Salt Lake evening Democrat. [volume] (Salt Lake City, Utah) 1885-1887, 1885-09-11
A PARADISE OF IDLENESS.
Where the HEahdi's Followers Are
Rewarded with An the Sem
SuOUs Pleasures That MAN
Can Conceive.

Nor, perhaps, could the Mahdi better
encourage the sinking spirits of men en-
camped with but scanty shelter and a
still more scanty commissariat, out upon
the burning, eye-scorching deserts Of the
Soudan, ever swept with dust-storms
driven along by the fierce khamsin, the
sitting harmattan, dry grain their food,
alkaline water their drink, and dreary
marching and wounds and death their
only service. "That prophet i'll sustains
his holy call who finds not heavens to
suit the tastes of ALL" And Mohammed
and "Mohammed Achmed, his servant, :"
it must be confessed, have found one
very suitable indeed to the tastes of Arab
folk. Their songs and their speech are
filled with phrases significant of the
yearning of those wild sons of sterile
land for the pleasures of green trees,
sweet smelling flowers and bubbling
water. Religion offers them, these men
of hard lives and stern work-as the one
supreme delight of the after world-the
luxury of idleness.
They are not even to take the trouble
to turn upon their beds of roses to eat
and drink, for exquisite beings, blessed
with perpetual girlhood, will always be
at their side to offer them all they want
before they can even ask for it. The
fruit will bend down to their lips, the
fountains of exquisite sherbets rise to
them. They are never to grow older
than the prime of manhood and if they
choose, need never, no never, all through
the cycles of Immortality, stir an inch
from the spot where angelic arms, carry
ing each from the battlefield, have laid
him down on the perfumed sward under
the tOoba tree. No more camels to drive.
and plenty, perpetual youth, and sacred
laziness. The birds even, in the boughs,
are only to sing in numerous fashion. No
ear-splitting, clamorous song will be
heard there. The aboreal choir will all
be beautiful nightingales, singing through
wells, as it were, the softest whisperings
of melody that shall never be the same
long enough for the listeners to recognize
tune twice.
The perfumes, in the same way, will
glide imperceptible from one fragrance to
another, and each in turn will be new and
exquisite. The sherbets will be nectareous
blends of all the hydromies, somas, and
meads that poets have devised for happy
heroes in the ''Cities of Rest and
"Elysian Fields" and are to pass by
subtle transmutatio from rose to pome-
granate and from citron to date, from
orange to grape, and so OH through ali
the pippins and berries of paradisiac Or
chards, favored with such fruits as saints
have worked miracles with, such as
tempted Eve, such as the champions of
Chrstendom knew of, as the pilgrims
found in the Masters garden, as heroes
and goddesses have striven for-the
apples of bliss and immortality The
hours, too-''the dark-eyed maids
they are not to weary the
eye by monotony. Sixty is the smallest
allowance. the "half rations" as it were,
of a common, ordinary sort of true he
lever.
In exceptional cases they are to be in
beyond counting, and at the
wish of their possessor they will change
their age, their features, and their voice.
1t is not enough that they shall each be
added to all this, the perpetual GOODNESS
Vi ll1ljh lDlldSC OfO1l1Cdu, anu SCI1Uit
breezes, and, above all, utter and in
violable laziness! 1t is no wonder then
that the Mahdi's soldiers, released from
the drudgery of beasts of burden only to
march and fight in the desperate Soudan,
escaped from the tyranny of petty masters
to fall under the relaxing despotism of a
fanatical leader, should go to their deaths
lightly.
They believe with stern faith every
iota of the promises OF future pleasures
held out to them, and on that belief
gladly stake the Indebtedness of their
life and risk the brief agony of death on
the battle field.
Faith, frenzied faith, once welded firm and
To some dear falsehood, hugs it to the last
And those who were in the Soudan bore
ample testimony to the amazing, bewil-
dering recklessness and disregard of pain
with which these soldiers of the Mahdi
came charging on to their fate.
The truth is, they looked beyond the
British squares at the green groves OF para
disc The glitter of the grim bayonets
before them was as nothing to the radi-
ance of the great gates they could see
opening for them. In front the flash of
rifles and the low-rolling smoke of the
cannon, dull masses of men in gray, and
camels in tumultuous motion. But flu ther
off, and visible only to the eyes of those
fanatics, were the fluttering OF
robes of green silk, the simmer of golden
Here, close at hand, were
the furious roar of the artillery, the pitt
less fusilade, the fierce clamor of men
giving and receiving death; but, above it
all. the ears of the true believer, quick
ened by his mortal wound, caught the
sweet fittings of heavens singing birds,
the murmur of the breeze in the leaves,
the babblings of the fountains OF Fem
zem, the whispered caresses of those hid
den pearls "the maids"
So they came on in a rush all together,
or in small parties, or even slngly, to
meet the death (which leads to paradise"
Out from the bush, and from behind
rocks, they came on, one against 100,
dancing and shouting What if they fell?
It was an infidel's hand that laid them
low. Their end was achieved. Or, If
thew reached the unbeliever's line and
drove their spears home before they went
down before their bullets, all the greater
was the gain, all the larger was the ful.
ness of eternal bliss. The leaders OF
Islam have always known how to avail
themselves of this intense confidence IN
the immediate possession of paradise.
Mohammed himself never failed to en-
plov it to the utmost, and his successors,
on many field of victory have proved
its potency.
The Moslem sees his reward actually
within his arms length. He has only to
strike and it is his. If he kills, or Is Kill
ed, he is assured of the prophets favor
and if he dies killing he is doubly secure: