The daily morning journal and courier., 1905-06-08

DerS, now Scrdpeu Jie NAttS S'N
 around the pot, now turned the roast ing berries over with the ladle chained | to the spoon. The shsik's hand stole on
 to the little boys head, and the boy,
 looking up, stroked the old mans
 beard. On we sat in the dark silence. | learning from these true masters Of
 time how neither to waste it nor let 1t
 drag, but going step by step with 1t,
 laying ourselves open to receive all
 that it had to give.
 "The silence was so prolonged and so | intense that, silently as time flies, we
 could almost hear its moments ticking
 away. It,has been said that we, take
 no note of time except when we count | its loss; it might be said of all easterns l that they are, unconscious of the time they lose, because they take no note of l it; they live unconsciously up to the
 fact that, the past being beyond. recall
 and the future unfathomable, the pres
 ent only is in our power. And the east
 erner is master of time because he
 spends it in absorbing the present.
 Meanwhile the berries had black
 ened, and the man ienptied them into a
 copper mortar; as he pounded them he
 caused the psstle to ring in tune
 against the sides of the bowl. The
 child laughed gleefully and pointed at
 him; the stern old man smiled and shot
 a proud glance over at us. 'Y
 "'Fiddle away, old Time,' rang out
 the tones of the metal pestle; it
 seemed to give voice to our joyful deri-
 sion of time; here was Time trying to
 weary us with himself, and we only
 laughed at him.
 | Fiddle away, old Time
 Fiddle away, old fellow!
 Airs for infancy youth and prime, Tunes both shrill and mellow. | Fiddle away,
 Or grave or gay,
 For faces pink or yellow; Scrape your song a lifetime long, Fiddle away old fellow!
 Mot a soul moved; outside in the
 dusk a stunted black COW thoughtfully
 chewed the maize stalks of which the inclosure around the tent was built,
 and kid rubbed his head up and down against a c1ild's bare leg. Beyond this | the darkness had nothing to conceal; !, we were in the middle of bare, large ! ly uninhabited desert land known only | to a few wandering Arab tribes; out I side tha mysterious open vault of the ! dark sky with it's many hundred points of light; inside, the mysterious recess of the dark tent with the fifty-three pairs of gleaming eyes-every one fixed | upon ourselves. Now and then, as a flash of lightning in the sky at night ! will expose the immediate surroundings I to view, so a sudden spark from the ! fire revealed the setting of the eyes \ the solemn, dusky Arab faces.
 "A splutter on the fire as the pot
 boiled over put an end alike to the tune and to the meditations called up by it. The man transferred the ground berries to copper jug, and, pouring ! the boiling water on to them, placed 1 this second pot on the hot ashes. We had been sitting thsre for an hour. watching these preparations, and it I seemed as if we might now reasonably \ entertain hopes of tasting the results, Our expectations in this direction were S"A7O SiAAi0AtGCu ny LllS OL l three tiny cups, which had been un- ! earthed from a dark corner and handed 1 to one of the men nearest the fire. He l proceeded to rinse them out one by one with hot water, displaying a care and absorption in the process which con- trasted strangely with the simplicity of 1 his task.
 ''The coffee on the fire came to the boil; the coffee maker poured it back { into the original pot which he again { set on the ashes. He then handed the empty jug to the cup washer, who rinsed each cup out carefully with a l few drops of the coffee left for this 1 purpose; very quietly, very precisely ! he placed each cup on the ground with l in reach of the coffee maker and re- 1 treated into. the background.
 ''Tha coffee on the fire boiled up; we 1 straightend ourselves in expectation as 1 the coffee maker reached out his hand: but he emptied the boiling liquid back ] again into the original pot, and re- ! placed it on the ashes
 1 "The fire now burned very dimly
 Even the mans form bending over the
 glowing ashes was discernibIe only as a
 black shadow. The stiffness for a few