Puslapio vaizdai
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day and night, and services are held five times a day, the Friday midday prayers (just as ours of Sunday morning) are the most largely attended. Previous to the prayer, a short sermon is delivered by the fakir, who also reads any communication which the Sultan may desire to circulate among his people. Once facing Mecca and the prayer begun, the Mussulman cannot be induced to shift his feet or move his head right or left. The Mohammedan grows in piety and zeal with advancing years; many of us pray in our childhood, and become too wise or too busy as we grow older.

September 18, 1901, was a strangely memorable day, by reason of what follows.

The royal portrait was nearing completion, as my sitter, tired of posing, was anxious to remove it to the palace. A knock was heard at the gate, interrupting the the slave page bobbing in prayer before the studio door.

A moment later a message was read, saying that a courier had arrived from Tangier with the news that President McKinley had been shot.

"Who could have shot him?" the Sultan asked.

"This is the first news I have had," I replied, astounded.

"God forbid!" he cried in alarm, and although previously in good spirits, he laid aside his cue and left abruptly for the palace.

AFTER TWELVE MONTHS AT COURT

As my royal pupil entered the studio with the Minister of War, his graceful nod of recognition turned my thoughts back to

Drawn by Arthur Schneider

A SLAVE CLEANING THE ARTIST'S PALETTE

"I thought the people of America were all good."

"All kinds of people are there."

He then asked how a man came to be President, and who succeeded him in case of death. We were looking at his Majesty's portrait, but our thoughts were elsewhere. A number of times he used the hopeful expression of the Moors, "La bas" ("No harm ").

On the 20th of the month, while we were playing billiards, word came that the President had died.

In striking contrast to the news of the shooting, the Sultan showed great concern.

the day when I was hurried to the presence of an authentic sultan. What a change from that day! Incongruous and distinctly disturbing to the sense of dignity were the collars and cuffs and leggings which now looked slyly from beneath his garments, but they revealed an effort to escape from the trap of tradition. He talked with a certain amount of surety, and was not at all timid about asserting his views. His beard was trimmed, and the two locks of hair which had long swung from above his ears were missing. I well remember the day they passed from sight. The Sultan had wished them banished from the portrait, and the removal of his locks followed close upon the removal of his picture to the palace. Plainly it was the comparison between himself and the portrait

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which caused their downfall.

He so handled the governors as to reduce the awful consequences of imprisonment, and the decapitated heads of rebels were, for the first time, no longer posted upon the gates of Morocco city. The practice of customs officials buying their positions and exacting exorbitant toll from the merchants, and of the governors who squeezed the people to pay a heavy tribute, were on the verge of being abolished, a regular percentage of duty charged, and his people taxed according to the amount of their property.

All this passed through my mind as the

Sultan drew at the table for a few moments; then he said, "Come, let us play billiards." Both he and the Minister of War were in extremely good spirits. When it came my turn to play, I made a fluke, and used the Arabic equivalent for "chance shot."

I had used this common expression often before, and nobody expressed any surprise, but this day the minister, pointing skyward, solemnly said:

"Allah wahid" ("There is but one God").

Both looked at me inquiringly as I completed the passage from the Koran by adding: "Wa la ushareku bihi aheda ("And no other one linked with that").

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Only one God," I replied.

They looked at each other in perplexity, and asked if all Americans believed the same. In reply I said: "They do, and always did."

Subjects of a private or religious nature are never pried into by the courteous and well-bred Moors, though they prove eager for information if the subject is brought about in a casual way, as in the present case. Although the workings of the Oriental mind are a puzzle, I believe Mulai Abdul-Aziz does not look upon Christians as infidels.

THE SULTAN

SITTING upon his throne, Mulai Abd-ulAziz appeared to be very large and fleshy. When he descended, he proved to be of a more shapely, though substantial, build.

Enveloped in a loose white robe, or gelab, with the hood over his head, only his face, hands, and slippers were to be seen. He undoubtedly wore garments beautiful in texture and color underneath, as occasionally a bit of color would peep out at the neck. He wore his turban as I had seen no other Moor wear that part of his dress-low down on the forehead, with just a narrow ribbon of brilliant red fez showing beneath.

Two locks of long black hair hung like pendulums from above his ears. He had very large, dark-brown, protruding eyes; eyebrows black, broad, and almost continuous; a solid nose, full lips, and a large expanse of double chin, beneath whichfor there was no beard to speak of on his face-grew a black beard. It was a face

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readily giving expression to the thoughts and feelings of the man, but was as inscrutable as a mask when the Sultan rode in state before his people.

He carried a watch, usually laid in the folds of a silk handkerchief, which he held in his hand, or hid among the cushions of his divan. He wore no jewelry except occasionally a diamond ring, which he would remove after wearing an hour or

two.

Almost every day he appeared in a new gown and slippers.

Apparently never quite sure of himself, having as yet developed no style of gesture or of breeding, he was exceedingly embarrassed under the scrutiny of one trying to take his measure. Full of boyish enthusiasm and the exuberant spirits of a child, his admiration and wonder were for a time centered upon fireworks. Eager to learn and quick to understand, and possessed of a remarkable memory for the most trivial details, he yet lacked the power of concentration and the perseverance to acquire a thorough mastery of the many accomplishments he was anxious to attain.

This was Mulai Abd-ul-Aziz when I arrived at the court of Morocco, as undeveloped as the first preliminary “laying in on my canvas. During the year of my residence there I watched him develop in force of character, in self-reliance and moral contour, and grow in values and tone, even as my picture of him grew under my brush, and almost as perceptibly. The greatest obstacles to his progressiveness were the traditions and the fanaticism, rather than the religion, of his race.

One day, trying to accomplish the pedal-mount on his bicycle, he found the feat impossible, hampered as he was by the loose, long skirt of his gelab-the garment of the Mussulman, which the custom of centuries had made a thing as sacred to him as his religion itself.

So at every step this broad-minded young monarch found some hoary superstition of his people entangling his feet. But as his ambition to master the pedalmount has induced him to don ridingbreeches beneath the folds of his Moslem robe, so, screened from the eyes of his people by the Moorish gates and the protecting walls of his palace, Mulai Abd-ulAziz is fast discarding ancient traditions and adopting many of the ideas and customs of our civilization.

Democratic at heart, he has little respect for the trumpery of court etiquette; yet he realizes the necessity of "pomp and circumstance" to keep his people duly awed. During the court journey from the capital of Morocco to that of Fez, upon which I accompanied him, before the people of the interior he assumed always an expression of stolid indifference. On arriving at Casa Blanca, on the coast, where the people had come in contact with Europeans and the outer world, he laid aside this mask and appeared among them without restraint, even indulging in the luxury of an occasional smile.

Although the Sultan boasted a court jester among his retinue, I soon learned that my duties were as much to entertain and amuse as to instruct. My work with the brush must be spectacular, or his interest soon lagged. Many amusing incidents occurred. Often I would be sent for at my house in great haste. His Majesty was waiting to see me at once. Mounting my horse, I would go at a gallop to the palace, and while kaid and governor, who had been summoned before the Minister of War, lined the passages, haunted with fear, I would at once be admitted into the royal presence, only to be asked some trivial question as to a certain line or color in one of my pictures. He seemed to regard me as a magician who, by some mysterious method, which I would not divulge, achieved the results which he himself was eager to accomplish. For a long time he appeared to feel that there must be some royal road-some secret door-through which, if I would but open my heart, I might at once admit him to the fulfilment of his hopes, just as I felt that he might, by a word, open to me the remaining palace gateways, beyond which, I fondly believed, lay the realization of glorious visions.

THE RECENT UPRISING

SINCE the writing of this article the Sultan has taken his court to Fez, where a revolutionary war is being fought.

The inhabitants of the Fez district are a fanatical set, and by keeping up a constant flow of wild rumors regarding their unconventional Sultan, they reduced themselves to a condition for which a supreme fakir is ever ready. As usual, one was forthcoming. He appeared one day among the ignorant tribesmen, and after performing several feats of magic as a proof of supernatural gifts, said that Allah had ordained that he should be Sultan, and furthermore that the people of Fez who were anxious for the overthrow of Mulai Abd-ul-Aziz had sent him among them.

At once his army took shape, and, incredible though it seems, the news comes that the Sultan's army has just been routed near Fez, fleeing in confusion to that city; the city's gates have been closed, while the Sultan is shut up in his fortified palace.

Those who do not know the Moors with their seeming loyalty to whoever is supreme, or the tremendous jealousies of the foreign powers, may venture an opinion as to the outcome. Undoubtedly, were the Sultan to resort to the former custom of savage warfare, with decapitated heads posted about, he could put a speedy end to it, as the Arabs have no respect for a humane sultan : they think him weak.

Knowing how poor the tribesmen are, it would be interesting to know who is supplying the pretender and his followers with arms and ammunition. It must be remembered that several European powers are deeply interested in obtaining a foothold in Morocco, especially that part just opposite to Gibraltar.

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XX

BY RICHARD WHITEING Author of "No. 5 John Street" and "The Island"

T is mid-August, and the family is returning to Allonby. The poor season in town has flickered out, but this new one in the country is to give due compensation. There is more cheerful news from the seat of war; the nation is in better spirits: society is expected to rise to the occasion.

For weeks the four hundred people attached to the service of the castle-agents, stewards, grooms of chambers, gardeners, keepers, the little army of the stables-have been on the move. The miles of walks in the great deer-park, trimmed with spade labor, have the precision of lines on a map. The dappled herds, scudding without sound of footfall through the glades, yield effects of low-lying cloud. The very river flowing through the domain seems to have been washed for the occasion. You may count the pebbles in the shallower parts of the bed, and the fish in the deeper. The mere osiers and river-grasses are organized schemes of color, intensified by the clearness of the stream. A fleet of tiny pleasureboats, spick and span like all the rest, stands at its mooring in the lake.

Not a pond but can give an account of itself. The frogs are unmistakably on the

establishment; the squirrels, the birds, and all the other living things exhibit the freedom. from fear which may be supposed to have characterized their kind in Eden. The trees have the cleanliness which is the coquetry of age. Their parasites are trained for sentimental effects of dependence, and where the withering limbs threaten collapse under the burden of centuries, their crutches are at hand. The same perfection of artificial conditions is seen in the great vineries as in the peach-houses and the apricot-houses, that are to be measured by substantial fractions of a mile, and in the tropical house a perfect university of floriculture, with a head-gardener as its principal dean of the faculty, and distinguished professors in the several chairs. Every tree, plant, flower, beast of the field, and fowl of the air, as a retainer of the house, seems to glory in its cultivated and individualized perfection.

The preserves especially are in magnificent order. A large party is expected for the shooting, and some are already busy with the grouse on one of the duke's moors in the North. The partridges positively languish for the 1st of September. The pining pheasants will have to wait for a month more before the head-keeper can redeem his promise of whole battalions of slaughter

in well-stocked preserves. With these, and with the ground game, there is every hope of sport for the autumn and winter. When the birds have been silenced, the deathsqueal of the rabbit will take up the wondrous tale. The ferrets, whose business it is to serve these shy creatures with notice of ejectment, are already longing to be at them. Meanwhile an occasional rat tossed into their cage saves them from the lapse into vegetarian diet, and keeps them wicked for their work.

Nothing is left to chance: it is the note of management in this lordly pleasurehouse. When the guns are ready for the game, the game must be ready for the guns. The ferret winds into the burrows and drives the rabbits into the open. The beaters drive them on to the line of fire, as they perform the same kindly service for the birds. This last ill turn, indeed, might seem to be enough to frighten all animated nature from Allonby as from a place accursed. But such creatures, being untroubled by school histories, which keep alive the memory of grievance, are incapable of bearing the malice of tradition.

The cultivated completeness of it all makes a profound impression on the American visitor. "And what may his name be?" he asks the head-keeper once, in a moonlight ramble, as a hare crosses their path.

"His name, sir?"

"Yes; surely you have him somewhere on the register. Shall we call him Leopold, just for the sake of the argument?”

Mr. Gooding's sole experience of sport is an occasional bear-hunt, by preference in the Carolina mountains, where the beast looks after himself, and the man follows his example: a blanket and a camp-fire for one, a cave for the other, and let the best win. So they hunted the boar in Calydon. The fox-hunting of the Genesee valley may set all that right in time for the younger community. Meanwhile, if you want sport as a fine art, you must seek it in a country which is too small and too thickly peopled to let anything happen by accident, even a hen's egg.

The art of producing that egg in pheasantry, and rearing it to its maturity of flight in whirring feathers, is one of the triumphs of civilization. The sacred birds govern the empire. Parliament rises for them; the professions make holiday to await their

good pleasure. The partridges are supposed to be wild, but that is only their fun. The main difference between them and the others is that they are watched in the gross, while the pheasants are tended in detail. Both have to be guarded day and night, and not merely against the poachers. Stray dogs must not come near them, nor even stray cats. No footfall of the wandering lover of nature may render them uneasy in their minds. You can hardly get a country walk, for the birds. Even when you have the liberty of the manor, the keeper expects you to skirt his fields, lest you flutter the game.

"I suppose you don't insist on their going to church Sundays?” Mr. Gooding asks.

The keeper rises to the occasion. "Well, if they did, they 'd hear summat to their advantage in the exhortation to ‘all ye fowls of the air.'

“Fact is, sir, you must have it so, or do without your sport. The pheasants has to be nussed like babies from first to last, leastways them as is hand-reared. Some tries to manage it for theirselves, but they 're ontidy mothers. All I ask them to do is lay their eggs. After that it's like the advertisement-'we do the rest.' If they get that business over nice an' early in the year, that's all we want of 'em. My men 'll go through the bracken an' pick up the eggs, an' I'll see to the hatchin'. That great clearin' close to my lodge is where the hen sits on 'em-common barn-door fowl, that's your motherin' bird, ready to lay on anything, from a duck's or a pheasant's egg to a lump of plaster of Paris. Pity we can't put 'em on to some of the poor wizened babbies born in the cottages."

It is a pregnant saying in these days, when there is some danger that mere human mothering may become one of the lost arts, crowded out, as it were, by societies for the improvement of the mind, the development of the individual, and other equally pressing concerns. Perhaps the European cuckoo is destined to be the emblem of the womanhood of the future, with her startling invention of mothering by deputy. The cuckoo dames of social life, who are mothers last, whatever else comes first, should include a bird of this variety in their aviaries. It would be interesting to learn from closer observation how the bird employs the abundant leisure

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