* It may seem a stretch of fancy, but even the bournous
itself, with its classic outline and flowing folds, loses
half its dignity and picturesqueness on these men. It has
been rather vulgarised of late years in Western Europe; and
when we see it carried on the arm of an Arab (as we do
sometimes), there is a suggestion of opera stalls, and
lingering last good nights on unromantic doorsteps, that is
fatal to its patriarchal character.
A step lower, of which there are too many examples in the crowd, and there is a sadder metamorphose yet—the patriarch turned scamp—one who has left his family and his tribe to seek his fortune. Look at him, with his ragged bournous, his dirt and his cringing ways, and contrast his life now, with what he has voluntarily abandoned. Oh! how civilization has lowered him in his own eyes, how his courage has turned to bravado, and his tact to cunning; how even natural affection has languished, and family ties are but threads of the lightest tissue. He has failed in his endeavour to trade, he has disobeyed the Koran, and is an outcast and unclean—one of the waifs and strays of cities!
As we wend our way homeward (as John Bunyan says), 'thinking of these things,' we see two tall white figures go down to the water side, like the monks in Millais' picture of 'A Dream of the Past.' They stand on the bank in the evening light, their reflections repeated in the water. It is the hour of prayer; what are they doing? They are fishing with a modern rod and line, and their little floats are painted with the tricolour!
[Original]
