enough to haul on a rope or to reef the great latteen sails as well as any of them.  The knowledge that I was just returning from a pilgrimage to Mecca obtained for me also a certain respect among the crew.  It makes very little difference what the trade, business, or branch of learning; in mechanical labour, or intellectual effort, the educated man is always superior to the common labourer.  One who is in the habit of applying his powers in the right way will carry his system into any occupation, and it will help him as much to handle a rope as to write a poem.

“At last we landed in Bombay.  I was in a wretched condition.  What little clothes I had had were in tatters; hard work and little food had made me even thinner than my youthful age and slight frame tolerated.  I had in all about three pence money in small copper coins, carefully hoarded against a rainy day.  I could not speak a word of the Indian dialects, still less of English, and I knew no one save the crew of the vessel I had come in, as poor as I, but saved from starvation by the slender pittance allowed them on land.  I wandered about all day through the bazaars, occasionally speaking to some solemn looking old shopkeeper or long-bearded Mussulman, who, I hoped, might understand a little Arabic.  But not one did I find.  At evening I bathed in the tank of a temple full from the recent rains, and I lay down supperless to sleep on the steps of the great mosque.  As I lay on the hard stones I looked up to my star, and took comfort, and slept.  That night a dream came to me.  I thought I was still awake and lying on the steps, watching the wondrous ruler of my fate.  And as I looked he glided down from his starry throne with an easy swinging motion, like a soap-bubble settling to the earth.  And the star came and poised among the branches of the palm-tree over the tank, opalescent, unearthly, heart shaking.  His face was as the face of the prophet, whose name be blessed, and his limbs were as the limbs of the Hameshaspenthas of old.  Garments he had none, being of heavenly birth, but he was clothed with light as with a garment, and the crest of his silver hair was to him a crown of glory.  And he spoke with the tongues of a thousand lutes, sweet strong tones, that rose and fell on the night air as the song of a lover beneath the lattice of his mistress, the song of the mighty star wooing the beautiful sleeping earth.  And then he looked on me and said:  ’Abdul Hafiz, be of good cheer.  I am with thee and will not forsake thee, even to the day when thou shalt pass over the burning bridge of death.  Thou shalt touch the diamond of the rivers and the pearl of the sea, and they shall abide with thee, and great shall be thy wealth.  And the sunlight which is in the diamond shall warm thee and comfort thy heart; and the moonlight which is in the pearl shall give thee peace in the night-time, and thy children shall be to thee a garland of roses in the land of the unbeliever.’  And the star floated down