Wauwatosa news. [volume] (Wauwatosa, Wis.) 1900-1948, 1909-05-21
MEKTUB.

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mounting block outside the stables of the
principal hotel. His bright red hair and
bleared blue eyes, with his freckled face,
looking just like newly sealded pig,
had given him the name by which the
Europeans knew him. although no doubt
he was Mohammed, something or another,
amongst his brethren in the faith
He spoke indifferently well most Euro
pean languages up to a point, and per
fectly as far as blasphemy was CON
cerned, and his quick ear enabled him as
| if by magic to ascertain the nationality
of any European Dasserby, if ever he had
spoken to the man before, and to salute
him in his mother tongue
| All day he sat, amused and cheerful, in
the sun. As people passed along the
road their horses slithering and sliding
on the sharp pitch of the paved road,
which dips straight down from under
meath the mounting block of the hotel,
between the tapia walls, over which
Grande, Ell Rubio would hail them, as if
he had been dark lighthouse, set up
to guide their steps.
/ Ipy OliC VI lllC 5lIOilS is,
which Nature seems to take delight in
| just to confound us, when after a few
| thousand years of study we think we
know her ways, the Rubio had love of
horses which in him replaced the usual
love of music of the blind. Along the
steep and twisting path that leads to-
wards Spartel he used to ride full speed
and shouting "Balak" when he was sent
| q r1naS
town out to the villas on the hill. All
those who knew him left him a free road.
and if he met herd of cattle or of sheen
| the horse would pick his way through
them, twisting and turning of his own
accord, whilst his blind rider left the
reins upon his neck and galloped furious
ly. In what dark lane or evil-smelling
hole he lived no European knew. Always
well dressed and clean, he lived apart
both from the Moors and from the Euro
peans, and in way from all humanity,
passing his time, as does lizard, in the
sun and in the evening disappearing to
his den. The missions of various true
faiths, Catholic, Presbyterian and An
glican, had tackled him in vain. Whether
it was that none of them had anything
to offer which he thought better than the
cheerful optimism with which he was
endowed by Nature to fight the dark
ness of the world ne lived in. is difficult
to say. Still, they had all been worsted !;
not that the subject of their spiritual
Establishments could have been termed a
strict Mohammedan, for he drank any
kind of spirits that was presented to him
by Christians, anxious perhaps to make
him break the spirit if they were impo-
tent to move him in the letter of his law.
Still though he sat with nothing seem
ingly reflected on the retina of his
opaque and porcelain colored eyes. his
interior vision was as keen or keener
than that of other men. He never seemed
a man apart, or cut off from his fellows,
but had his place in life, just as through
out the east the poorest and most mis-
cradle appear to have, not barred out
from mankind by mere eXternals as are
their brethren in the north, shut in the
ice of charity, as bees are shut behind
a plate of glass so that the rich NAV
watch their movements in the hive.
His blindness did not seem to trouble
him, and if he thought of it at all. he
looked on it as part and parcel of the
scheme of Nature, against which it is
impious to contend. Doctors had peered
into his eyes with lenses, quarreled with
one another on their diagnoses of his
case, and still the Rubio sat contented.
Questioning nothing, and enduring every
thing, sun, rain. wind, flies and dust, as
patiently as if he We're a rock Nothing
was farther from his thoughts than that
he ever once again could see Plainly. it
had been written in the books of fate he
should be blind, and so when European
doctors talked to him of operations and
the like he smiled not wishing to offend.
and never doubling of their learning. for
had not one of them cured relation of
his own of intermittent fever by the use
of some white magic powder, when native
doctors after having burned him with a
red hot iron. and made him take texts
bef the Koran stepped in water. had ig-
ANONYMOUSLY failed2
All that they said did not appeal to
him, for all of them were serious men,
lwho talked the matter over gravely, and
looked on him as something curious on
which to exercise their skill All might
have gone on in the same old way. and
to this day the Rubio still sat on his
stone without a wish to see the horses
that he held, the sunlight falling white
upon the towers, or the red glare upon
the Spanish coast at eventide, had not a
herman scientist appeared.
From the first day on which the Rubio
held the doctors horse a fellowship
sprang up between them. not easy to
leXplain. The doctor peered out on the
world through neutral tinted glasses, for
his own eyes were weak. Whether their
weakness drew him to the blind, or if
he liked to hear the Rubio's tales about
the Europeans he had known, to all of
whom he gave the worst of characters,
the doctor never said. Soon Tangier
knew him for a character, and as he
stumbled on his horse about the town,
curing the Arabs of ophthalmia and
gathering facts Tor the enormous book he
said he meant to write upon North
Africa, his reputation grew. The natives