However, when the Mussulman, careering over Sahara, finds himself, by a
stumble of his horse, rolling in the sand, with his yataghan, pistols,
and turban scattered around him, he rises quietly, and exclaims, 'Allah
is great!' I know a Christian would have expended his wrath in a variety
of anathemas highly edifying, and close by wishing his unfortunate steed
in a much warmer climate than the Mohammedan has any idea of. I am a
poor church-man: let me emulate the philosophy of the simple child of
the desert, and when I fall into trouble bear it patiently.

"I wonder what the grim savage would do were he short of money in a land
thronging with beggars and other blissful adjuncts of civilization? Woe
unto every blind or club-foot man, and every one-armed or scalded woman,
_I_ meet to-day! They shall work out their own salvation with fear and
trembling, or I'm an idiot.

"Why, bless my soul, the fortunes bequeathed to all the novel-heroes
created this century, would not begin to supply them!"

Redfield shook his head decidedly when he came to this part of his
monologue, and put the gold and silver coins back into his pocket.

"I hate poor people--I positively do! I despise their pale faces and
cadaverous expression. I detest straggling little girls who come up to
you and say their mothers have been bedridden for three months, and all
their little brothers and sisters are down with the fever. I know it's
a lie. I can detect at once the professional whine, and am certain the
story has been repeated by rote a hundred times that day; but for the
life of me I cannot put out from my mind the imaginary picture of the
half-furnished room in some filthy back street, with a forlorn woman
with red hair stretched on a bed of straw, and half a dozen or more