Told in the gardens of Araby (untranslated until now)

By IZORA CHANDLER and MARY W. MONTGOMERY
NEW YORK: EATON & MAINS CINCINNATI: JENNINGS & GRAHAM
Memory swings backward to revel in a certain Garden of Delight; to picture the high whitewashed wall, topped with red tiles, and guarding within its quadrangle of acres clustering palms, grave cypress trees, the fig, quince, orange, pomegranate, and mulberry; also the gray olive, with roots twisted out of the soil as if by force and seeming to hint that, once upon a time, giant souls were imprisoned within each grizzly trunk and struggled themselves to death, in mad wrestlings after freedom.
Through this Garden, in which Memory lies dreaming, a silvery stream flows from a marble basin. Into this basin play the waters from a tree-shaded fountain. Beside it sits a gruff old pelican, eyeing dweller and guest with equal disfavor. This bird of desolation likes not his fair prison. Sweeter, to his ear, is the owl’s hoot than any music distilled by human voices.
Attention is fastened upon these patient dumb creatures. At this, the young hostess—who, by the way, speaks Arabic, modern Greek, French, German, English; who interprets Chopin with appealing sympathy upon the piano in the beautiful drawing-room; and, upon occasion, picks her mandolin to light, minor-keyed melodies—decides that the American lady must have a ride about the garden.
The white beasts trot placidly over the graveled walks of the quadrangle, and the pastime is growing pleasant to the rider. But “Faster! faster!” commands the young hostess. “It is not with this sleep of the day that we should seek to amuse one who comes from the Land of Haste! Faster! Ismail, faster!”
Time is not given in which to explain that a mild gait is preferred; for the Arab boy at once enters into the spirit of his mistress—strikes a resounding blow upon each snowy flank, with such immediate effect that the unaccustomed rider slides from her insecure position and joins in the merriment.
“Alas! the Orient has broken your spirit! It is not like this that in your own country you would ride. Think you that I do not know?”