Allah, il Allah! for God and the right,
Press on, lance and spear, to the glorious fight;
Though our life-blood in torrents should crimson our plains,
Better freedom in death than existence in chains.
On, lions of Islam, the wolves are afraid,
See, see, how they shrink from your conquering blade!
Strike swiftly, and spare not—yon turbanless crowd
Sought our desert for conquest to find it their shroud.
HOBBIES IN OUR BLOCK.
IF every madman, and monomaniac, every idiot and imbecile in our block were to be transplanted to-morrow, what a lot of room would be left, and what a howling wilderness the place would become! I don’t know a completely, take him all round sort of a sensible man in the community. Every one of my acquaintances has some ridiculous hobby. There’s Smith. His failing is dogs. He has a miniature Kennel Club show up at his place. He has such a multitude of canine live-stock that he has to have them entered in a ledger, and he calls over the muster-roll every night to see that none of his barks have steered their course to other ports. He has lost all his friends through his hobby. When a fellow sheds his gore at the knocker, owing to the attentions of a bulldog with powerful jaws; and when he loses a square foot of his trousers in the lobby through the inquiring nature of a mastiff; and when he is brought to bay at the parlor door by a ferocious bloodhound that seems inclined to take an evening meal off him; and when he is transformed into a statue of adamant in his seat by the consciousness that there are half a dozen variegated specimens of fighting-dogs merely waiting a movement from him as a signal to chaw him up—under such circumstances one don’t feel inclined to take advantage of Smith’s hospitality too often.
Brown’s weakness is flowers. Brown is always handicapped in the race of life by a desire to linger on the wayside and breathe the fragrance of the lily and the rose, the daffadowndilly, and the potato blossom. You never meet Brown but he wants you to inhale the perfume of some horticultural wonder or other. The last time I met him he wanted me to envelop my senses with the heavenly odor of some infernal tulip he had with him. There was one of the most energetic bees I ever encountered hidden away in its petals. To gratify Brown I took a ten-horse-power sniff. I never smelt anything like it before. I carried my nose about in a sling for a fortnight afterwards.
Johnson’s hobby is old porcelain. His delirious desire to indulge in all kinds of ancient crockery, broken earthen-ware, blue-moulded slop-basins, and cracked washing-mugs has so affected his brain that he believes himself a Dresden china jug, and is frightened out of his life that he may be smashed. He’s afraid to shake hands with anybody, lest his handle might be broken; he speaks in a whisper, for fear of injuring his spout; and he is in such dread of being cracked that it takes him half an hour to sit down.
But Robinson, next door, is the worst case I know. His mental contortion is due to an insane desire to collect foreign postage stamps. He has carried his mania to a miraculous extent. I have known him to go down in a coal-mine to secure a rare specimen from a collier; he has been up in a balloon to coax a scarce sort of stamp out of the aeronaut, and he would have pitched him overboard if he hadn’t promised to turn it up; he has changed his religion half a dozen times to get round persons that he thought could contribute to his album; and on one occasion, when another crazy collector called on him in the middle of the night with a hundred or so of rare, unused stamps, as he couldn’t find the matches, and didn’t know where he had hung his pants, he just gummed the stamps round about his noble figure, and went to bed rejoicing. Unluckily, the mucilage of that distant shore, whose fatal postage stamps added a picturesque variety to his unadorned appearance which it had lacked before—that mucilage was of a diabolical stickiness, and after a week’s sponging and fingering, and disposing himself in a series of striking attitudes over the spout of a kettle, he found that he couldn’t improve his new costume without destroying its component parts, so he has travelled the dull journey of every-day life since with a kaleidoscopic arrangement of postage stamps attached to his hide, and a knowledge that he will be well worth skinning when he pegs out. It is inconvenient not to be in a position to exhibit his entire assortment to his friends. With some intimate acquaintances he can be confidential, and after going over his half-dozen ordinary albums it is really magnificent to be able to peel off the garb of civilization and invite inspection of his remaining treasures. But to most enthusiasts in the philatelic line he can only drop mysterious hints of what he could show them if the customs of the country permitted its costumes to be more scanty.
NOT A JOHN L. SULLIVAN.
I HAVE never taken any interest in pugilism since my schoolboy days.
I studied it once then, with highly unsatisfactory results.
There was a boy called Bill at the school where I imbibed my knowledge, who was the bane of my existence. He used to take liberties with my marbles, and make free with my pegtops, and fly his kites with my string, and knock me down and sit on me when I remonstrated.