406 
A CRUSADE IN THE EAST. 
rice; but having no appetite, I contented myself with the 
coffee and a small piece of bread ; after which I called for a 
chibouck, and endeavored to soothe my nervous system by a 
comfortable smoke. The conversation turned incidentally 
upon the affair of the onions. I was averse to any allusion to 
so humiliating an episode in our tour, and made several at¬ 
tempts to change the subject. It was no easy matter, as may 
be supposed, to silence our dragoman when any thing unusual 
was weighing upon his mind ; he had to give vent to his in¬ 
dignation in some way, and the most natural was by talking. 
Although he spoke in English which it was not likely the 
old Arab woman understood, he had hitherto kept a guarded 
watch upon his tongue ; but now finding she had disappear¬ 
ed, he broke forth in his usual strain of violence. He de¬ 
nounced the whole female sex as the root of all evil; he pro¬ 
tested that he would sooner be tied to the tail of a wild horse 
than to any female that ever breathed ; he swore that the 
insult offered by that old hag to his beloved friend and mas¬ 
ter, would rankle in his breast until he had slain every male 
member in the family. I was greatly moved at this avowal 
of sympathy and devotion, and did my best to soothe the 
excited feelings of Yusef, by telling him that the greatest of 
mankind were subject to the caprices of fate ; that charges 
alike humiliating had been preferred against high officers of 
state and other great men, who required far more to be dis¬ 
tinguished for integrity than myself; that in the present case 
this was an ignorant old woman, who was more to be pitied 
for her ignorance than blamed for the injustice she had done 
me ; that it was very true many evils in this life could be 
traced to the gentler sex, yet we could not well do without 
this source of trouble, for were we alone in the world we 
would find ourselves much more miserable, and in all proba¬ 
bility would pine away for want of something to make us 
only as unhappy as we were before, and in the end become 
totally extinct. To this Yusef replied that he felt the full 
force of my remarks, and would even go as far as to admit 
that perhaps this was one of the necessary evils of life ; but 
what he most insisted upon was, that there was no other evil 
