paradoxically, an oddly soothing quality, and he puffed away in silence. Why had the room suddenly taken on so hazy an aspect? Why did Handlon grin in that idiotic manner? And the Professor ... he was getting farther and farther away ... that perfecto ... or was it an El Cabbajo? What was the old archfiend doing to him anyhow?... Why was he laughing and leering at them so horribly?... Confound it all ... that cigar ... where was it?... Just one more puff.... Blindly he groped for the missing weed, becoming aware of a cackle of amusement nearby. Professor Kell was standing near the spot where he had fallen and now began prodding him contemptuously with his toe. “Fools!” he was saying. “You thought to interfere with my program. But you are in my power and you have no hope of escape. I am unexpectedly provided with more subjects for my experiments. You will....” His words became hazy and unintelligible, for the hapless reporter was drifting off into a numb oblivion. He had long since lost the power to move a muscle. Out of the corner of an eye, just before he lost consciousness altogether, he perceived Handlon lying upon the floor still puffing at the fateful drugged cigar. 360 Eons passed. To the reporter came a vision of a throbbing, glaring inferno, wherein he was shaken and tossed by terrific forces. His very vital essence seemed to respond to a mighty vibration. Now he was but a part of some terrific chaos. Dimly he became aware of another being with whom he must contend. Now he was in a death struggle, and to his horror he found himself being slowly but surely overpowered. A demoniac grin played upon the features of the other as he forced the reporter to his knees. It was Handlon.... Once more he was sinking into soft oblivion, the while a horrid miasma assailed his nostrils. He was nothing.... Slowly, and with infinite effort, Perry felt himself returning to consciousness, though he had no clear conception of his surroundings. His brain was as yet but a whirling vortex of confused sounds, colors and––yes, odors. A temporary rift came in the mental cloud which fettered his faculties, and things began to take definite shape. He became aware that he was lying upon his back at some elevation from the floor. Again the cloudy incubus closed in and he knew no more. When he finally recovered the use of his faculties it was to discover himself the possessor of a violent headache. The pain came in such fearsome throbs that it was well nigh unendurable. The lamp still sputtered dimly where the professor had left it. At the moment it was on the point of going out altogether. The reporter noticed this, and over him stole a sense of panic. What if the light should fail altogether, leaving him lying in the dark in this frightful place! Still dizzy and sick, he managed to rise upon his elbows enough to complete a survey of the room. He was still in the laboratory of Professor Kell, but that worthy had disappeared. Of Handlon there was no sign. The mysterious apparatus, of which he now had but a vague remembrance, also had vanished. His thoughts became confused again, and wearily he passed a hand over his brow in the effort to collect all of his faculties. The lamp began to sputter, arousing him to action. Desperately he fought against the benumbing sensation that was even again stealing over him. Gradually he gained the ascendancy. He struggled dizzily to his feet and took a few tentative steps. Where was Handlon? He decided his friend had probably recovered from the drug first and was gone, possibly to get a doctor for him, Perry. However, he must make some search to determine if Skip had really left the premises. As he walked through the open door the lamp in his hand gave a last despairing flicker and went out. From there he was forced to grope his way down the dark hall to the stairs. Just how he reached the lower floor he was never able to remember, for as yet all the effect of the powerful drug had not worn off. He had a dim recollection of being thankful to the ancestor of Kell who had provided such thick carpets in these halls. Thanks to them his footsteps had been noiseless, at any rate. What was Kell’s real object in giving them those drugged cigars? he wondered. How long had they been under the influence of the lethal stuff? Surely several hours. Upon glancing through a hall window he found that outside was the blackness of midnight. Cautiously he explored the desolate chambers on the ground floor: the kitchen––where it could be plainly seen that cooking of a sort had been done––the barn, and woodshed. Not a living thing could he find, not even the huge wolf-hound which had attacked them in so strange a manner that afternoon. By now he was quite frankly worried on Handlon’s account. At that moment, could he have known the actual fate that had overtaken his companion, it is quite probable he would 361 have gone mad. He stumbled back and into the dark front hall, shouting his friend’s name. The response was a hollow echo, and once or twice he thought he heard the ghost of a mocking chuckle. At length he gave up the search and started for the door, intent now only upon flight from the accursed place. He would report the whole thing to the office and let Bland do what he pleased about it. Doubtless Handlon had already left. Then he stumbled over Handlon’s camera. Evidently the Professor had neglected to take possession of it. That must be rescued, at all costs. He picked it up and felt the exposed plate still inside. He started again for the door. What little light there was faded out and he felt stealing over him a horrid sensation of weakness. Again came a period of agony during which he felt the grip of unseen forces. Once more it seemed that he was engaged in mortal strife with Skip Handlon. Malevolently Handlon glared at him as he endeavored with all his strength to overcome Perry. This time, however, the latter seemed to have more strength and resisted the attack for what must have been hours. Finally the other drew away baffled. At this the mental incubus surrounding Perry’s faculties broke. Dimly he became aware of a grinding noise nearby and a constant lurching of his body. At length his vision cleared sufficiently to enable him to discover the cause of the peculiar sensations. He was in a railroad coach! He took a rapid glance around and noted a drummer sitting in the seat across the aisle, staring curiously at him. With an effort Perry assumed an inscrutable expression and determined to stare the other out of countenance. Reluctantly the man glanced away, and after a moment, under Perry’s stony gaze, he suddenly arose and chose a new seat in front of the car. Perry took to the solace of a cigarette and stared out at the flying telegraph poles. From time to time he noted familiar landmarks. The train had evidently left Keegan far behind and was already nearly into the home town. For the balance of the ride the reporter experienced pure nightmare. The peculiar sensations of dizziness, accompanied by frightful periods of insensibility, kept recurring, now, however, not lasting more than ten or fifteen minutes at a time. At such times as he was conscious he found opportunity to wonder in an abstracted sort of way how he had ever managed to get on the train and pay his fare, which must have been a cash one, without arousing the conductor’s suspicions. Discovery of a rebate in his pocket proved that he must have done so, however. The business of leaving the train and getting to the office has always been an unknown chapter in Perry’s life. He came out of one of his mental fogs to find himself seated in the private editorial sanctum of the Journal. Evidently he had just arrived. Bland, a thick-set man with the jaw of a bulldog, was eyeing him intently. “Well! Any report to make?” The question was crisp. The reporter passed a hand across his perspiring forehead. “Yes, I guess so. I––er––that is––you see––” “Where’s Handlon? What happened to you? You act as if you were drunk.” Bland was not in an amiable mood. “Search me,” Perry managed to respond. “If Skip isn’t here old man Kell must have done for him. I came back alone.” “You wha-a-t?” the irate editor fairly roared, half rising from his chair. “Tell me exactly what happened and get ready to go back there on the next train. Or––no, on second thoughts you’d better go to bed. You look all used up. Handlon may be dead or dying at this minute. That Kell could do anything.” He pressed the button on his desk. “Johnny,” he said to the office boy, 362 “get O’Hara in here on the double quick and tell him to bring along his hat and coat.”

The heavy rain had of course effectually obliterated all wheel tracks.
Another clipping was fairly lengthy, but Perry glanced only at the headlines:

KELL STILL CARRYING ON HIS STRANGE EXPERIMENTS

Has Long Been Known to Have Fantastic Theories. Refuses to Divulge Exact Methods Employed, or Nature of Results

Still another appeared to be an excerpt from an article in an agricultural paper. It read:

A prize bull belonging to Alton Shepard, a Keegan cattle breeder, has created considerable sensation by running amuck in a most peculiar manner. While seemingly more intelligent than heretofore, it has developed characteristics known to be utterly alien to this type of animal.
Perhaps the most noteworthy feature of the case is the refusal of the animal to eat its accustomed food. Instead it now consumes enormous quantities of meat. The terrific bellow of the animal’s voice has also undergone a marked change, now resembling nothing earthly, although some have remarked that it could be likened to the bay of an enormous hound. Some of its later actions have seemingly added further canine attributes, which make the matter all the more mystifying. Veterinaries are asking why this animal should chase automobiles, and why it should carry bones in its mouth and try to bury them!

The last one read in part:

Professor Kell has been questioned by authorities at Keegan relative to the disappearance there last Tuesday of Robert Manion and his daughter. Kell seemed unable to furnish clues of any value, but officials are not entirely satisfied with the man’s attitude toward the questions.

Somewhat bewildered by these apparently unrelated items, the reporter remained lost in thought for quite a space, the while he endeavored to map out his course of action when he should meet the redoubtable Professor. That many of the weird occurrences could be traced in some way to the latter’s door had evidently occurred to Bland. Furthermore, the Old Man relied implicitly upon Perry to get results.
It must be said that for once the star reporter was not overly enthusiastic with the assignment. Certain rumors aside from the clippings in his hand had produced in his mind a feeling of uneasiness. So far as his personal preference was concerned he would have been well satisfied if some cub reporter had been given the job. Try as he would, however, he could offer no tangible reason for the sudden wariness.
He was aroused from his absorption by his companion.
“Thought I smelled smoke a while 354 back, and I was right. That’s the house up in the edge of the pines. Deep grounds in front and all gone to seed; fits the description exactly. Thank Heaven we struck off from the station in the right direction. This stroll has been long enough. Come out of it and let’s get this job finished.”
Suiting the action to the words Handlon started off at a brisk pace down the hill, followed at a more moderate rate by Perry. At length they came within full sight of the grounds. Extending for a considerable distance before them and enclosing a large tract of land now well covered with lush grass, was a formidable looking wall. In former days a glorious mantle of ivy had covered the rough stones; but now there was little left, and what there was looked pitifully decrepit. They continued their progress along this barrier, finally coming upon a huge iron gate now much the worse for rust. It stood wide open
To the westward could be perceived a dull, red glow, which, even as they watched with fascinated eyes, developed into an intense glare. Gradually the fading stars became eclipsed in the greater glory.
Three cars, motors throbbing as if eager to be gone, stood a space apart on the main road. The car behind O’Hara’s was the Manion machine, now occupied by Bland and Riley. The remaining one was a touring car and contained the balance of the party. Perry was at the wheel, and beside him sat the Handlon-Kell-Saunders combination.
“Thus passes a den of horror,” whispered Jimmie to his companion.
“It is the funeral pyre of my father,” the girl answered simply. She had long since recovered from her initial outburst of grief at her loss, and now watched the progress of the conflagration dry-eyed. At length Jimmie slipped an arm protectingly about the trembling shoulders.
“You have seen enough,” he said. As the three cars raced from the scene of the holocaust, faint streamers in the east told of the rising orb of day.
“Good-by, Keegan, forever,” murmured Norma.
“Amen,” O’Hara devoutedly agreed.
.

As the road struck into the sierra we branched off to the right and Barbastro, though a long way from the front line, looked bleak

Barbastro, though a long way from the front line,
looked bleak and chipped.
 Swarms of militiamen in shabby uniforms wandered up and down the streets, trying to keep warm.
On a ruinous wall I came upon a poster dating from the previous year and announcing that 'six handsome bulls' would be killed in the arena

As the road struck into the sierra we branched off

to the right and climbed a narrow mule-track that wound round the mountain-side. The hills in that part of Spain are of a queer formation, horseshoe-shaped with flattish tops and very steep sides running down into immense ravines. On the higher slopes nothing grows except stunted shrubs and heath, with the white bones of the limestone sticking out everywhere. The front line here was not a continuous line of trenches, which would have been impossible in such mountainous country; it was simply a chain of fortified posts, always known as 'positions', perched on each hill-top. In the distance you could see our 'position' at the crown of the horseshoe; a ragged barricade of sand-bags, a red flag fluttering, the smoke of dug-out fires. A little nearer, and you could smell a sickening sweetish stink that lived in my nostrils for weeks afterwards. Into the cleft immediately behind the position all the refuse of months had been tipped--a deep festering bed of breadcrusts, excrement, and rusty tins. The company we were relieving were getting their kits together. They had been three months in the line; their uniforms were caked with mud, their boots falling to pieces, their faces mostly bearded. The captain commanding the position, Levinski by name, but known to everyone as Benjamin, and by birth a Polish Jew, but speaking French as his native language, crawled out of his dug-out and greeted us. He was a short youth of about twenty-five, with stiff black hair and a pale eager face which at this period of the war was always very dirty. A few stray bullets were cracking high overhead. The position was a semi-circular enclosure about fifty yards across, with a parapet that was partly sand-bags and partly lumps of limestone. There were thirty or forty dug-outs running into the ground like rat-holes. Williams, myself, and Williams's Spanish brother-in-law made a swift dive for the nearest unoccupied dug-out that looked habitable. Somewhere in front an occasional rifle banged, making queer rolling echoes among the stony hills. We had just dumped our kits and were crawling out of the dug-out when there was another bang and one of the children of our company rushed back from the parapet with his face pouring blood. He had fired his rifle and had somehow managed to blow out the bolt; his scalp was torn to ribbons by the splinters of the burst cartridge-case. It was our first casualty, and, characteristically, self-inflicted. In the afternoon we did our first guard and Benjamin showed us round the position. In front of the parapet there ran a system of narrow trenches hewn out of the rock, with extremely primitive loopholes made of piles of limestone. There were twelve sentries, placed at various points in the trench and behind the inner parapet. In front of the trench was the barbed wire, and then the hillside slid down into a seemingly bottomless ravine; opposite were naked hills, in places mere cliffs of rock, all grey and wintry, with no life anywhere, not even a bird. I peered cautiously through a loophole, trying to find the Fascist trench. 'Where are the enemy?' Benjamin waved his hand expansively. 'Over zere.' (Benjamin spoke English--terrible English.) 'But _where?_' According to my ideas of trench warfare the Fascists would be fifty or a hundred yards away. I could see nothing--seemingly their trenches were very well concealed. Then with a shock of dismay I saw where Benjamin was pointing; on the opposite hill-top, beyond the ravine, seven hundred metres away at the very least, the tiny outline of a parapet and a red-and-yellow flag--the Fascist position. I was indescribably disappointed. We were nowhere near them! At that range our rifles were completely useless. But at this moment there was a shout of excitement. Two Fascists, greyish figurines in the distance, were scrambling up the naked hill-side opposite. Benjamin grabbed the nearest man's rifle, took aim, and pulled the trigger. Click! A dud cartridge; I thought it a bad omen. The new sentries were no sooner in the trench than they began firing a terrific fusillade at nothing in particular. I could see the Fascists, tiny as ants, dodging to and fro behind their parapet, and sometimes a black dot which was a head would pause for a moment, impudently exposed. It was obviously no use firing. But presently the sentry on my left, leaving his post in the typical Spanish fashion, sidled up to me and began urging me to fire. I tried to explain that at that range and with these rifles you could not hit a man except by accident. But he was only a child, and he kept motioning with his rifle towards one of the dots, grinning as eagerly as a dog that expects a pebble to be thrown. Finally I put my sights up to seven hundred and let fly. The dot disappeared. I hope it went near enough to make him jump. It was the first time in my life that I had fired a gun at a human being. Now that I had seen the front I was profoundly disgusted. They called this war! And we were hardly even in touch with the enemy! I made no attempt to keep my head below the level of the trench. A little while later, however, a bullet shot past my ear with a vicious crack and banged into the parados behind. Alas! I ducked. All my life I had sworn that I would not duck the first time a bullet passed over me; but the movement appears to be instinctive, and almost everybody does it at least once. Chapter 3 In trench warfare five things are important: firewood, food, tobacco, candles, and the enemy. In winter on the Zaragoza front they were important in that order, with the enemy a bad last. Except at night, when a surprise-attack was always conceivable, nobody bothered about the enemy. They were simply remote black insects whom one occasionally saw hopping to and fro. The real preoccupation of both armies was trying to keep warm. I ought to say in passing that all the time I was in Spain I saw very little fighting. I was on the Aragón front from January to May, and between January and late March little or nothing happened on that front, except at Teruel. In March there was heavy fighting round Huesca, but I personally played only a minor part in it. Later, in June, there was the disastrous attack on Huesca in which several thousand men were killed in a single day, but I had been wounded and disabled before that happened. The things that one normally thinks of as the horrors of war seldom happened to me. No aeroplane ever dropped a bomb anywhere near me, I do not think a shell ever exploded within fifty yards of me, and I was only in hand-to-hand fighting once (once is once too often, I may say). Of course I was often under heavy machine-gun fire, but usually at longish ranges. Even at Huesca you were generally safe enough if you took reasonable precautions. Up here, in the hills round Zaragoza, it was simply the mingled boredom and discomfort of stationary warfare. A life as uneventful as a city clerk's, and almost as regular. Sentry-go, patrols, digging; digging, patrols, sentry-go. On every hill-top, Fascist or Loyalist, a knot of ragged, dirty men shivering round their flag and trying to keep warm. And all day and night the meaningless bullets wandering across the empty valleys and only by some rare improbable chance getting home on a human body. Often I used to gaze round the wintry landscape and marvel at the futility of it all. The inconclusiveness of such a kind of war! Earlier, about October, there had been savage fighting for all these hills; then, because the lack of men and arms, especially artillery, made any large-scale operation impossible, each army had dug itself in and settled down on the hill-tops it had won. Over to our right there was a small outpost, also P.O.U.M., and on the spur to our left, at seven o'clock of us, a P.S.U.C. position faced a taller spur with several small Fascist posts dotted on its peaks. The so-called line zigzagged to and fro in a pattern that would have been quite unintelligible if every position had not flown a flag. The P.O.U.M. and P.S.U.C. flags were red, those of the Anarchists red and black; the Fascists generally flew the monarchist flag (red-yellow-red), but occasionally they flew the flag of the Republic (red-yellow-purple).* The scenery was stupendous, if you could forget that every mountain-top was occupied by troops and was therefore littered with tin cans and crusted with dung. To the right of us the sierra bent south-eastwards and made way for the wide, veined valley that stretched across to Huesca. In the middle of the plain a few tiny cubes sprawled like a throw of dice; this was the town of Robres, which was in Loyalist possession. Often in the mornings the valley was hidden under seas of cloud, out of which the hills rose flat and blue, giving the landscape a strange resemblance to a photographic negative. Beyond Huesca there were more hills of the same formation as our own, streaked with a pattern of snow which altered day by day. In the far distance the monstrous peaks of the Pyrenees, where the snow never melts, seemed to float upon nothing. Even down in the plain everything looked dead and bare. The hills opposite us were grey and wrinkled like the skins of elephants. Almost always the sky was empty of birds. I do not think I have ever seen a country where there were so few birds. The only birds one saw at any time were a kind of magpie, and the coveys of partridges that startled one at night with their sudden whirring, and, very rarely, the flights of eagles that drifted slowly over, generally followed by rifle-shots which they did not deign to notice. [* Footnote: An errata note found in Orwell's papers after his death: "Am not now completely certain that I ever saw Fascists flying the republican flag, though I _think_ they sometimes flew it with a small imposed swastika."] At night and in misty weather, patrols were sent out in the valley between ourselves and the Fascists. The job was not popular, it was too cold and too easy to get lost, and I soon found that I could get leave to go out on patrol as often as I wished. In the huge jagged ravines there were no paths or tracks of any kind; you could only find your way about by making successive journeys and noting fresh landmarks each time. As the bullet flies the nearest Fascist post was seven hundred metres from our own, but it was a mile and a half by the only practicable route. It was rather fun wandering about the dark valleys with the stray bullets flying high overhead like redshanks whistling. Better than night-time were the heavy mists, which often lasted all day and which had a habit of clinging round the hill-tops and leaving the valleys clear. When you were anywhere near the Fascist lines you had to creep at a snail's pace; it was very difficult to move quietly on those hill-sides, among the crackling shrubs and tinkling limestones. It was only at the third or fourth attempt that I managed to find my way to the Fascist lines. The mist was very thick, and I crept up to the barbed wire to listen. I could hear the Fascists talking and singing inside. Then to my alarm I heard several of them coming down the hill towards me. I cowered behind a bush that suddenly seemed very small, and tried to cock my rifle without noise. However, they branched off and did not come within sight of me. Behind the bush where I was hiding I came upon various relics of the earlier fighting--a pile of empty cartridge-cases, a leather cap with a bullet-hole in it, and a red flag, obviously one of our own. I took it back to the position, where it was unsentimentally torn up for cleaning-rags. I had been made a corporal, or _cabo_, as it was called, as soon as we reached the front, and was in command of a guard of twelve men. It was no sinecure, especially at first. The _centuria_ was an untrained mob composed mostly of boys in their teens. Here and there in the militia you came across children as young as eleven or twelve, usually refugees from Fascist territory who had been enlisted as militiamen as the easiest way of providing for them. As a rule they were employed on light work in the rear, but sometimes they managed to worm their way to the front line, where they were a public menace. I remember one little brute throwing a hand-grenade into the dug-out fire 'for a joke'. At Monte Pocero I do not think there was anyone younger than fifteen, but the average age must have been well under twenty. Boys of this age ought never to be used in the front line, because they cannot stand the lack of sleep which is inseparable from trench warfare. At the beginning it was almost impossible to keep our position properly guarded at night. The wretched children of my section could only be roused by dragging them out of their dug-outs feet foremost, and as soon as your back was turned they left their posts and slipped into shelter; or they would even, in spite of the frightful cold, lean up against the wall of the trench and fall fast asleep. Luckily the enemy were very unenterprising. There were nights when it seemed to me that our position could be stormed by twenty Boy Scouts armed with airguns, or twenty Girl Guides armed with battledores, for that matter. At this time and until much later the Catalan militias were still on the same basis as they had been at the beginning of the war. In the early days of Franco's revolt the militias had been hurriedly raised by the various trade unions and political parties; each was essentially a political organization, owing allegiance to its party as much as to the central Government. When the Popular Army, which was a 'non-political' army organized on more or less ordinary lines, was raised at the beginning of 1937, the party militias were theoretically incorporated in it. But for a long time the only changes that occurred were on paper; the new Popular Army troops did not reach the Aragón front in any numbers till June, and until that time the militia-system remained unchanged. The essential point of the system was social equality between officers and men. Everyone from general to private drew the same pay, ate the same food, wore the same clothes, and mingled on terms of complete equality. If you wanted to slap the general commanding the division on the back and ask him for a cigarette, you could do so, and no one thought it curious. In theory at any rate each militia was a democracy and not a hierarchy. It was understood that orders had to be obeyed, but it was also understood that when you gave an order you gave it as comrade to comrade and not as superior to inferior. There were officers and N.C.O.s but there was no military rank in the ordinary sense; no titles, no badges, no heel-clicking and saluting. They had attempted to produce within the militias a sort of temporary working model of the classless society. Of course there was no perfect equality, but there was a nearer approach to it than I had ever seen or than I would have thought conceivable in time of war. But I admit that at first sight the state of affairs at the front horrified me. How on earth could the war be won by an army of this type? It was what everyone was saying at the time, and though it was true it was also unreasonable. For in the circumstances the militias could not have been much better than they were. A modern mechanized army does not spring up out of the ground, and if the Government had waited until it had trained troops at its disposal, Franco would never have been resisted. Later it became the fashion to decry the militias, and therefore to pretend that the faults which were due to lack of training and weapons were the result of the equalitarian system. Actually, a newly raised draft of militia was an undisciplined mob not because the officers called the private 'Comrade' but because raw troops are _always_ an undisciplined mob. In practice the democratic 'revolutionary' type of discipline is more reliable than might be expected. In a workers' army discipline is theoretically voluntary. It is based on class-loyalty, whereas the discipline of a bourgeois conscript army is based ultimately on fear. (The Popular Army that replaced the militias was midway between the two types.) In the militias the bullying and abuse that go on in an ordinary army would never have been tolerated for a moment. The normal military punishments existed, but they were only invoked for very serious offences. When a man refused to obey an order you did not immediately get him punished; you first appealed to him in the name of comradeship. Cynical people with no experience of handling men will say instantly that this would never 'work', but as a matter of fact it does 'work' in the long run. The discipline of even the worst drafts of militia visibly improved as time went on. In January the job of keeping a dozen raw recruits up to the mark almost turned my hair grey. In May for a short while I was acting-lieutenant in command of about thirty men, English and Spanish. We had all been under fire for months, and I never had the slightest difficulty in getting an order obeyed or in getting men to volunteer for a dangerous job. 'Revolutionary' discipline depends on political consciousness--on an understanding of _why_ orders must be obeyed; it takes time to diffuse this, but it also takes time to drill a man into an automaton on the barrack-square. The journalists who sneered at the militia-system seldom remembered that the militias had to hold the line while the Popular Army was training in the rear. And it is a tribute to the strength of 'revolutionary' discipline that the militias stayed in the field at all. For until about June 1937 there was nothing to keep them there, except class loyalty. Individual deserters could be shot--were shot, occasionally--but if a thousand men had decided to walk out of the line together there was no force to stop them. A conscript army in the same circumstances--with its battle-police removed--would have melted away. Yet the militias held the line, though God knows they won very few victories, and even individual desertions were not common. In four or five months in the P.O.U.M. militia I only heard of four men deserting, and two of those were fairly certainly spies who had enlisted to obtain information. At the beginning the apparent chaos, the general lack of training, the fact that you often had to argue for five minutes before you could get an order obeyed, appalled and infuriated me. I had British Army ideas, and certainly the Spanish militias were very unlike the British Army. But considering the circumstances they were better troops than one had any right to expect. Meanwhile, firewood--always firewood. Throughout that period there is probably no entry in my diary that does not mention firewood, or rather the lack of it. We were between two and three thousand feet above sea-level, it was mid winter and the cold was unspeakable. The temperature was not exceptionally low, on many nights it did not even freeze, and the wintry sun often shone for an hour in the middle of the day; but even if it was not really cold, I assure you that it seemed so. Sometimes there were shrieking winds that tore your cap off and twisted your hair in all directions, sometimes there were mists that poured into the trench like a liquid and seemed to penetrate your bones; frequently it rained, and even a quarter of an hour's rain was enough to make conditions intolerable. The thin skin of earth over the limestone turned promptly into a slippery grease, and as you were always walking on a slope it was impossible to keep your footing. On dark nights I have often fallen half a dozen times in twenty yards; and this was dangerous, because it meant that the lock of one's rifle became jammed with mud. For days together clothes, boots, blankets, and rifles were more or less coated with mud. I had brought as many thick clothes as I could carry, but many of the men were terribly underclad. For the whole garrison, about a hundred men, there were only twelve great-coats, which had to be handed from sentry to sentry, and most of the men had only one blanket. One icy night I made a list in my diary of the clothes I was wearing. It is of some interest as showing the amount of clothes the human body can carry. I was wearing a thick vest and pants, a flannel shirt, two pull-overs, a woollen jacket, a pigskin jacket, corduroy breeches, puttees, thick socks, boots, a stout trench-coat, a muffler, lined leather gloves, and a woollen cap. Nevertheless I was shivering like a jelly. But I admit I am unusually sensitive to cold. Firewood was the one thing that really mattered. The point about the firewood was that there was practically no firewood to be had. Our miserable mountain had not even at its best much vegetation, and for months it had been ranged over by freezing militiamen, with the result that everything thicker than one's finger had long since been burnt. When we were not eating, sleeping, on guard, or on fatigue-duty we were in the valley behind the position, scrounging for fuel. All my memories of that time are memories of scrambling up and down the almost perpendicular slopes, over the jagged limestone that knocked one's boots to pieces, pouncing eagerly on tiny twigs of wood. Three people searching for a couple of hours could collect enough fuel to keep the dug-out fire alight for about an hour. The eagerness of our search for firewood turned us all into botanists. We classified according to their burning qualities every plant that grew on the mountainside; the various heaths and grasses that were good to start a fire with but burnt out in a few minutes, the wild rosemary and the tiny whin bushes that would burn when the fire was well alight, the stunted oak tree, smaller than a gooseberry bush, that was practically unburnable. There was a kind of dried-up reed that was very good for starting fires with, but these grew only on the hill-top to the left of the position, and you had to go under fire to get them. If the Fascist machine-gunners saw you they gave you a drum of ammunition all to yourself. Generally their aim was high and the bullets sang overhead like birds, but sometime they crackled and chipped the limestone uncomfortably close, whereupon you flung yourself on your face. You went on gathering reeds, however; nothing mattered in comparison with firewood. Beside the cold the other discomforts seemed petty. Of course all of us were permanently dirty. Our water, like our food, came on mule-back from Alcubierre, and each man's share worked out at about a quart a day. It was beastly water, hardly more transparent than milk. Theoretically it was for drinking only, but I always stole a pannikinful for washing in the mornings. I used to wash one day and shave the next; there was never enough water for both. The position stank abominably, and outside the little enclosure of the barricade there was excrement everywhere. Some of the militiamen habitually defecated in the trench, a disgusting thing when one had to walk round it in the darkness. But the dirt never worried me. Dirt is a thing people make too much fuss about. It is astonishing how quickly you get used to doing without a handkerchief and to eating out of the tin pannikin in which you also wash. Nor was sleeping in one's clothes any hardship after a day or two. It was of course impossible to take one's clothes and especially one's boots off at night; one had to be ready to turn out instantly in case of an attack. In eighty nights I only took my clothes off three times, though I did occasionally manage to get them off in the daytime. It was too cold for lice as yet, but rats and mice abounded. It is often said that you don't find rats and mice in the same place, but you do when there is enough food for them. In other ways we were not badly off. The food was good enough and there was plenty of wine. Cigarettes were still being issued at the rate of a packet a day, matches were issued every other day, and there was even an issue of candles. They were very thin candles, like those on a Christmas cake, and were popularly supposed to have been looted from churches. Every dug-out was issued daily with three inches of candle, which would bum for about twenty minutes. At that time it was still possible to buy candles, and I had brought several pounds of them with me. Later on the famine of matches and candles made life a misery. You do not realize the importance of these things until you lack them. In a night-alarm, for instance, when everyone in the dug-out is scrambling for his rifle and treading on everybody else's face, being able to strike a light may make the difference between life and death. Every militiaman possessed a tinder-lighter and several yards of yellow wick. Next to his rifle it was his most important possession. The tinder-lighters had the great advantage that they could be struck in a wind, but they would only smoulder, so that they were no use for lighting a fire. When the match famine was at its worst our only way of producing a flame was to pull the bullet out of a cartridge and touch the cordite off with a tinder-lighter. It was an extraordinary life that we were living--an extraordinary way to be at war, if you could call it war. The whole militia chafed against the inaction and clamoured constantly to know why we were not allowed to attack. But it was perfectly obvious that there would be no battle for a long while yet, unless the enemy started it. Georges Kopp, on his periodical tours of inspection, was quite frank with us. 'This is not a war,' he used to say, 'it is a comic opera with an occasional death.' As a matter of fact the stagnation on the Aragón front had political causes of which I knew nothing at that time; but the purely military difficulties--quite apart from the lack of reserves of men--were obvious to anybody.

DAS TRADUÇÕES E DO INTERESSE NOS ACTOS HUMANOS NÃO PARA NOS RIR-MOS DELES POIS SÃO TODOS RISÍVEIS NEM PARA OS DEPLORAR OU MESMO DEFLORAR OU DETESTAR OU MESMO CONTESTAR MAS SIMPLESMENTE PARA TENTAR COMPREENDER TAIS ACTOS E COMPREENDEDO-OS COMPREENDER OS MEUS ...Sedulo curavi humanas actiones non ridere, non lugere, neque detestari, sed intelligere.” — Ho assiduamente cercato di imparare a non ridere delle azioni degli uomini, a non piangerne, a non odiarle, ma a comprenderle.um corpo é capaz, em comparação com outros, de agir simultaneamente sobre um número maior de coisas, ou de padecer simultaneamente de um número maior de coisas, tanto mais sua mente é capaz, em comparação com outras, de perceber, simultaneamente, um número maior de coisas. E quanto mais as ações de um corpo dependem apenas dele próprio, e quan- to menos outros corpos cooperam com ele no agir, tanto mais sua mente é capaz de compreender distintamente. E por esses critérios que podemos reconhecer a superioridade de uma mente sobre as outras, bem como compreender por que não temos de nosso corpo senão um conhecimento muito confuso, além de muitas outras coisas, as quais deduzirei, a seguir, do que acabo de expor. Pensei, por isso, que valeria a pena explicar e de- monstrar cuidadosamente essas coisas e, para isso, é necessário estabelecer algumas premissas sobre a natureza dos corpos. Axioma 1. Todos os corpos estão ou em movimento ou em repouso. Axioma 2. Todo corpo se move ora mais lentamente, ora mais velozmente.

Comunista & Pastafariano.
Per fortuna o purtroppo terrone.
Occasionalmente posto porno.
"Io penso che il divertimento sia una cosa seria."
- Italo Calvino
" Quanno se scherza bisogna esse' seri!"
- Onofrio del Grillo
"Scherzando si può dire tutto, anche la verità."
- Sigmund Freud
"L'umorismo è un fenomeno di sdoppiamento nell'atto della concezione; è come un'erma bifronte, che ride per una faccia del pianto della faccia opposta."
- Luigi Pirandello
"Le persone veramente serie non sono mai serie."
- Luca Quadri
"Chi non sa ridere non è una persona seria."
- Fryderyk Chopin

schlutt ? is a popular element ...is a rock star not a elemental whore..Schlutt OLD saxon schlutt....reverted to anglo in 1385 ....the welch and english archers call sluts to the wenches that follow the english army in the wars in europe ---- the archers are in good need long bow you know CARBON ARE MONEY FORMS ...IN DOLLAR YOU TRUST.......DIAMONDS ARE C.....TOO....NO NO A BAD ELEMENT IS LIKE ISIS YOU SHOULD PUT IN ARE INTO IT ...LIKE THESE...So profitable was the business that the early dividends were at the ' rate of 12 to 16 per cent, per annum. Upon an allegation that the bank had produced evil effects, its charter was repealed in Sept. 1785, by the state government of Pennsylvania ; but it continued its business, claiming the right to do so under the act of Congress. In 1787, the bank was re-incorporated, and has been continued to the present day. Its operations are confined however to the state of Pennsylvania. BAD ELEMENTS ONLY IN WALL STREET

• sulfer will bond with six at once. This guy don't know what he is talking about

  SULFER SUFFER FROM SULFURIC INFLUENCES

  • sulfer will bond with six at once. This guy don't know what he is talking about

    
    

     The following is a list of all the 

    State Banks in 
    operation on the 1st of January, 1830. 

    — (From Mr. Galatin.) 
    
    
    
    MASSACHUSETTS. 
    
    
    
    Capital. 
    
    
    
    Massachusetts - 
    
    
    - 800,000 
    
    
    Union 
    
    
    - 800,000 
    
    
    Phoenix 
    
    
    . 200,000 
    
    
    Gloucester 
    
    
    - 120,000 
    
    
    Newburyport 
    
    
    - 210,000 
    
    
    Beverly 
    
    
    - 100,000 
    
    
    Boston 
    
    
    - 900,000 
    
    
    Salem 
    
    
    - 250,000 
    
    
    Plymouth - 
    
    
    - 100,000 
    
    
    Worcester 
    
    
    - 200,000 
    
    
    Marblehead 
    
    
    - 120,000 
    
    
    Pacific 
    
    
    - 200,000 
    
    
    State 
    
    
    - 1,800,000 
    
    
    Mechanics - 
    
    
    - 200,000 
    
    
    Merchants, (Salem) 
    
    
    - 400,000 
    
    
    Taunton - 
    
    
    - 175,000 
    
    
    New-England - 
    
    
    . 1,000,000 
    
    
    Hampshire 
    
    
    - 100,000 
    
    
    Dedham - 
    
    
    - 100,000 
    
    
    Manuf.&Mech's.(Boston) 750,000 
    
    
    Springfield 
    
    
    - 250,000 
    
    
    Lynn Mechanics 
    
    
    - 100,000 
    
    
    Merrimack 
    
    
    - 150,000 
    
    
    Pawtucket 
    
    
    - 100,000 
    
    
    Suffolk - . 
    
    
    - 750,000 
    
    
    Commercial, Salem 
    
    
    - 300,000 
    
    
    Bedford Commercial 
    
    
    - 250,000 
    
    
    Agricultural 
    
    
    - 1 00,000 
    
    
    American - 
    
    
    - 750,000 
    
    
    Andover - 
    
    
    - 100,000 
    
    
    Asiatic 
    
    
    - 350,000 
    
    
    Atlantic - 
    
    
    - 500,000 
    
    
    Barnstable 
    
    
    - 100,000 
    
    
    Blackstone 
    
    
    - 100,000 
    
    
    Brighton - 
    
    
    - 150,000 
    
    
    Bunker HiU - 
    
    
    - 150,000 
    
    
    Cambridge 
    
    
    - 150,000 
    
    
    Central 
    
    
    - 50,000 
    
    
    City 
    
    
    - 1,000,000 
    
    
    Columbian 
    
    
    - 500,000 
    
    
    Commonwealth - 
    
    
    - 500,000 
    
    
    Danvers - 
    
    
    - 120,000 
    
    
    Eagle 
    
    
    - 500,000 
    
    
    Exchange - 
    
    
    - 300,000 
    
    
    Fall River - 
    
    
    - 200,000 
    
    
    
    Capital 
    
    Falmouth - - - 100,000 
    
    Farmers - - - 100,000 
    
    Franklin, (Boston) - 100,000 
    
    Franklin, (Greenfield)- 100,000 
    
    
    
    Globe 
    Hampden - 
    Hampshire Man. 
    Housatonic 
    
    Leicester - - - 
    Lowell - - - 
    Man. & Mech.'s (Nan- 
    tucket) - - - 
    Mendon - - - 
    Mercantile 
    
    Mercht. (New-Bedford) 250,000 
    Millbury - - - 100,000 
    Norfolk - 
    North Bank 
    
    
    
    66 Banks 
    
    
    20,420,000 
    
    

    
    

    and which should not be equivalent to specie at the place 
    where offered, and convertible upon the spot into gold and silver, at 
    the will of the holder, and without loss or delay to him. Nor have 
    the states lagged behind in their efforts to improve the currency by 
    infusing into it a greater proportion of the precious metals. ^ Already 
    are the issuing of bills under the denomination of five dollars pro- 
    hibited by the states of Pennsylvania, Maryland, Virginia, Georgia, 
    Tennessee, Louisiana, North Carolina, Indiana, Kentucky, Maine, New 
    York, New Jersey, and Alabama, and of one and two dollars by 
    Connecticut. That this policy will become general, and gradually 
    extended, cannot be doubted. To what precise extent it may be 
    carried with advantage to the country, will be decided by time, 
    experience, and judicious observation. Evasions of it may for a 
    season take place, and some slight inconveniences arise from the 
    change, but they will both be temporary. The union committee of 
    the city of New York, confesseAy combining some of the best 
    business talents of our great conunercial emporium, regarded it as an 
    improvement of the currency of great importance to all classes of the 
    people. Legislative bodies have shewn great uflanimity in its &vour. 
    It is approved by the people, and must prevail. 
    
    " Sincerely believing, for the reasons which have just been stated, 
    that the public funds may be as safely and conveniently transmitted 
    from one portion of the Union to another, that domestic exchange can 
    be as successfully and as cheaply effected, and the currency be rendered 
    at least as sound under the existing system, as those objects could be 
    accomplished by means of a national bank, I would not seek a remedy 
    for the evils to which you allude, should they unfortunately occur, 
    through such a medium, even if the constitutional objection were not 
    in the way." 
    
    By a report recently made by the auditor-general 
    to the Pennsylvanian legislature, the following are the 
    principal items in the condition of the new bank of 
    the United States. 
    
    Dollars. 
    
    Capital 35,000,000 
    
    Notes in circulation 36,620,420 
    
    Deposits 2,194,231 
    
    Notes of other banks 19,078,796 
    
    Specie 5,079,460 
    
    Debts owng by other banks 31,553,035 
    
    Bills discounted 56,389,253 
    
    Unclaimed dividends 241,900 
    
    Contingent Fund 1,695,105 
    
    Real Estate 315,214 
    
    Due toother banks 30,755,561 
    
    
    
    42 THE HISTORY OF 
    
    SECTION III. 
    
    THE STATE BANKS. 
    
    The Bank of the United States 

    was founded by 
    Congress, 

    but all the other banks derived their char- 
    ter Irom the government of the states in which they 
    are established. They are all joint-stock companies, 
    as no private banking is allowed. The chartered 
    banks are subject to various restrictions, according to 
    the enactments of the different states ; and their re- 
    strictions are often such as are unknown in this coun- 
    try. Generally no shareholder is answerable for the 
    debts of the bank beyond the proportionate amount 
    of his shares. In some cases the government retains 
    the option of subscribing an additional number of 
    shares, and of appointing a corresponding number 
    of directors. And in others, the banks are under 
    obligation to advance a certain sum to the govern- 
    ment whenever required. Some states have laid a 
    tax of ten per cent, on the dividends paid on the 
    stock of each bank. The banks are sometimes re- 
    stricted not to incur debts beyond a certain proportion 
    to their capital ; and in all the states the banks are 
    now required to make periodical returns to the 
    government. 
    
    I. The business of the States Banks. 
    
    *' Tlie business of all those banks consists, in receiving money on 
    deposit, in issuing bank notes, and in discounting notes of band or bills 
    of exchange. A portion of the capital is sometimes vested in public 
    stocks, but this is not obligatory, and in this they differ essentially 
    from the Bank of England. 
    
    " Whenever therefore an American bank is in full operation, its 
    debts generally consist, 1st. to the stockholders of the capital; 2nd. 
    to the community, of the notes in circulation, and of the credits in 
    account current, commonly called deposits ; and its credits, Ist. of dis- 
    counted notes or bills of exchange, and occasionally of public stocks. 
    2. Of the specie in its vaults, and of the notes of, and balances due by, 
    other banks. 3. Of its real estate, either used for banking purposes 
    or taken in payment of debts. Some other incidental items may some- 
    times be introduced ; a part of the capital is occasionally invested in 
    road, canal, and bridge stocks, and the debts secured on judgments, 
    or bonds and mortgages, are generally distinguished in the official 
    returns of the banks." — Gallatin . 
    
    
    
    BANKING IN AMERICA. 
    
    
    
    

When for Air I take my Mare When for Air I take my Mare, And mount her first, She walks just thus, Her Head held low, And Motion slow; With Nodding, Plodding, Wagging, Jogging, Dashing, Plashing, Snorting, Starting, Whimsically she goes: Then Whip stirs up, Trot, Trot, Trot; Ambling then with easy slight, She riggles like a Bride at Night; Her shuffling hitch, Regales my Britch; Whilst Trott, Trott, Trott, Trott, Brings on the Gallop, The Gallop, the Gallop, The Gallop, and then a short Trott, Trott, Trott, Trott, Straight again up and down, Up and down, up and down, Till she comes home with a Trott, When Night dark grows. Just so Phillis, Fair as Lillies, As her Face is, Has her Paces; And in Bed too, Like my Pad too; Nodding, Plodding, Wagging, Jogging, Dashing, Plashing, Flirting, Spirting, Artful are all her ways: Heart thumps pitt, patt, Trott, Trott, Trott, Trott: Ambling, then her Tongue gets loose, Whilst wrigling near I press more close: Ye Devil she crys, I'll tear your Eyes, When Main seiz'd, Bum squeez'd, I Gallop, I Gallop, I Gallop, I Gallop, And Trott, Trott, Trott, Trott, Streight again up and down, Up and down, up and down, Till the last Jerk with a Trot, Ends our Love Chase. Young Collin, cleaving of a Beam Young Collin, cleaving of a Beam, At ev'ry Thumping, thumping blow cry'd hem; And told his Wife, and told his Wife, And told his Wife who the Cause would know, That Hem made the Wedge much further go: Plump Joan, when at Night to Bed they came, And both were Playing at that same; Cry'd Hem, hem, hem prithee, prithee, prithee Collin do, If ever thou lov'dst me, Dear hem now; He laughing answer'd no, no, no, Some Work will Split, will split with half a blow; Besides now I Bore, now I bore, now I bore, Now, now, now I bore, I Hem when I Cleave, but now I Bore. There was an old Woman liv'd under a Hill There was an old Woman liv'd under a Hill, Sing Trolly lolly, lolly, lolly, lo; She had good Beer and Ale for to sell, Ho, ho, had she so, had she so, had she so; She had a Daughter her name was Siss, Sing Trolly lolly, lolly, lolly, lo; She kept her at Home for to welcome her Guest, Ho, ho, did she so, did she so, did she so. There came a Trooper riding by, Sing trolly, &c. He call'd for Drink most plentifully, Ho, ho, did he so, &c. When one Pot was out he call'd for another, Sing trolly, &c. He kiss'd the Daughter before the Mother, Ho, ho, did he so, &c. And when Night came on to Bed they went, Sing trolly, &c. It was with the Mother's own Consent, Ho, ho, was it so, &c. Quoth she what is this so stiff and warm, Sing trolly &c. 'Tis Ball my Nag he will do you no harm, Ho, ho, wont he so, &c. But what is this hangs under his Chin, Sing trolly, &c. 'Tis the Bag he puts his Provender in, Ho, ho, is it so, &c. Quoth he what is this? Quoth she 'tis a Well, Sing trolly, &c. Where Ball your Nag may drink his fill, Ho, ho, may he so, &c. But what if my Nag should chance to slip in, Sing trolly, &c. Then catch hold of the Grass that grows on the brim, Ho, ho, must I so, &c. But what if the Grass should chance to fail, Sing trolly, &c. Shove him in by the Head, pull him out by the Tail, Ho, ho, must I so, &c.How vile are the sordid Intrigues of the Town, Cheating and lying, perpetually sway From Bully and Punk to the Politick Gown, In plotting and sotting they wast the whole day. Let me have Musick, and bring in Orpheus there, O, my hard fortune!

Sometimes I am a Tapster new

Sometimes I am a Tapster new,
And skilful in my Trade Sir,
I fill my Pots most duly,
Without deceit or froth Sir:
A Spicket of two Handfuls long,
I use to Occupy Sir:
And when I set a Butt abroach,
Then shall no Beer run by Sir. Sometimes I am a Butcher,
And then I feel fat Ware Sir;
And if the flank be fleshed well,
I take no farther care Sir:
But in I thrust my Slaughtering-Knife,
Up to the Haft with speed Sir;
For all that ever I can do,
I cannot make it bleed Sir.
Sometimes I am a Baker,
And Bake both white and brown Sir;
I have as fine a Wrigling-Pole,
As any is in all this Town Sir;
But if my Oven be over-hot,
I dare not thrust in it Sir;
For burning of my Wrigling-Pole,
My Skill's not worth a Pin Sir.
Sometimes I am a Glover,
And can do passing well Sir;
In dressing of a Doe-skin,
I know I do excel Sir:
But if by chance a Flaw I find,
In dressing of the Leather;
I straightway whip my Needle out,
And I tack 'em close together.

Sometimes I am a Cook,
And in Fleet-Street I do dwell Sir
At the sign of the Sugarloaf,
As it is known full well Sir:
And if a dainty Lass comes by
And wants a dainty bit Sir;
I take four Quarters in my Arms,
And put them on my Spit Sir.
In Weavering and in Fulling,
I have such passing Skill Sir;
And underneath my Weavering-Beam,
There stands a Fulling-Mill Sir:
To have good Wives displeasure
I would be very loath Sir;
The Water runs so near my Hand,
It over-thicks my Cloath Sir.

Sometimes I am a Shoe-maker,
And work with silly Bones Sir:
To make my Leather soft and moist,
I use a pair of Stones Sir:
My Lasts for and my lasting Sticks
Are fit for every size Sir
I know the length of Lasses Feet
By handling of their Thighs Sir.

The Tanner's Trade I practice,
Sometimes amongst the rest Sir;
Yet I could never get a Hair,
Of any Hide I dress'd Sir;
For I have been tanning of a Hide,
This long seven Years and more Sir;
And yet it is as hairy still,
As ever it was before Sir.
Sometimes I am a Taylor,
And work with Thread that's strong Sir
I have a fine great Needle,
About two handfulls long Sir.
The finest Sempster in this Town,
That works by line or leisure;
May use my Needle at a pinch.
And do themselves great Pleasure.

---

Blowzabella my bouncing Doxie

He. Blowzabella my bouncing Doxie,
Come let's trudge it to Kirkham Fair,
There's stout Liquor enough to Fox me,
And young Cullies to buy thy Ware. She. Mind your Matters ye Sot without medling
How I manage the sale of my Toys,
Get by Piping as I do by Pedling,
You need never want me for supplies.
He. God-a-mercy my Sweeting, I find thou think'st fitting,
To hint by this twitting, I owe thee a Crown;
She. Tho' for that I've been staying, a greater Debt's paying,
Your rate of delaying will never Compound.
He. I'll come home when my Pouch is full,
And soundly pay thee all old Arrears;
She. You'll forget it your Pate's so dull,
As by drowzy Neglect appears.
He. May the Drone of my Bag never hum,
If I fail to remember my Blowse;
She. May my Buttocks be ev'ry ones Drum,
If I think thou wilt pay me a Souse.
He. Squeakham, Squeakham, Bag-pipe will make 'em,
Whisking, Frisking, Money brings in,
She. Smoaking, Toping, Landlady groping,
Whores and Scores will spend it again.
He. By the best as I guess in the Town,
I swear thou shalt have e'ery Groat;
She. By the worst that a Woman e'er found,
If I have it will signify nought;
He. If good Nature works no better, Blowzabella I'd have you to know,
Though you fancy my Stock is so low,
I've more Rhino than always I show,
For some good Reasons of State that I know.
She. Since your Cheating I always knew,
For my Ware I got something too,
I've more Sence than to tell to you.
He. Singly then let's imploy Wit,
I'll use Pipe as my gain does hit,
She. And If I a new Chapman get,
You'll be easy too,
He. Easy as any worn out Shoo.
[CHORUS of both.]
Free and Frolick we'll Couple Gratis
Thus we'll show all the Human Race;
That the best of the Marriage State is,
Blowzabella's and Collin's Case.

---

As Oyster Nan stood by her Tub

As Oyster Nan stood by her Tub,
To shew her vicious Inclination;
She gave her noblest Parts a Scrub,
And sigh'd for want of Copulation:
A Vintner of no little Fame,
Who excellent Red and White can sell ye,
Beheld the little dirty Dame,
As she stood scratching of her Belly. Come in, says he, you silly Slut,
'Tis now a rare convenient Minute;
I'll lay the Itching of your Scut,
Except some greedy Devil be in it:
With that the Flat-capt Fusby smil'd,
And would have blush'd, but that she cou'd not;
Alass! says she, we're soon beguil'd,
By Men to do those things we shou'd not.
From Door they went behind the Bar,
As it's by common Fame reported;
And there upon a Turkey Chair,
Unseen the loving Couple sported;
But being call'd by Company,
As he was taking pains to please her;
I'm coming, coming Sir, says he,
My Dear, and so am I, says she, Sir.
Her Mole-hill Belly swell'd about,
Into a Mountain quickly after;
And when the pretty Mouse crept out,
The Creature caus'd a mighty Laughter:
And now she has learnt the pleasing Game,
Altho' much Pain and Shame it cost her;
She daily ventures at the same,
And shuts and opens like an Oyster.

---

There was a Lass of Islington

There was a Lass of Islington,
As I have heard many tell;
And she would to Fair London go,
Fine Apples and Pears to sell:
And as along the Streets she flung,
With her basket on her Arm:
Her Pears to sell, you may know it right well,
This fair Maid meant no harm. But as she tript along the Street,
Her pleasant Fruit to sell;
A Vintner did with her meet,
Who lik'd this Maid full well:
Quoth he, fair Maid, what have you there?
In Basket decked brave;
Fine Pears, quoth she, and if it please ye
A taste Sir you shall have.
The Vintner he took a Taste,
And lik'd it well, for why;
This Maid he thought of all the rest,
Most pleasing to his Eye:
Quoth he, fair Maid I have a Suit,
That you to me must grant;
Which if I find you be so kind,
Nothing that you shall want.
Thy Beauty doth so please my Eye,
And dazles so my sight;
That now of all my Liberty,
I am deprived quite:
Then prithee now consent to me,
And do not put me by;
It is but one small courtesie,
All Night with you to lie.
Sir, if you lie with me one Night,
As you propound to me;
I do expect that you should prove,
Both courteous, kind and free:
And for to tell you all in short,
It will cost you Five Pound,
A Match, a Match, the Vintner said,
And so let this go round.
When he had lain with her all Night,
Her Money she did crave,
O stay, quoth he, the other Night,
And thy Money thou shalt have:
I cannot stay, nor I will not stay,
I needs must now be gone,
Why then thou may'st thy Money go look,
For Money I'll pay thee none.
This Maid she made no more ado,
But to a Justice went;
And unto him she made her moan,
Who did her Case lament:
She said she had a Cellar Let out,
To a Vintner in the Town;
And how that he did then agree
Five Pound to pay her down.
But now, quoth she, the Case is thus,
No Rent that he will pay;
Therefore your Worship I beseech,
To send for him this Day:
Then strait the Justice for him sent,
And asked the Reason why;
That he would pay this Maid no Rent?
To which he did Reply,
Although I hired a Cellar of her,
And the Possession was mine?
I ne'er put any thing into it,
But one poor Pipe of Wine:
Therefore my Bargain it was hard,
As you may plainly see;
I from my Freedom was Debarr'd,
Then good Sir favour me.
This Fair Maid being ripe of Wit,
She strait Reply'd again;
There were two Butts more at the Door,
Why did you not roul them in?
You had your Freedom and your Will,
As is to you well known;
Therefore I do desire still,
For to receive my own.
The Justice hearing of their Case,
Did then give Order strait;
That he the Money should pay down,
She should no longer wait:
Withal he told the Vintner plain
If he a Tennant be;
He must expect to pay the same,
For he could not sit Rent-free.
But when the Money she had got,
She put it in her Purse:
And clapt her Hand on the Cellar Door,
And said it was never the worse:
Which caused the People all to laugh,
To see this Vintner Fine:
Out-witted by a Country Girl,
About his Pipe of Wine.

---

Would ye have a young Virgin of fifteen Years

Would ye have a young Virgin of fifteen Years,
You must tickle her Fancy with sweets and dears,
Ever toying, and playing, and sweetly, sweetly,
Sing a Love Sonnet, and charm her Ears:
Wittily, prettily talk her down,
Chase her, and praise her, if fair or brown,
Sooth her, and smooth her,
And teaze her, and please her,
And touch but her Smicket, and all's your own. Do ye fancy a Widow well known in a Man?
With a front of Assurance come boldly on,
Let her rest not an Hour, but briskly, briskly,
Put her in mind how her Time steals on;
Rattle and prattle although she frown,
Rowse her, and towse her from Morn to Noon,
Shew her some Hour y'are able to grapple,
Then get but her Writings, and all's your own.
Do ye fancy a Punk of a Humour free,
That's kept by a Fumbler of Quality,
You must rail at her Keeper, and tell her, tell her
Pleasure's best Charm is Variety,
Swear her much fairer than all the Town,
Try her, and ply her when Cully's gone,
Dog her, and jog her,
And meet her, and treat her,
And kiss with two Guinea's, and all's your own.

Men have looked upon the desert as barren land, the free holding of whoever chose; but in fact each hill and valley in it had a man who was its acknowledged owner and would quickly assert the right of his family or clan to it, against aggression. Even the wells and trees had their masters, who allowed men to make firewood of the one and drink of the other freely, as much as was required for their need, but who would instantly check anyone trying to turn the property to account and to exploit it or its products among others for private benefit. The desert was held in a crazed communism by which Nature and the elements were for the free use of every known friendly person for his own purposes and no more. Logical outcomes were the reduction of this licence to privilege by the men of the desert, and their hardness to strangers unprovided with introduction or guarantee, since the common security lay in the common responsibility of kinsmen. Tafas, in his own country, could bear the burden of my safe-keeping lightly. The valleys were becoming sharply marked, with clean beds of sand and shingle, and an occasional large boulder brought down by a flood. There were many broom bushes, restfully grey and green to the eye, and good for fuel, though useless as pasture. We ascended steadily till we rejoined the main track of the pilgrim road. Along this we held our way till sunset, when we came into sight of the hamlet of Bir el Sheikh. In the first dark as the supper fires were lighted we rode down its wide open street and halted. Tafas went into one of the twenty miserable huts, and in a few whispered words and long silences bought flour, of which with water he kneaded a dough cake two inches thick and eight inches across. This he buried in the ashes of a brushwood fire, provided for him by a Subh woman whom he seemed to know. When the cake was warmed he drew it out of the fire, and clapped it to shake off the dust; then we shared it together, while Abdulla went away to buy himself tobacco. They told me the place had two stone-lined wells at the bottom of the southward slope, but I felt disinclined to go and look at them, for the long ride that day had tired my unaccustomed muscles, and the heat of the plain had been painful. My skin was blistered by it, and my eyes ached with the glare of light striking up at a sharp angle from the silver sand, and from the shining pebbles. The last two years I had spent in Cairo, at a desk all day or thinking hard in a little overcrowded office full of distracting noises, with a hundred rushing things to say, but no bodily need except to come and go each day between office and hotel. In consequence the novelty of this change was severe, since time had not been given me gradually to accustom myself to the pestilent beating of the Arabian sun, and the long monotony of camel pacing. There was to be another stage tonight, and a long day to-morrow before Feisal's camp would be reached. So I was grateful for the cooking and the marketing, which spent one hour, and for the second hour of rest after it which we took by common consent; and sorry when it ended, and we re-mounted, and rode in pitch darkness up valleys and down valleys, passing in and out of bands of air, which were hot in the confined hollows, but fresh and stirring in the open places. The ground under foot must have been sandy, because the silence of our passage hurt my straining ears, and smooth, for I was always falling asleep in the saddle, to wake a few seconds later suddenly and sickeningly, as I clutched by instinct at the saddle post to recover my balance which had been thrown out by some irregular stride of the animal. It was too dark, and the forms of the country were too neutral, to hold my heavy-lashed, peering eyes. At length we stopped for good, long after midnight; and I was rolled up in my cloak and asleep in a most comfortable little sand-grave before Tafas had done knee-haltering my camel. Three hours later we were on the move again, helped now by the last shining of the moon. We marched down Wadi Mared, the night of it dead, hot, silent, and on each side sharp-pointed hills standing up black and white in the exhausted air. There were many trees. Dawn finally came to us as we passed out of the narrows into a broad place, over whose flat floor an uneasy wind span circles, capriciously in the dust. The day strengthened always, and now showed Bir ibn Hassani just to our right. The trim settlement of absurd little houses, brown and white, holding together for security's sake, looked doll-like and more lonely than the desert, in the immense shadow of the dark precipice of Subh, behind. While we watched it, hoping to see life at its doors, the sun was rushing up, and the fretted cliffs, those thousands of feet above our heads, became outlined in hard refracted shafts of white light against a sky still sallow with the transient dawn. We rode on across the great valley. A camel-rider, garrulous and old, came out from the houses and jogged over to join us. He named himself Khallaf, too friendly-like. His salutation came after a pause in a trite stream of chat; and when it was returned he tried to force us into conversation. However, Tafas grudged his company, and gave him short answers. Khallaf persisted, and finally, to improve his footing, bent down and burrowed in his saddle pouch till he found a small covered pot of enamelled iron, containing a liberal portion of the staple of travel in the Hejaz. This was the unleavened dough cake of yesterday, but crumbled between the fingers while still warm, and moistened with liquid butter till its particles would fall apart only reluctantly. It was then sweetened for eating with ground sugar, and scooped up like damp sawdust in pressed pellets with the fingers. I ate a little, on this my first attempt, while Tafas and Abdulla played at it vigorously; so for his bounty Khallaf went half-hungry: deservedly, for it was thought effeminate by the Arabs to carry a provision of food for a little journey of one hundred miles. We were now fellows, and the chat began again while Khallaf told us about the last fighting, and a reverse Feisal had had the day before. It seemed he had been beaten out of Kheif in the head of Wadi Safra, and was now at Hamra, only a little way in front of us; or at least Khallaf thought he was there: we might learn for sure in Wasta, the next village on our road. The fighting had not been severe; but the few casualties were all among the tribesmen of Tafas and Khallaf; and the names and hurts of each were told in order. Meanwhile I looked about, interested to find myself in a new country. The sand and detritus of last night and of Bir el Sheikh had vanished. We were marching up a valley, from two hundred to five hundred yards in width, of shingle and light soil, quite firm, with occasional knolls of shattered green stone cropping out in its midst. There were many thorn trees, some of them woody acacias, thirty feet and more in height, beautifully green, with enough of tamarisk and soft scrub to give the whole a charming, well kept, park-like air, now in the long soft shadows of the early morning. The swept ground was so flat and clean, the pebbles so variegated, their colours so joyously blended that they gave a sense of design to the landscape; and this feeling was strengthened by the straight lines and sharpness of the hills. They rose on each hand regularly, precipices a thousand feet in height, of granite-brown and dark porphyry-coloured rock, with pink stains; and by a strange fortune these glowing hills rested on hundred-foot bases of the cross-grained stone, whose unusual colour suggested a thin growth of moss. We rode along this beautiful place for about seven miles, to a low watershed, crossed by a wall of granite slivers, now little more than a shapeless heap, but once no doubt a barrier. It ran from cliff to cliff, and even far up the hill-sides, wherever the slopes were not too steep to climb. In the centre, where the road passed, had been two small enclosures like pounds. I asked Khallaf the purpose of the wall. He replied that he had been in Damascus and Constantinople and Cairo, and had many friends among the great men of Egypt. Did I know any of the English there? Khallaf seemed curious about my intentions and my history. He tried to trip me in Egyptian phrases. When I answered in the dialect of Aleppo he spoke of prominent Syrians of his acquaintance. I knew them, too; and he switched off into local politics, asking careful questions, delicately and indirectly, about the Sherif and his sons, and what I thought Feisal was going to do. I understood less of this than he, and parried inconsequentially. Tafas came to my rescue, and changed the subject. Afterwards we knew that Khallaf was in Turkish pay, and used to send frequent reports of what came past Bir ibn Hassani for the Arab forces. Across the wall we were in an affluent of Wadi Safra, a more wasted and stony valley among less brilliant hills. It ran into another, far down which to the west lay a cluster of dark palm-trees, which the Arabs said was Jedida, one of the slave villages in Wadi Safra. We turned to the right, across another saddle, and then downhill for a few miles to a corner of tall cliffs. We rounded this and found ourselves suddenly in Wadi Safra, the valley of our seeking, and in the midst of Wasta, its largest village. Wasta seemed to be many nests of houses, clinging to the hillsides each side the torrent-bed on banks of alluvial soil, or standing on detritus islands between the various deep-swept channels whose sum made up the parent valley. Riding between two or three of these built-up islands, we made for the far bank of the valley. On our way was the main bed of the winter floods, a sweep of white shingle and boulders, quite flat. Down its middle, from palm-grove on the one side to palm-grove on the other, lay a reach of clear water, perhaps two hundred yards long and twelve feet wide, sand-bottomed, and bordered on each brink by a ten-foot lawn of thick grass and flowers. On it we halted a moment to let our camels put their heads down and drink their fill, and the relief of the grass to our eyes after the day-long hard glitter of the pebbles was so sudden that involuntarily I glanced up to see if a cloud had not covered the face of the sun. We rode up the stream to the garden from which it ran sparkling in a stone-lined channel; and then we turned along the mud wall of the garden in the shadow of its palms, to another of the detached hamlets. Tafas led the way up its little street (the houses were so low that from our saddles we looked down upon their clay roofs), and near one of the larger houses stopped and beat upon the door of an uncovered court. A slave opened to us, and we dismounted in privacy. Tafas haltered the camels, loosed their girths, and strewed before them green fodder from a fragrant pile beside the gate. Then he led me into the guest-room of the house, a dark clean little mud-brick place, roofed with half palm-logs under hammered earth. We sat down on the palm-leaf mat which ran along the dais. The day in this stifling valley had grown very hot; and gradually we lay back side by side. Then the hum of the bees in the gardens without, and of the flies hovering over our veiled faces within, lulled us into sleep.

The first rush on Medina had been a desperate business. The Arabs were
ill-armed and short of ammunition, the Turks in great force, since
Fakhri's detachment had just arrived and the troops to escort von
Stotzingen to Yemen were still in the town. At the height of the crisis
the Beni Ali broke; and the Arabs were thrust out beyond the walls. The
Turks then opened fire on them with their artillery; and the Arabs,
unused to this new arm, became terrified. The Ageyl and Ateiba got into
safety and refused to move out again. Feisal and Ali ibn el Hussein
vainly rode about in front of their men in the open, to show them that
the bursting shells were not as fatal as they sounded. The
demoralization deepened.

Sections of Beni Ali tribesmen approached the Turkish command with an
offer to surrender, if their villages were spared. Fakhri played with
them, and in the ensuing lull of hostilities surrounded the Awali
suburb with his troops: then suddenly he ordered them to carry it by
assault and to massacre every living thing within its walls. Hundreds
of the inhabitants were raped and butchered, the houses fired, and
living and dead alike thrown back into the flames. Fakhri and his men
had served together and had learned the arts of both the slow and the
fast kill upon the Armenians in the North.

This bitter taste of the Turkish mode of war sent a shock across
Arabia; for the first rule of Arab war was that women were inviolable:
the second that the lives and honour of children too young to fight
with men were to be spared: the third, that property impossible to
carry off should be left undamaged. The Arabs with Feisal perceived
that they were opposed to new customs, and fell back out of touch to
gain time to readjust themselves. There could no longer be any question
of submission: the sack of Awali had opened blood feud upon blood feud,
and put on them the duty of fighting to the end of their force: but it
was plain now that it would be a long affair, and that with muzzle-loading
guns for sole weapons, they could hardly expect to win.

So they fell back from the level plains about Medina into the hills
across the Sultani-road, about Aar and Raha and Bir Abbas, where they
rested a little, while Ali and Feisal sent messenger after messenger
down to Rabegh, their sea-base, to learn when fresh stores and money
and arms might be expected. The revolt had begun haphazard, on their
father's explicit orders, and the old man, too independent to take his
sons into his full confidence, had not worked out with them any
arrangements for prolonging it. So the reply was only a little food.
Later some Japanese rifles, most of them broken, were received. Such
barrels as were still whole were so foul that the too-eager Arabs burst
them on the first trial. No money was sent up at all: to take its place
Feisal filled a decent chest with stones, had it locked and corded
carefully, guarded on each daily march by his own slaves, and
introduced meticulously into his tent each night. By such theatricals
the brothers tried to hold a melting force.

At last Ali went down to Rabegh to inquire what was wrong with the
organization. He found that Hussein Mabeirig, the local chief, had made
up his mind that the Turks would be victorious (he had tried
conclusions with them twice himself and had the worst of it), and
accordingly decided theirs was the best cause to follow. As the stores
for the Sherif were landed by the British he appropriated them and
stored them away secretly in his own houses. Ali made a demonstration,
and sent urgent messages for his half-brother Zeid to join him from
Jidda with reinforcements. Hussein, in fear, slipped off to the hills,
an outlaw. The two Sherifs took possession of his villages. In them
they found great stores of arms, and food enough for their armies for a
month. The temptation of a spell of leisured ease was too much for
them: they settled down in Rabegh.

This left Feisal alone up country, and he soon found himself isolated,
in a hollow situation, driven to depend upon his native resources. He
bore it for a time, but in August took advantage of the visit of
Colonel Wilson to the newly-conquered Yenbo, to come down and give a
full explanation of his urgent needs. Wilson was impressed with him and
his story, and at once promised him a battery of mountain guns and some
maxims, to be handled by men and officers of the Egyptian Army garrison
in the Sudan. This explained the presence of Nafi Bey and his units.

The Arabs rejoiced when they came, and believed they were now equals of
the Turk; but the four guns were twenty-year-old Krupps, with a range
of only three thousand yards; and their crews were not eager enough in
brain and spirit for irregular fighting. However, they went foward with
the mob and drove in the Turkish outposts, and then their supports,
until Fakhri becoming seriously alarmed, came down himself, inspected
the front, and at once reinforced the threatened detachment at Bir
Abbas to some three thousand strong. The Turks had field guns and
howitzers with them, and the added advantage of high ground for
observation. They began to worry the Arabs by indirect fire, and nearly
dropped a shell on Feisal's tent while all the head men were conferring
within. The Egyptian gunners were asked to return the fire and smother
the enemy guns. They had to plead that their weapons were useless,
since they could not carry the nine thousand yards. They were derided;
and the Arabs ran back again into the defiles.

Feisal was deeply discouraged. His men were tired. He had lost many of
them. His only effective tactics against the enemy had been to chase in
suddenly upon their rear by fast mounted charges, and many camels had
been killed, or wounded or worn out in these expensive measures. He
demurred to carrying the whole war upon his own neck while Abdulla
delayed in Mecca, and Ali and Zeid at Rabegh. Finally he withdrew the
bulk of his forces, leaving the Harb sub-tribes who lived by Bir Abbas
to keep up pressure on the Turkish supply columns and communications by
a repeated series of such raids as those which he himself found
impossible to maintain.

Yet he had no fear that the Turks would again come forward against him
suddenly. His failure to make any impression on them had not imbued him
with the smallest respect for them. His late retirement to Hamra was
not forced: it was a gesture of disgust because he was bored by his
obvious impotence, and was determined for a little while to have the
dignity of rest.

After all, the two sides were still untried. The armament of the Turks
made them so superior at long range that the Arabs never got to grips.
For this reason most of the hand-to-hand fighting had taken place at
night, when the guns were blinded. To my ears they sounded oddly
primitive battles, with torrents of words on both sides in a
preliminary match of wits. After the foulest insults of the languages
they knew would come the climax, when the Turks in frenzy called the
Arabs 'English', and the Arabs screamed back 'German' at them. There
were, of course, no Germans in the Hejaz, and I was the first
Englishman; but each party loved cursing, and any epithet would sting
on the tongues of such artists.

I asked Feisal what his plans were now. He said that till Medina fell
they were inevitably tied down there in Hejaz dancing to Fakhri's tune.
In his opinion the Turks were aiming at the recapture of Mecca. The
bulk of their strength was now in a mobile column, which they could
move towards Rabegh by a choice of routes which kept the Arabs in
constant alarm. A passive defence of the Subh hills had shown that the
Arabs did not shine as passive resisters. When the enemy moved they
must be countered by an offensive.

Feisal meant to retire further yet, to the Wadi Yenbo border of the
great Juheina tribe. With fresh levies from them he would march
eastwards towards the Hejaz Railway behind Medina, at the moment when
Abdulla was advancing by the lava-desert to attack Medina from the
east. He hoped that Ah' would go up simultaneously from Rabegh, while
Zeid moved into Wadi Safra to engage the big Turkish force at Bir
Abbas, and keep it out of the main battle. By this plan Medina would be
threatened or attacked on all sides at once. Whatever the success of
the attack, the concentration from three sides would at least break up
the prepared Turkish push-outwards on the fourth, and give Rabegh and
the southern Hejaz a breathing space to equip themselves for effective
defence, or counter-attack.

Maulud, who had sat fidgeting through our long, slow talk, could no
longer restrain himself and cried out, 'Don't write a history of us.
The needful thing is to fight and fight and kill them. Give me a
battery of Schneider mountain guns, and machine-guns, and I will finish
this off for you. We talk and talk and do nothing.' I replied as
warmly; and Maulud, a magnificent fighter, who regarded a battle won as
a battle wasted if he did not show some wound to prove his part in it,
took me up. We wrangled while Feisal sat by and grinned delightedly at
us.

This talk had been for him a holiday. He was encouraged even by the
trifle of my coming; for he was a man of moods, flickering between
glory and despair, and just now dead-tired. He looked years older than
thirty-one; and his dark, appealing eyes, set a little sloping in his
face, were bloodshot, and his hollow cheeks deeply lined and puckered
with reflection. His nature grudged thinking, for it crippled his speed
in action: the labour of it shrivelled his features into swift lines of
pain. In appearance he was tall, graceful and vigorous, with the most
beautiful gait, and a royal dignity of head and shoulders. Of course he
knew it, and a great part of his public expression was by sign and
gesture.

His movements were impetuous. He showed himself hot-tempered and
sensitive, even unreasonable, and he ran off soon on tangents. Appetite
and physical weakness were mated in him, with the spur of courage. His
personal charm, his imprudence, the pathetic hint of frailty as the
sole reserve of this proud character made him the idol of his
followers. One never asked if he were scrupulous; but later he showed
that he could return trust for trust, suspicion for suspicion. He was
fuller of wit than of humour.

His training in Abdul Hamid's entourage had made him past-master in
diplomacy. His military service with the Turks had given him a working
knowledge of tactics. His life in Constantinople and in the Turkish
Parliament had made him familiar with European questions and manners.
He was a careful judge of men. If he had the strength to realize his
dreams he would go very far, for he was wrapped up in his work and
lived for nothing else; but the fear was that he would wear himself out
by trying to seem to aim always a little higher than the truth, or that
he would die of too much action. His men told me how, after a long
spell of fighting, in which he had to guard himself, and lead the
charges, and control and encourage them, he had collapsed physically
and was carried away from his victory, unconscious, with the foam
flecking his lips.

Meanwhile, here, as it seemed, was offered to our hand, which had only
to be big enough to take it, a prophet who, if veiled, would give
cogent form to the idea behind the activity of the Arab revolt. It was
all and more than we had hoped for, much more than our halting course
deserved. The aim of my trip was fulfilled.

My duty was now to take the shortest road to Egypt with the news: and
the knowledge gained that evening in the palm wood grew and blossomed
in my mind into a thousand branches, laden with fruit and shady leaves,
beneath which I sat and half-listened and saw visions, while the
twilight deepened, and the night; until a line of slaves with lamps
came down the winding paths between the palm trunks, and with Feisal
and Maulud we walked back through the gardens to the little house, with
its courts still full of waiting people, and to the hot inner room in
which the familiars were assembled; and there we sat down together to
the smoking bowl of rice and meat set upon the food-carpet for our
supper by the slaves.