ABSTRACT
MH.—WALKED out this morning and found no one in the streets; every body was still in bed, or shut up in their houses, being the first day of the Ramadan. A paralysis of death seemed to have stricken the city. Had no morning patients for the same reason. Afterwards, the servants of the Rais came to visit me and found me taking coffee ; they gaped with full (empty ?) open mouths, as if wondering I was not choked. I asked them if the Rais would take his tea. " It's unlawful," they screamed, and ran away as if Old Nick were after them. Usually make tea for the Governor every morning, which I send him in a glass, and sometimes also for the Sheikh Makouran. I could not help thanking God that I was born a Protestant, and professed a religion not in violence to the physical requirements of human nature, nor in contradiction to the plain sense of
mankind. Man has evils enough to contend with, and to war against, without inflicting new and additional evils upon himself, like this most health-trying and healthdestroying Ramadan. My turjeman confessed every body was mad in Ramadan. Whatever becomes of me in the deserts of Africa, I hope I shall have force of mind enough to maintain my religion intact.
