A New Light

IT was in October, 1886, that I was admitted to the American boarding-school, known to us as the High School of Sûk-el-Gharb, a village situated on one of a lofty chain of hills overlooking the Mediterranean Sea, about nine miles east of the city of Beyrout.

In making preparations for this important step, the first, thing on the programme was an order to the carpenter for a clothes-chest. This was a proud possession, the first earthly object besides my clothes which I could call my own. The carpenter covered the chest with cheap yellow paint which, whenever, however, and wherever I touched it, came off on my hands and clothes. It must have been a very interesting spectacle to see a ‘green’ boy painted yellow.

As for myself, instead of the bloomer-like shirwal, used among the Lebanonians, I put on the more genteel ghimbaz (a gown which resembles a kimono), an embroidered vest, a silk sash, white stockings and red slippers, thus giving myself quite a citified appearance. A muleteer, who cheered my way with quaint songs, carried me, with my bed and clothes-chest, to the coveted institution of learning. Upon my arrival I was assigned three pine boards and two saw-horses as a bedstead. That was the first elevating influence of education that I felt. But by force of habit as well as gravitation I found myself twice on the floor in my first night in that American school.

When the supper-bell rang that evening, the pupils filed into the diningroom, where seats were assigned to the newcomers. All remained standing until the senior teacher came in and said grace. That pious act was startling to me. I had seen my teacher, a layman, offer prayer at the opening of every school-day in my childhood, and I greatly enjoyed the little service, but that a layman should ‘bless the food’ was altogether at variance with my religious antecedents. Only the priest had the authority to lift his consecrated hand and bestow a blessing on such an occasion. Where did the teacher get his authority to perform such a solemn act? With such a question in mind, I could not be reverent during the prayer. I did not bow my head or close my eyes; I looked at the praying teacher with much curiosity as I explained to myself that the entire performance was a peculiarity of Protestantism with which I was not at all concerned. I had come to the school to get knowledge, and nothing else.

Next morning lessons began. Owing to the fact that my schooling had been so sadly interrupted when I was put to work at the age of nine, I was assigned to a class of ‘beginners.’ They were much younger boys than I, and among them I appeared like a giant among pigmies. I was tall, rough, and awkward, with a vague hunger for knowledge. Under the circumstances, it was a great consolation that my dear friend, Iskander, who had just been elevated to the position of instructor, was to be my teacher.

All studies, up to the senior year, were given in Arabic. English was taught as a language. It interested me at once. I looked upon the English Primer as the gateway to untold mysteries, and when I was able to say, ‘Run, mouse, run. The cat will catch you,’ I felt that I had entered into the exalted circle of the learned.

But the study which assumed supremacy in my mind above all others during my first year in school was that of the Bible. I shall never forget the thrilling charm of my first SundaySchool lesson. Our topic was the story of Elijah’s ascension into heaven in a chariot of fire. As a Syrian boy I had not the slightest difficulty in believing in miracles. In the minds of my people the miraculous element stands as the very foundation of religion. Our Bible was full of miracles. Our saints, even our priests, worked miracles. Miracles grew under our eyes. But, to me, the wonder of wonders was the fact that the Bible, the great and holy book of our religion, the Bible of which, as a Greek Orthodox, I had heard so much but which I had seen so seldom in the hands of the laity, was now free and open, even to me, not only to read, but to study, and to have explained to me, verse by verse, by ‘learned men’!

Every school-day, for all the scholars, the first lesson was the Bible. It was the Bible, however, not under the microscope of the ‘higher critics,’ but the Bible just as it reads. The pupils read the lesson in turn, each reading one or two verses, and the teacher explained the text, as a profound and uncorrupted supernaturalist must explain it.

The ethical distinctions, also, which beset the more highly cultivated minds in these days with regard to certain portions of the Bible, were unknown even to our teachers. We read the scriptural stories just as they were. They had grown and been recorded in our country. They were the very precipitate of the moral and intellectual atmosphere of our people put forth in the current idioms of the land of our heritage, and all bound together by a divine purpose. Therefore,’What God hath joined together, let not man put asunder.’

The great mystery of the Holy of Holies, as it was interpreted by our teacher, made a profound impression upon me. The Holy of Holies symbolized the unapproachable Divine Presence. ‘The holy place,’ where the priests ministered to waiting Israel, represented the world and humanity seeking the light. The ‘veil of blue, and purple, and scarlet, and fine twined linen,’ which hung between the Holy of Holies and the holy place, symbolized the barrier which was established between God and mankind when Adam fell, and which could be removed only when the promise of a Saviour was fulfilled. When Jesus was crucified on Calvary, and thus ‘paid the price of sin,’ ‘the veil of the temple was rent in twain, from the top to the bottom,’ signifying the removal of the barrier of original sin and the opening of the way of salvation to all those who come to the Father through the Son.

To me, that was Christian theology in a nutshell. Other explanations of the Bible were indeed precious, but the lesson of the Holy of Holies, a concentrated world of religious knowledge, was my chief treasure.

When I returned home for the Christmas vacation, I was expected to give a creditable account of myself as a student. All my other acquirements seemed to me too insignificant to be compared with my Biblical knowledge, of which, however, my only significant possessions were the interpretation of the Holy of Holies and the story of the ascension of Elijah. So, when a goodly company of friends and relatives came in to greet me, on the evening of my arrival, and asked me to ‘tell what I had learned,’ the story of the Holy of Holies leaped spontaneously forth from my mind. Upon my auditors it had a telling effect. It was amazing to them ‘what schools could do.’ One of my cousins was so carried away by my portrayal of the divine mysteries, that, throwing up his hands in the air, in Oriental fashion, he exclaimed, ‘My cousin, by the life of God, go no deeper into learning. I fear you might lose your mind! ’

The Protestant doctrine of the Bible and the Church was also very interesting to me, but somewhat disquieting. It threatened my ancient orthodox faith in the authority of the Church and the mediatorial offices of the saints. I was taught that the Bible, and the Bible only, was of divine authority; that church ordinances were man-made, therefore faulty. Prayer to the saints, I was told, was ‘a worship of the creature in place of the Creator’; the Church was the company of all believers, and not simply a body of priests; fasting and other legalistic practices were vain efforts on the part of man to save himself by his own endeavor, instead of seeking salvation by faith in the atoning merits of Christ.

I felt especially predisposed to set my face against Protestantism when it taught me to give up adoring the Virgin Mary, the ‘Mother of God.’

My education was not confined to the Bible and Protestant doctrines. I was instructed in arithmetic, in English, in reading the classical Arabic, in grammar, geography, and writing. My more mature faculties led me soon out of the beginners’ class to higher grades, and in the latter part of the year I was allowed to attend the class of ‘essayists,’ whose essays were heard and criticised by the senior teacher every Saturday morning.

The most startling experience of my first year in school was my ‘preaching’ at the meeting of the recently organized Christian Endeavor Society, which comprised the entire student body and all the teachers. Toward the end of the year, the invitation to exercise this office came to me as a great honor, but it was a crushing one. At the appointed time one of the teachers led the devotional exercises, and then quietly introduced me as the preacher of the evening. It was the first time in my life that I had ever faced an audience. My ‘sermon,’ which occupied four foolscap pages, had taken me so long to write that I thought it would take as long to read. I was disposed, therefore, to read it from the pulpit with rapidity. What the sermon was about I have not the slightest recollection, and the manuscript is lost. What I do remember of that occasion is a curious psychological experience.

As I looked down from the platform I seemed to be peering through a powerful magnifying-glass. The heads of my auditors assumed enormous proportions; their eyes glared at me like those of an angry bull, and really frightened me. Nothing whatever seemed normal. It was my sub-conscious self that read the little sermon, and I ‘came to’in my seat in the audience, mopping my face violently. Unconscious of all that was going on around me, I turned to one of the boys and asked, ‘What happened?’ ‘You preached,’ was his hasty answer, ‘ for about two minutes.’

When I went home for my summer vacation, I was received by my family and friends, not only affectionately but with that regard which is accorded seekers after knowledge among all peoples. The fact that my attainments were as yet very meagre counted for naught with my people. I was in the path of wisdom, and that was enough.

But such honors brought with them great responsibilities. I was supposed to be able to give an enlightened opinion on every subject under the sun, from a problem in subtraction to medical questions and the policies of the European nations.

It was a source of gratification to my parents, and to the pious among our neighbors, that I had not departed from my Mother Church. During that summer our little parish had the rare privilege of a visit from the great Patriarch of Antioch, who was then on a pastoral tour through his ancient see. Aside from the stupendous prestige of his official position, he was a personal friend of the Sultan, and so, wherever he went, the governors of the provinces were little more than his servants. The entire population of our town and the neighboring villages went out to meet him. The men of our church formed themselves into an armed escort, firing salutes all the way and enveloping the entire procession, Patriarch and all, in clouds of smoke and dust. I was equipped for the occasion with a pair of flint-lock pistols and a more modern double-barreled shotgun, and my place in the procession was close to the white horse of His Eminence.

At such times as this I felt myself to be as yet a true Greek Orthodox, but when I returned to the ordinary routine of worship in our village church, I discovered that the Protestant virus had gone deeper into my blood than I had been aware of, or desired. My soul was rent in twain. Sentimentally, I was still Greek Orthodox; intellectually, I had leaned perceptibly toward Protestantism. The pictures of the saints on the walls of our church seemed to me less rich in spiritual mystery than they did before I went to school. Saint-worship and many church ceremonials appeared beset with questionmarks. They had no warrant in theBible, and my inquiring mind chafed under their claims. Such issues were perpetually in my mind, and I was inclined to argue them with my parents or even with the priest. The priest, however, who was very ignorant and quick-tempered, had very little to say excepting to rebuke me for emulating the methods of ‘those accursed Protestants who know nothing else but to argue.’

With all our differences, however, I managed to retain my respect for the priest until he led me, by his own arrogance, to think and act differently. After my return from school, Ino longer observed fast-days and days of abstention from meat. One evening, as ill-luck had it, the priest called at our house and found me eating meat on a forbidden day. He was violent with rage. ‘What are you eating, you accursed of God?’ he said. ‘You are neither sick nor feeble. Why do you sin in this manner?’ Shaking with anger, he advanced toward me and lifted his foot to kick the table from before me.

In an instant I was on my feet, deeply insulted and greatly angered. I told him to leave the house instantly, else I should drive him out with a stick.

My parents were inexpressibly shocked. While they regretted his indiscretion, they were horrified at my conduct toward ‘the priest of my people.’

‘My son, my son,’ exclaimed my mother, after our visitor had gone, ‘the priest may be a bad man. Still he possesses the mystery of the priesthood,’

‘The mystery of the priesthood!’ cried I. ‘Cursed be he and his mystery! A bad man cannot make a good priest. Mother, I am a Protestant upon the housetop.’¹

My second year at school found me very happy and successful in my studies, but my lessons did not compare in significance with the general, indefinable influence which my school associations exerted over me. I seemed to awaken and absorb revolutionary religious and social forces. My individual life began to acquire both retrospect and prospect. I began to feel intelligently the impact of the past and to have visions of the more significant future. My teachers spoke encouragingly to me of my swift progress — ‘a youth who had but very recently forsaken the barren life of the stonemason and taken up the duties of the student.’

It was during the autumn of this year that I joined the Protestant Church. (Happily we knew no denominational designations in that school, which, however, was of the Presbyterian persuasion.) The American missionary, the Reverend Theodore Pond, who was the principal, examined me and received me into church fellowship. This step I took upon my own responsibility. I knew my parents would not favor it, so I did not ask them. Protestantism seemed to me more reasonable than my old form of faith. It did away with many church ordinances which had often bewildered my growing mind, and it afforded me a closer communion with Christ, who was the only Saviour of the world. Above all things, Protestantism opened and explained the Bible to me, and laid much emphasis on religion as life. When I was being examined by Mr. Pond, he asked me what my parents would think of the step I contemplated taking.

‘They would oppose it,’ I answered.

‘Would you disobey your parents?’ he asked.

‘In this case I would,’ said I. ‘The Master has said, “ He that loveth father or mother more than me, is not worthy of me.” Therefore Christ stands above earthly parents.’

Mr. Pond was pleasantly surprised at the quick but authoritative answer, and expressed the hope that my parents might, in the not far future, see the wisdom of my course.

My friend Iskander and I were the only Protestants in Betater, and while we were not persecuted in a mediaeval sense, we had to fight many battles in defense of our faith. When we came in collision with intelligence, we were no mean fighters, but in the face of benighted bigotry we were often helpless. At such gatherings as weddings and funerals we suffered not a little. We were referred to sneeringly as ‘the Lutherans, the followers of the lustful monk who ran away from the church in order to get married.’ We were urged to admit the truth of the assertions that the Protestants who refused to confess their sins to the priest went up and confessed to the stone-roller on the housetop.² Many of our leaders, so they said, held communion with Satan. Our marriage service, being performed by a ‘lay-preacher,’³ was invalid. Therefore, Protestant children were bastards, and so forth. Of intelligent criticism we seldom heard a word. Therefore, the reviling of our theological enemies only strengthened our hold on our new belief. Our own families accepted our defection from the faith as one would the inevitable, and parental and filial love kept us generally at peace.

While I was at school, I heard much about America. I studied its geography, heard of its great liberator, Washington, and almost every Sunday listened to Mr. Pond and other preachers speak of the zeal of its people for missionary work among the heathen of the earth. What has seemed very curious to me in the light of subsequent knowledge is the fact that America was always presented to my mind as a sort of hermit nation. Its people were rich and religious and little else. Every one of its citizens told the truth, and nothing but the truth, went to church every single Sunday, and lived the life of non-resistance. America had neither fleets nor armies and looked to England for the protection of American citizens in foreign lands. I do not remember that the missionaries spoke of America in exactly such terms, but by drawing their illustrations always from the religious side of American life, they led many of us to form such views of the New World.

But more exciting tales about America came to me through returning Syrian emigrants. Most of them, being common laborers, knew, of course, very little of the real life of America. They spoke only of its wealth and how accessible it was, and told how they themselves secured more money in America in a very few years than could be earned in Syria in two generations. More enlightened accounts of the great country beyond the seas came into Syria through a small minority of a better class of emigrants. From such descriptions I had a few glimpses of American civilization, of a land of free schools, free churches, and a multitude of other organizations which worked for human betterment. The fact that a few poor Syrian emigrants who had gone to America had in a few years attained not only wealth but learning and high social positions—had become real khawajas — appealed very strongly to my imagination. I would go to America if some turn of fortune made that possible.

At the end of my second year as a student my father told me that he was no longer able to keep me in school. He was getting old fast; his building enterprises grew smaller every year, and of his twelve children six still remained at home to care for. He had already paid twelve Turkish pounds for my two years’ keep in school. Adding to that the loss of my wages for two years, his financial burden was no light one. Disappointment fell upon me with the weight of a calamity. I could not blame my father, so I was the more helpless in dealing with the stubborn difficulty. What was to become of me? Was I to be forced back to the circumstances against which I had rebelled so successfully two years before? Were all my hopes to be dashed?

During that summer and autumn my father met with serious business reverses, and we were actually reduced to want. The approach of the winter, always dreaded by the common people of Syria, was doubly dreaded by our family. I had never known what real want was before, and now, afler I had been flattered lavishly by my teachers and fellow-students as ‘one of the very promising young men,’ to behold our family in the grip of real poverty and to think of myself as the helpless victim of such circumstances, was almost unbearable.

Early in November I made a visit to my beloved school in Sûk-el-Gharb and called on Mr. Pond. He asked me interestedly about my plans and listened with sympathy to my story. I told him that my chief desire was to return to the school as a student, but that my father’s circumstances rendered this impossible. It was beyond Mr. Pond’s power to extend me financial assistance, but he offered me the position of a teacher in the primary or day school, which joined the High School, suggesting that in that position I could avail myself of many of the privileges which the High School offered. I promptly accepted, and in a few days assumed my new duties with great enthusiasm.

The salary of my new position was three quarters of a Turkish pound (about $3.00) per month, and my board, which was provided at the High School. My bed stood in my schoolroom, among the benches of my pupils, and served as a comfortable seat for me during recitations. I do not remember that I ever received my salary at the end of the month without a sense of insult. Mr. Pond lived in a beautiful residence. He had a carriage, a saddlehorse, and three servants. Why was it that I should accept a position whose salary did not enable me to preserve my self-respect? Yet I had accepted it of my own free will, and I only was to blame for the choice.

My career as a school-teacher covered three years — two in Suk-elGharb and one in the city of Zahlah, which is situated on the eastern slopes of Mt. Lebanon, on the main road to Damascus. At that time Zahlah claimed a population of about twenty thousand souls, and enjoyed a commanding commercial position. The city was rich, and its population contained not a few college men, my associations with whom proved very profitable. During those three years I applied myself to the search after knowledge with strong and sustained zeal. Owing to the scarcity of books, my range of subjects was very narrow. The Arabic language and literature absorbed almost all my time and effort. I mastered its grammar and rhetoric, read extensively in its literature, and committed to memory hundreds of lines of poetry, chiefly from the ancient classical poets. When I became able to write correct poetry, in classical Arabic, I considered the prize of my educational calling won.

My absorption in this study led me to neglect the English language entirely. It ceased to have any charms for me, and gradually became a faint and tarnished memory.

In my last year in Sûk-el-Gharb I touched the fringe of Occidental life at two points. First, I acquired a European costume. European dress was slowly becoming the attire of the new ‘aristocracy of learning.' When I first donned this fashionable but strange garb, I was ashamed to appear where people might look at me. The lower half of my person felt quite bare and my legs seemed uncomfortably long. The habit of sitting on the floor often asserted itself unconsciously, and occasionally endangered the seams of the newly acquired costume. My townspeople most uncharitably called me ‘the man in tights.’ Happily for me, I only put on the strange garb on special occasions, and retained with it the Turkish fez as a connecting link between the East and the West.

My other touch of Occidental life came from dining with the ot her teachers one evening at the home of the American missionary. Here it was that I heard the piano for the first and last time in Syria, and ate with the knife and fork. The chief dish of the occasion consisted of a stratum of dough baked over a dissected chicken. When my plate reached me heavily laden with the strange composition, I was not a little puzzled to know how it was to be eaten. I deemed it wise to follow the example of the others, but to disengage the flesh from the bones of a chicken, with knife and fork, was a painful experience to me. Lacking skill, I applied force, when suddenly my awkward eating tools slipped, and almost broke the plate. I was deeply impressed with the gracious dignity of my host, who appeared not to notice it, while my fellow Syrian guests (I suppose because of our familiarity with one another) snickered at my distressing experience.

My three years of activity and intellectual endeavor as a school-teacher, while they proved advantageous in many ways, failed to put me on the highway of true progress. My salary kept me on the level of poverty, and the opportunities for promotion were extremely scant. I began to realize that soul-expansion and a useful career in the world of knowledge depended first and last, not on the theories of the schoolroom, but on the enlightened and progressive genius of a nation. I could claim no nationality and no flag. The rule of the Turk was painfully repressive. Under it love of freedom and of progress was a crime against the State. Our schools were simply foreign colonies, tolerated by the Sultan because of the great powers which stood behind them. The enlightened youth of the country not only lacked the opportunities which call forth and develop the nobler human qualities, but were constantly watched by the government as possible revolutionists. With a multitude of other young men I longed and prayed inwardly and silently for better things, or, at least, for the opportunity to emigrate from a country in which life slowly but surely grew to mean intellectual and moral death.

Whither should I go? On one occasion Mr. Pond suggested to me to enter the ministry in my own country. He thought I was qualified by nature for the sacred office, and lacked only the training, which I could have, free, in the theological department of the Syrian Protestant College in Beyrout.

The offer did not appeal to me very strongly. The preachers I had listened to in school, including Mr. Pond himself, made no strong impression on me. Their messages were almost wholly formal statements of doctrine, whose dynamic power decreased in proportion as they were repeated from Sunday to Sunday.

My answer to Mr. Pond’s proposition was that I had never contemplated entering the ministry, nor did I feel at the time inclined to entertain such an idea. We both ‘ hoped ’ that in the future I might be led to take such a step. My hope, however, was a mere imitation of his, for the matter dropped from my mind soon after I left his house.

At last I concluded to continue teaching school, preferring, however, to return to Zahlah, where I had worked during my second year as teacher. Early in September, 1891, I went thither to visit some friends and more particularly to apply for my former position as a teacher.

Upon my arrival I was told that two young men, who had been close friends of mine, were to leave for America the following morning. The news startled me. Certainly 1 must go and bid them good-bye. Soon after supper I called at the home of one of them and found them both there. We fell on one another’s neck and kissed in Oriental fashion.

Speaking both at once, they said, ‘Abraham, why don’t you go with us? What is there in Syria for a man like you? Come, let us go to America together.’

The words of my friends, while they stirred violently the depths of my soul and awakened a thousand slumbering hopes, rendered me speechless.

‘Why don’t you say yes?’ they asked. ‘Let nothing stand in your way, and let us make the voyage together.’

‘How can I go,’ I said, ‘with so many obstacles in the way?’

‘What obstacles?’ queried my friends. ‘If your chief difficulty is financial, we stand ready to lend you all the money you need until you reach New York. What better chance can you ask for?’

The moment seemed to me of divine significance. Really, what better chance could I ask or hope for? At last America was within my reach. Would it be anything short of madness to let such a great privilege go by? I had to act on my own responsibility, but I remembered that when I dropped my tools as a stonemason and went to school, I had to act on my own responsibility; when I left the church of my fathers and became a Protestant, I had to follow my own course. Now I was called upon to make a third great decision, and to make it. quickly. The wiser powers within and above me again asserted themselves, and I decided that I would go to America. Our final plan was that I was to return home at once, secure all the money I could, and, within two days, join my friends at Beyrout, whence we were to sail for the New World.

My sudden decision to emigrate to America was a shocking surprise to my parents, but not altogether unpleasant. They had confidence in me because I was ‘a learned man.' They regretted deeply my having to depend on others for funds, but it all seemed to them Allah’s will. Pushing her scarf back from her forehead and lifting her eyes and hands to heaven, my mother implored the all-seeing, all-wise Father, whose will it was that her favorite son should be torn away from her arms, possibly forever, to guide and prosper him, and return him safe to his father’s house.

All the money which my father could give me amounted to three napoleons. He wept because he could find no more. It required no very long time to complete my preparations for the voyage. My clothes were tied up into a bundle in a large bandanna. My ‘bed for the ship’ was much like that of the man who was sick of the palsy, consisting of a cushion, a pillow, and a light quilt. With such an equipment I rejoined my friends at Beyrout, at the appointed time.

Our most important task was to secure the indorsement of our teskaras, — passports, —which we had obtained from the government of Mt. Lebanon, by the Beyrout officials. Difficulties were often placed in the way of emigrants from Turkey by the officials for the purpose of extorting money from them. Emigration to America was discouraged and generally supposed to be prohibited. Our passports indicated that our destination was Alexandria, which was true, but not the whole truth. Moreover, our more refined speech and manners seemed to remove us, in the minds of t he officials, from the ordinary class of emigrants. For the indorsing of our passports we were required to pay half a madjidy — Turkish dollar — each, and we thought our exit from the unbeloved empire was rather cheap.

Our opinion was probably suspected, for shortly after we left the wharf, our boat was halted and an officer demanded our teskaras. The inspector appeared stern and doubtful. Our own boatman advised us to ‘present’ the inspector with half a madjidy each, and avoid more unpleasant things. We heeded the advice and the boat went on. When we were within a few yards of our steamer another haughty inspector interrupted our progress and demanded our teskaras. Another ‘half a madjidy each’ gave us our freedom. We left our ‘mother country’ with nothing but curses for her government on our lips.

Our steamer tickets entitled us to passage from Beyrout to Marseilles as ‘deck passengers’ — the equivalent of the steerage on Atlantic liners. With more gayety than wisdom we established our quarters high up on the foredeck. There were more sheltered places, but we scorned them.

Joppa was our first stopping-place. Next came Port Said, where a large contingent of Russian Jews joined us. This little city seemed to me a wonder. A department store, a mere toy compared with the department stores of America, dazzled me. Its large glass windows and a real sidewalk around it quickened my poetic sense. I seemed to myself to have come face to face with some of the wonders of the world, and my pen spared not in describing the scenes before me.

Alexandria came next, and Port Said was dwarfed in my imagination. I tore up the description of the department store and proceeded to poetize the great city of Alexander.

Shortly after we left this port for Marseilles, the Mediterranean began to be unfriendly. Our quarters on the foredeck, our trunks and bedding, caught the copious spray from every wave. Our gayety changed to grave concern, and all our singing ceased. A peculiar ailment also seized me just below the diaphragm. With our portable beds in our arms we sought more sheltered places, but found them all filled with an inhospitable crowd of Jews and Gentiles. In our extremity, we resorted to a malodorous recess on the port side of the lower deck where many trunks and bundles of clothing had been thrown for shelter, and where ducks and other feathery fellow creatures were kept within wire screens. The ducks gave screams of terror because of our intrusion, and we did no less, because of their presence there. Other human beings joined us in that locality, and we all lay piled on top of that heap of freight, across one another’s bodies, much like the neglected wounded in a great battle.

An incident which occurred in that hole (which I have called ever since ‘the duck apartment’) still lives in my memory, because of its amusing and ethical aspects alike.

Lying across my legs, and barely within shelter, was a very kindhearted, God-fearing man from Damascus. I was just telling him not to allow another person to come in with us, because we were almost suffocated as it was, when we heard a woman approaching us, uttering in the Egyptian dialect terrible imprecations against the steamship company.

I felt that a veritable terror was about to visit us, and very ungallantly called to him, ‘By the life of Heaven, don’t allow this woman in here! ’ In a second she was upon us, and demanded accommodation.

‘ Lewajeh Allah,' — for the face of God,⁴—said the kind-hearted Damascene, and squeezed himself a few inches to one side. In an instant the wrathful Egyptian wedged herself in, squirmed round until she secured the proper leverage, and then kicking mightily with both feet, pushed the beneficent Damascene clear out on the wave-washed deck!

When we landed at Marseilles I could hardly credit my senses. Everything Turkish had disappeared and I was walking the streets of France, the great country of which I had heard so much. My friends having studied at the Syrian Protestant College, besides having a fair knowledge of the English language, knew some French, by the aid of which we escaped on many occasions from the hands of interpreters and ticket-brokers of our own nationality.

In Marseilles I first saw electric lights, which fascinated me beyond description, and there I first marveled at a railway train. I narrowly escaped being run over near the railway station, when I dashed across the track, a very short distance from an incoming train. A uniformed man, who, I infer, was a guard, shouted at me so fiercely that I thought he was beside himself. I was not fully acquainted with the fact that a train would really run over a hopeful and ambitious young man. It was in Marseilles also that I first experienced a distinctly Occidental sensation, when I cast off the soft Turkish fez and put a stiff, and, incidentally, ill-fitting, hat on my head.

At Marseilles we bought tickets for New York. We were shipped by train (third-class) to Paris, whence, after a halt of a few hours during which we wandered in the neighborhood of the railway station,— ‘just to see Paris,’ — we were reshipped to Havre. Here we were herded in a lodging-house, together with many other steerage passengers, for two nights, and were each of us given a table equipment of tinware, consisting of a plate, two spoons differing in size, a cup, and a knife and fork. On the day of sailing we were marched out to the steamer in the style of wellbehaved convicts, carrying our labels in our hats.

The steerage of those days on a secondor third-class steamer certainly fell below the worst tenement house. Hundreds of men, women, and children were herded together in a large and filthy cave in the lower regions of the steamer, under conditions which precluded even the commonest decency. The food was distributed to the passengers in buckets and large tin pans, from which they filled their tin plates and cups, and to the swift was the race.

Fortunately for us ‘college men,’ and thanks to the linguistic qualifications of my two friends, who won the respect of the captain, or an officer who we thought was the captain, we were given quarters with a few others in a room which contained three tiers of three berths each, and which was more or less successfully partitioned from the main steerage quarters. We had our full share of the noise and stench of the general surroundings, but we enjoyed greatly the decency of our partial seclusion.

Almost all the way I suffered from that peculiar sickness whose acquaintance I first made between Alexandria and Marseilles. Having seen much better days at home, the diet of the steamer tortured my soul. The lower class of Europeans did by no means appeal most exquisitely to my æsthetic sense. My physical weakness made the uncertainty of my future and my financial difficulties oppressive to me. But hope remained alive, the great New World, the enchanter of my soul, was very near at hand, and the God of my fathers was my God and helper.

On the evening of October 6, 1891, our steamer cast anchor in the harbor of New York, too late for us to disembark. From some Italian venders who had boarded the ship we bought the needful things for the evening repast. Here I ate the first real meal since we had left Havre. A certain meat composite, strongly spiced, proved unspeakably toothsome to me. Upon inquiry I learned that it was called ‘bologna,’ which term I rooted deeply in my memory as the first trophy of the New World.

Refreshed and sustained by my savory supper, and exhilarated by the thought of my arrival in the great city of New York, I proceeded to the casting of my accounts. The outcome was not all that could be desired. The figures, which ‘do not lie,’ showed that my assets were about nine cents (half a franc) and my liabilities forty dollars, which I owed to my friends. Under those somewhat embarrassing circumstances, I was to face the inspector of immigrants at Ellis Island the following morning.

But the significance of the exact knowledge of my straightened circumstances went with me far beyond the usual depression one feels under similar conditions. I was told by wellinformed fellow-passengers that on the morrow I stood in danger of being deported because the immigration laws of America required an immigrant such as I was, with no family and no position awaiting him in this country, to give satisfactory evidence that he had no less than twenty dollars (the sum must have been a mere guess) on his person; otherwise he could not be admitted into the United States.

That was decidedly unwelcome information. It took away all the pleasure of my bologna supper. To be deported to Turkey! Just think of it! Had my blossoming hopes come so near fruition only to be blasted? I would not ask my friends for more money. They had already told me that they could lend me no more without endangering their own future. But the situation being of such a peculiar nature, my companions came to the rescue by offering to lend me four pounds ‘on demand,’ with which to meet the requirements of the law. I found no reason to reject the offer.

On the following morning, armed with my ‘short loan,’ I stood before the inspector, who was a Syrian, with only slight tremors in my knees. He asked me my age, the name of the Syrian province whence I came, whether I could read and write, took down my description, and then, with a smile, asked me whether I was married. I came very near giving myself away when, with a smile broader still than his, I answered, ‘What should I do with a wife, when I can hardly take care of myself?’

With a very encouraging laugh, he said, ‘ Married Syrian immigrants get on much better in this country than the unmarried.’

I do not know now in what connection I quoted two lines of poetry to the genial inspector, and, with more playfulness than wisdom, asked him whether he knew of any beautiful damsel in the Syrian colony who would consider the advances of a willing young poet. With another hearty smile, he said,

‘Pass on, you are all right.’ He did not ask about money! As we passed out of the building, my merry friends said, ‘Abraham, your wily poetry served you well this time.’ With a mixed feeling of relief and anxiety, I returned the emergency loan and held fast my half franc.

We landed at Battery Place, explored t he dock for our trunks, which we discovered in a small mountain of baggage, and proceeded to a lodginghouse on Washington Street, the chief centre of the Syrian colony in New York.

(To be continued.)