belonged to Peckham, and dwelt near
the Enchantress; and that the Nelson never got
further west than Fleet Street.

Thus it appears to me that godfathers
have been playing absurd games with
omnibuses; that the sooner they find useful names
for their vehicles the better, both for the
public and for themselves. Let them take
counsel of the Putney, the Chelsea, and the
Kensington proprietors.

THE GOSSIP OF LEBANON

There is village gossip everywhere. I was
for some time domesticated in the village of
Betela on the Lebanon, and there we had our
gossip certainly we had. Would you believe
that the wife of sheik Useph (the chief of the
Druse sheiks among us) met my wife one day
at the house of a mutual friend, and said she
to my wife, " Why have you lived so long in
our village without calling to see me."
"Being a stranger here," my wife answered,
"I thought it was not my place to pay the
first visit." " Oh! " answered Madam Useph,
very quickly, " it was not to be supposed that
I could think of calling upon you, because you
reside in that portion of the village belonging
to the younger branch of sheiks." My wife,
understanding this, called upon the good lady
on the following day, and was warmly
welcomed; refreshment was offered her of pipes,
coffee, sherbet, and sweetmeats; but during
the whole of our stay on the Lebanon we were
not honoured with a return visit from Madam
Useph.

I never could understand very much, from
talk we had in Betela, of the Druse religion.
I believe it is a dark subject with most
people, and there is not much light thrown
on it in books. The vulgar seem to be
profane, the common Druse has no religion,
but confides the practice of it as wholly
to the priests as we confide to a standing
army (or a volunteer militia) the business
of war. Once upon a time, about eight
hundred and fifty years ago, there was a
man named Hakim-be-Aonrehi, of Cairo,
one of the family of Fatimists, caliphs of
Bagdad. Hakim preached a sort of doctrine
which Derussi pronounced admirable, Hakim-
be-Aonrehi died, Derussi preached, and his
followers were Derussis or Druses. But his
followers were very few in Cairo, so he went
into Syria, and settled at last on the Libanus,
where he found people willing to accept him
for a prophet. The people who were profited
by the prophet Derussi liked his easy doctrine,
that they had nothing at all to do. I believe
that there exist to this day among the Druses
no places of common worship, and few forms
or ceremonies. A few individuals who are
called " Acal," or the Initiated, act as priests,
and are obliged to conform to certain habits,
and submit to some restrictions. If one of
these religious men, for example, should
chance to have an estate or money bequeathed
to him, he is obliged to satisfy his conscience
by exchanging it for something else, equal in
value, of which he can be quite sure that it
has never passed through wicked hands. A
Mussulman abhors a Druse more than a
Christian. One, he says, has a religion, and
does worship the true God: the other has
no religion, and is worse, therefore, than,
a dog.

It is wrong, however, to say, that the Druse
priests have no ceremonies. One night the
child of a sheik died in our village. At
daybreak it was laid out and buried. The burial
was in this fashion. The corpse went first
upon a cushion, the little child decently
covered with a yellow handkerchief. Beside
the corpse walked half-a-dozen priests, in
flowing beards, wearing enormous white
turbans and blue robes. All the sheiks in
the village followed, howling mournfully.
No women were present. The tomb to which
they travelled was a vault hollowed out of the
road-side rock, belonging to the elder branch
of sheiks. When it was reached, the body
was set down before the entrance, and the
priests, forming a circle around it, began a
series of prayers, accompanied with many
gestures, and varied occasionally with a dirge.
The gestures consisted in holding the hands
together before the face after the manner of
an open book, resting them on the turban,
touching the forehead and cheeks, and finally
resolved themselves always into a
vigorous stroking of the beard. The body was
then taken into the vault and placed in a
wooden, box or coffin. This having been
done, the priests re-assembled outside, and
seating themselves in a circle, concluded
the ceremony with a prayer. During the
service the followers, who formed a framework
to the whole scene, stood or sat, as
it pleased them, smoking their long pipes,
and accompanying each whiff with a melancholy moan.

Poor child! I do not wonder that it died.
I wonder how any children lived that were
born in our village. I used to look with
wonder at the sugar-loaf heads of the Arabs,
when they lifted up their fez or turban. The
heads were all well-shaven, except that there
was left a small top-knot of hair—for the
convenience of those who would have
hereafter to pull them up to heaven—so on the
shaven heads one could not but remark with,
surprise the conical shape. I nearly found to
my cost how this was managed by the
compression of the skull in infancy. A little son
came to me on the Lebanon, whose Arab
nurse has never ceased to grieve that she
was not allowed to make him a complete
beauty.

The souls of good men and children when
they die, go, said the Druses of our village,
into the bodies of free beasts—gazelles, hares,
foxes: those of the wicked inhabit beasts of
burden, so that they may get well beaten.
I once saw a poor horse in another village on