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sound of its band rise up and die, and he landed and came that night into
Boob Aheera's hut. And there he offered himself as his enemy's slave, and
Boob Aheera's slave he is to this day, and his master has protection from
the idol. And Ali rows to the liners and goes on board to sell rubies made
of glass, and thin suits for the tropics and ivory napkin rings, and
Manchester kimonos, and little lovely shells; and the passengers abuse him
because of his prices; and yet they should not, for all the money cheated by
Ali Kareeb Ahash goes to Boob Aheera, his master.





Tales of Three Hemispheres -- Chapter 4




EAST AND WEST
IT WAS DEAD of night and midwinter. A frightful wind was bringing sleet from
the East. The long sere grasses were wailing. Two specks of light appeared
on the desolate plain; a man in a hansom cab was driving alone in North
China.
Alone with the driver and the dejected horse. The driver wore a good
waterproof cape, and of course an oiled silk hat, but the man in the cab
wore nothing but evening dress. He did not have the glass door down because
the horse fell so frequently, the sleet had put his cigar out and it was too
cold to sleep; the two lamps flared in the wind. By the uncertain light of a
candle lamp that flickered inside the cab, a Manchu shepherd that saw the
vehicle pass, where he watched his sheep on the plain in fear of the wolves,
for the firs time saw evening dress. And though he saw if dimly, and what he
saw was wet, it was like a backward glance of a thousand years, for as his
civilization is so much older than ours they have presumably passed through
all that kind of thing.
He watched it stoically, not wondering at a new thing, if indeed it be new
to China, meditated on it awhile in a manner strange to us, and when he had
added to his philosophy what little could be derived from the sight of this
hansom cab, returned to his contemplation of that night's chances of wolves
and to such occasional thoughts as he drew at times for his comfort out of
the legends of China, that have been preserved for such uses. And on such a
night their comfort was greatly needed. He thought of the legend of a
dragon-lady, more fair than the flowers are, without an equal amongst
daughters of men, humanly lovely to look on although her sire was a dragon,
yet one who traced his descent from gods of the elder days, and so it was
that she went in all her ways divine, like the earliest ones of her race,
who were holier than the emperor.
She had come down one day out of her little land, a grassy valley hidden
amongst the mountains; by the way of the mountain passes she came down, and
the rocks of the rugged pass rang like little bells about her, as her bare
feet went by, like silver bells to please her; and the sound was like the