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<h2> CURIOUS RELIC FOR SALE </h2>
<p>"For sale, for the benefit of the Fund for the Relief of the Widows<br/>
and Orphans of Deceased Firemen, a Curious Ancient Bedouin Pipe,<br/>
procured at the city of Endor in Palestine, and believed to have<br/>
once belonged to the justly-renowned Witch of Endor. Parties<br/>
desiring to examine this singular relic with a view to purchasing,<br/>
can do so by calling upon Daniel S., 119 and 121 William street, New<br/>
York"<br/></p>
<p>As per advertisement in the "Herald." A curious old relic indeed, as I had
a good personal right to know. In a single instant of time, a long drawn
panorama of sights and scenes in the Holy Land flashed through my memory—town
and grove, desert, camp, and caravan clattering after each other and
disappearing, leaving me with a little of the surprised and dizzy feeling
which I have experienced at sundry times when a long express train has
overtaken me at some quiet curve and gone whizzing, car by car, around the
corner and out of sight. In that prolific instant I saw again all the
country from the Sea of Galilee and Nazareth clear to Jerusalem, and
thence over the hills of Judea and through the Vale of Sharon to Joppa,
down by the ocean. Leaving out unimportant stretches of country and
details of incident, I saw and experienced the following described matters
and things. Immediately three years fell away from my age, and a vanished
time was restored to me—September, 1867. It was a flaming Oriental
day—this one that had come up out of the past and brought along its
actors, its stage-properties, and scenic effects—and our party had
just ridden through the squalid hive of human vermin which still holds the
ancient Biblical name of Endor; I was bringing up the rear on my grave
four-dollar steed, who was about beginning to compose himself for his
usual noon nap. My! only fifteen minutes before how the black, mangy,
nine-tenths naked, ten-tenths filthy, ignorant, bigoted, besotted, hungry,
lazy, malignant, screeching, crowding, struggling, wailing, begging,
cursing, hateful spawn of the original Witch had swarmed out of the caves
in the rocks and the holes and crevices in the earth, and blocked our
horses' way, besieged us, threw themselves in the animals' path, clung to
their manes, saddle-furniture, and tails, asking, beseeching, demanding
"bucksheesh! bucksheesh! BUCKSHEESH!" We had rained small copper Turkish
coins among them, as fugitives fling coats and hats to pursuing wolves,
and then had spurred our way through as they stopped to scramble for the
largess. I was fervently thankful when we had gotten well up on the
desolate hillside and outstripped them and left them jawing and
gesticulating in the rear. What a tempest had seemingly gone roaring and
crashing by me and left its dull thunders pulsing in my ears!</p>
<p>I was in the rear, as I was saying. Our pack-mules and Arabs were far
ahead, and Dan, Jack, Moult, Davis, Denny, Church, and Birch (these names
will do as well as any to represent the boys) were following close after
them. As my horse nodded to rest, I heard a sort of panting behind me, and
turned and saw that a tawny youth from the village had overtaken me—a
true remnant and representative of his ancestress the Witch—a
galvanised scurvy, wrought into the human shape and garnished with
ophthalmia and leprous scars—an airy creature with an invisible
shirt-front that reached below the pit of his stomach, and no other
clothing to speak of except a tobacco-pouch, an ammunition-pocket, and a
venerable gun, which was long enough to club any game with that came
within shooting distance, but far from efficient as an article of dress.</p>
<p>I thought to myself, "Now this disease with a human heart in it is going
to shoot me." I smiled in derision at the idea of a Bedouin daring to
touch off his great-grandfather's rusty gun and getting his head blown off
for his pains. But then it occurred to me, in simple school-boy language,
"Suppose he should take deliberate aim and 'haul off' and fetch me with
the butt-end of it?" There was wisdom in that view of it, and I stopped to
parley. I found he was only a friendly villain who wanted a trifle of
bucksheesh, and after begging what he could get in that way, was perfectly
willing to trade off everything he had for more. I believe he would have
parted with his last shirt for bucksheesh if he had had one. He was
smoking the "humbliest" pipe I ever saw—a dingy, funnel-shaped,
red-clay thing, streaked and grimed with oil and tears of tobacco, and
with all the different kinds of dirt there are, and thirty per cent. of
them peculiar and indigenous to Endor and perdition. And rank? I never
smelt anything like it. It withered a cactus that stood lifting its
prickly hands aloft beside the trail. It even woke up my horse. I said I
would take that. It cost me a franc, a Russian kopek, a brass button, and
a slate pencil; and my spendthrift lavishness so won upon the son of the
desert that he passed over his pouch of most unspeakably villainous
tobacco to me as a free gift. What a pipe it was, to be sure! It had a
rude brass-wire cover to it, and a little coarse iron chain suspended from
the bowl, with an iron splinter attached to loosen up the tobacco and pick
your teeth with. The stem looked like the half of a slender walking-stick
with the bark on.</p>
<p>I felt that this pipe had belonged to the original Witch of Endor as soon
as I saw it; and as soon as I smelt it, I knew it. Moreover, I asked the
Arab cub in good English if it was not so, and he answered in good Arabic
that it was. I woke up my horse and went my way, smoking. And presently I
said to myself reflectively, "If there is anything that could make a man
deliberately assault a dying cripple, I reckon may be an unexpected whiff
from this pipe would do it." I smoked along till I found I was beginning
to lie, and project murder, and steal my own things out of one pocket and
hide them in another; and then I put up my treasure, took off my spurs and
put them under my horse's tail, and shortly came tearing through our
caravan like a hurricane.</p>
<p>From that time forward, going to Jerusalem, the Dead Sea, and the Jordan,
Bethany, Bethlehem, and everywhere, I loafed contentedly in the rear and
enjoyed my infamous pipe and revelled in imaginary villany. But at the end
of two weeks we turned our faces toward the sea and journeyed over the
Judean hills, and through rocky defiles, and among the scenes that Samson
knew in his youth, and by and by we touched level ground just at night,
and trotted off cheerily over the plain of Sharon. It was perfectly jolly
for three hours, and we whites crowded along together, close after the
chief Arab muleteer (all the pack-animals and the other Arabs were miles
in the rear), and we laughed, and chatted, and argued hotly about Samson,
and whether suicide was a sin or not, since Paul speaks of Samson
distinctly as being saved and in heaven. But by and by the night air, and
the duskiness, and the weariness of eight hours in the saddle, began to
tell, and conversation flagged and finally died out utterly. The
squeak-squeaking of the saddles grew very distinct; occasionally somebody
sighed, or started to hum a tune and gave it up; now and then a horse
sneezed. These things only emphasised the solemnity and the stillness.
Everybody got so listless that for once I and my dreamer found ourselves
in the lead. It was a glad, new sensation, and I longed to keep the place
forevermore. Every little stir in the dingy cavalcade behind made me
nervous. Davis and I were riding side by side, right after the Arab. About
11 o'clock it had become really chilly, and the dozing boys roused up and
began to inquire how far it was to Ramlah yet, and to demand that the Arab
hurry along faster. I gave it up then, and my heart sank within me,
because of course they would come up to scold the Arab. I knew I had to
take the rear again. In my sorrow I unconsciously took to my pipe, my only
comfort. As I touched the match to it the whole company came lumbering up
and crowding my horse's rump and flanks. A whiff of smoke drifted back
over my shoulder, and—</p>
<p>"The suffering Moses!"</p>
<p>"Whew!"</p>
<p>"By George, who opened that graveyard?"</p>
<p>"Boys, that Arab's been swallowing something dead!"</p>
<p>Right away there was a gap behind us. Whiff after whiff sailed airily
back, and each one widened the breach. Within fifteen seconds the barking,
and gasping, and sneezing, and coughing of the boys, and their angry abuse
of the Arab guide, had dwindled to a murmur, and Davis and I were alone
with the leader. Davis did not know what the matter was, and don't to this
day. Occasionally he caught a faint film of the smoke and fell to scolding
at the Arab and wondering how long he had been decaying in that way. Our
boys kept on dropping back further and further, till at last they were
only in hearing, not in sight. And every time they started gingerly
forward to reconnoitre—or shoot the Arab, as they proposed to do—I
let them get within good fair range of my relic (she would carry seventy
yards with wonderful precision), and then wafted a whiff among them that
sent them gasping and strangling to the rear again. I kept my gun well
charged and ready, and twice within the hour I decoyed the boys right up
to my horse's tail, and then with one malarious blast emptied the saddles,
almost. I never heard an Arab abused so in my life. He really owed his
preservation to me, because for one entire hour I stood between him and
certain death. The boys would have killed him if they could have got by
me.</p>
<p>By and by, when the company were far in the rear, I put away my pipe—I
was getting fearfully dry and crisp about the gills and rather blown with
good diligent work—and spurred my animated trance up alongside the
Arab and stopped him and asked for water. He unslung his little
gourd-shaped earthenware jug, and I put it under my moustache and took a
long, glorious, satisfying draught. I was going to scour the mouth of the
jug a little, but I saw that I had brought the whole train together once
more by my delay, and that they were all anxious to drink too—and
would have been long ago if the Arab had not pretended that he was out of
water. So I hastened to pass the vessel to Davis. He took a mouthful, and
never said a word, but climbed off his horse and lay down calmly in the
road. I felt sorry for Davis. It was too late now, though, and Dan was
drinking. Dan got down too, and hunted for a soft place. I thought I heard
Dan say, "That Arab's friends ought to keep him in alcohol or else take
him out and bury him somewhere." All the boys took a drink and climbed
down. It is not well to go into further particulars. Let us draw the
curtain upon this act.</p>
<p>..............................<br/></p>
<p>Well, now, to think that after three changing years I should hear from
that curious old relic again, and see Dan advertising it for sale for the
benefit of a benevolent object. Dan is not treating that present right. I
gave that pipe to him for a keepsake. However, he probably finds that it
keeps away custom and interferes with business. It is the most convincing
inanimate object in all this part of the world, perhaps. Dan and I were
room-mates in all that long "Quaker City" voyage, and whenever I desired
to have a little season of privacy I used to fire up on that pipe and
persuade Dan to go out; and he seldom waited to change his clothes,
either. In about a quarter, or from that to three-quarters of a minute, he
would be propping up the smoke-stack on the upper deck and cursing. I
wonder how the faithful old relic is going to sell?</p>
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