On our way from a journey to the Cedars, while engaged in the present Work, we passed through a pine forest, in which were some tangled bushes of the clematis. The muleteer stops near one of these and stoops to reach something he had seen therein. No treasure-trove, alas, as he supposed; but merely a book for which he lacerated his hands and which he cursed and handed to us, saying, “This must be the breviary of some monk.”
No, it was an English book, and of American origin, and of a kind quite rare in America. Indeed, here were a find and surprise as agreeable as Khalid’s sweetbrier bush. Henry Thoreau’s Week! What a miracle of chance. Whose this mutilated copy of the Week, we thought? Who in these mountains, having been in America, took more interest in the Dreamer of Walden Woods than in peddling and trading? We walk our mule, looking about in vague, restless surprise, as if seeking in the woods a lost companion, and lo, we reach a monarch pine on which is carved the name of—Khalid! This book, then, must be his; the name on the pine tree is surely his own; we know his hand as well as his turn of mind. But who can say if this be his Kaaba, this his pine-mosque? Might he not only have passed through these glades to other parts? Signs, indeed, are here of his feet and hands, if not of his tent-pegs. And what signifies his stay? No matter how long he might have put up here, it is but a passage, deeply considered: like Thoreau’s passage through Walden woods, like Mohammad’s through the desert.
This leisure hour is the nipple of the soul. And fortunate they who are not artificially suckled, who know this hour no matter how brief, who get their nipple at the right time. If they do not, no pabulum ever after, will their indurated tissues assimilate. Do you wonder why the world is full of crusty souls? and why to them this infant hour, this suckling while, is so repugnant? But we must not intrude more of such remarks about mankind. Whether rightly suckled or not, we manage to live; but whether we do so marmot-like or Maronite-like, is not the question here to be considered. To pray for your bread or to burrow in the earth for it, is it not the same with most people? Given a missionary with a Bible in his hip-pocket or a peasant with a load of brushwood on his back and the same gastric coefficient, and you will have in either case a resulting expansion for six feet of coffin ground and a fraction of Allah’s mercy. Our poor missionary, is it worth while to cross the seas for this? Marmot-like or Maronite-like—but soft you know! Here is our peasant with his overshadowing load of brushwood. And there is another, and another. They are carrying fuel to the lime-pit ahead of us yonder. What brow-sweat, what time, what fire, what suffering and patient toil, the lime-washing, or mere liming, of our houses and sepulchres, requires. That cone structure there, that artificial volcano, with its crackling, flaming bowels and its fuliginous, coruscating crater, must our hardy peasants feed continually for twenty days and nights.
But the book and the name on the pine, we would know more of these signs, if possible. And so, we visit the labourers of the kiln. They are yodeling, the while they work, and jesting and laughing. The stokers, with flaming, swollen eyes, their tawny complexion waxing a brilliant bronze, their sweat making golden furrows therein, with their pikes and pitchforks busy, are terribly magnificent to behold. Here be men who would destroy Bastilles for you, if it were nominated in the bond. And there is the monk-foreman—the kiln is of the monastery’s estate—reading his breviary while the lime is in making. Indeed, these sodalities of the Lebanons are not what their vows and ascetic theologies would make them. No lean-jowled, hungry-looking devotees, living in exiguity and droning in exinanition their prayers—not by any means. Their fleshpots are not a few, and their table is a marvel of ascetism! And why not, if their fat estates—three-quarter of the lands here is held in mortmain by the clergy—can yield anything, from silk cocoons to lime-pits? They will clothe you in silk at least; they will lime-wash your homes and sepulchres, if they cannot lime-wash anything else. Thanks to them so long as they keep some reminiscence of business in their heads to keep the Devil out of it.
The monk-foreman is reading with one eye and watching with the other. “Work,” cries he, “every minute wasted is stolen from the abbey. And whoso steals, look in the pit: its fire is nothing compared with Jahannam.” And the argument serves its purpose. The labourers hurry hither and thither, bringing brushwood near; the first stoker pitches to the second, the second to the third, and he feeds the flaming, smoking, coruscating volcano. “Yallah!” (Keep it up) exclaims the monk-foreman. “Burn the devil’s creed,” cries one. “Burn hell,” cries another. And thus jesting in earnest, mightily working and enduring, they burn the mountains into lime, they make the very rocks yield somewhat.—Strength and blessings, brothers.
After the usual inquiry of whence and whither, his monkship offers the snuffbox. “No? roll you, then, a cigarette,” taking out a plush pouch containing a mixture of the choicest native roots. These, we were told, are grown on the monastery’s estate. We speak of the cocoon products of the season.
“Beshrew the mulberries!” exclaims the monk. “We are turning all our estates into fruit orchards and orangeries. The cultivation of the silkworm is in itself an abomination. And while its income today is not as much as it was ten years ago, the expenditure has risen twofold. America is ruining our agriculture; and soon, I suppose, we have to send to China
