304 
A CRUSADE IN THE EAST. 
roamed, thy footsteps are marked in tear-drops; thy whole 
life has been a constant overflow of tears; thy lachrymal 
ducts have never yet been dry, and never will, until the tear- 
bags within are withered up in dust; nay, even then thou 
wilt start new floods from that feeling heart, and weep that 
the world hath lost a Poet and a Philosopher. Wherefore, I 
—a simple General in the Bobtail Militia, following in thy 
footsteps on a Crusade against the Mists of Fancy—do venture 
to assert that hadst thou seen us in this old mill, beset by 
fleas, donkeys, and filthy Arabs, thou wouldst have opened 
thy flood-gates of sympathy and refreshed us with balmy sighs 
and copious showers of gentle tears. 
Now, as long as our grievances were confined to vermin, 
dirt, and noisy Arabs, we bore them very cheerfully, and 
even admitted that little afflictions of that kind add materi¬ 
ally to the spice of travel; but when it came to making asses 
of us by placing us on a par with such animals, it was alto¬ 
gether too much to be borne. I had often heard that travel¬ 
ing makes one acquainted with strange bed-fellows, but in all 
my previous experience I had never been subjected to the mor¬ 
tification of sleeping in the same bed with two genuine asses. 
“ What,” said I, fired with honest indignation, “ are we to 
stand this ? Breathes there a man with soul so dead that 
he’ll voluntarily sleep with a pair of vile asses ?” 
“Ho, Yusef!” cried the Captain, “we’ll be ass-assinated 
if you don’t turn these abominable beasts out. We are in 
danger of being devoured bodily.” 
Yusef declared that he was very sorry, but it was a Moham¬ 
medan custom to show great tenderness and respect to ani¬ 
mals of the brute kind; he would ask the miller to put the 
asses out, but could not insist upon it as a matter of right. 
Another exciting conversation now took place in which all 
the Arabs participated. Yusef stormed, threatened, and 
swore ; the old miller protested, remonstrated, and finally de¬ 
clared that he could not be guilty of any thing so inhuman; 
that he would sooner drive out of his house on a rainy night 
the brother of his affections than the asses of his heart; so, to 
make peace, the asses of his heart were suffered to remain. 
