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Mr. Isaacs by F. Marion (Francis Marion) Crawford
page 19 of 266 (07%)
extinguished. And I rose from the stony stairway that seemed like a bed
of flowers for the hopeful dream, and I turned westward, and praised
Allah, and went my way.

"The sun being up, all was life, and the life in me spoke of a most
capacious appetite. So I cast about for a shop where I might buy a
little food with my few coppers, and seeing a confectioner spreading out
his wares, I went near and took stock of the queer balls of flour and
sugar, and strange oily-looking sweetmeats. Having selected what I
thought would be within my modest means, I addressed the shopkeeper to
call his attention, though I knew he would not understand me, and I
touched with my hand the article I wanted, showing with the other some
of the small coins I had. As soon as I touched the sweetmeats the man
became very angry, and bounding from his seat called his neighbours
together, and they all shouted and screamed at me, and called a man I
thought to be a soldier, though he looked more like an ape in his long
loose trousers of dirty black, and his untidy red turban, under which
cumbrous garments his thin and stunted frame seemed even blacker and
more contemptible than nature had made them. I afterwards discovered him
to be one of the Bombay police. He seized me by the arm, and I, knowing
I had done no wrong, and curious to discover, if possible, what the
trouble was, accompanied him whither he led me. After waiting many hours
in a kind of little shed where there were more policemen, I was brought
before an Englishman. Of course all attempts at explanation were
useless. I could speak not a word of anything but Arabic and Persian,
and no one present understood either. At last, when I was in despair,
trying to muster a few words of Greek I had learned in Istamboul, and
failing signally therein, an old man with a long beard looked curiously
in at the door of the crowded court. Some instinct told me to appeal to
him, and I addressed him in Arabic. To my infinite relief he replied in
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