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the most imaginative mind can conceive, or as
are sometimes presented to it in dream. They
travel with us for miles—and then fade, and
one is tempted to ask whether some of the most
fascinating scenes of life through which we pass
may not after all be unreal like them.
The most usual picture presented to the
eye is that of a scene adorned with graceful
date palms surrounding the margin of a silver
lake. This picture grows out of the sand, fixes
itself in the eyes of the beholder and so over-
powers his faculties as to make it impossible to
think that it can be unreal—until it vanishes.
My fourtiu—sdsit to Arabia has made me
•/ *r -— -~
stronger in soul, though the body has passed
through illness and experienced some of the
usual discomforts of the journey. The desert,
where one gets nothing but sunshine and pure
air, is a wonderful restorer. It teaches patience
and fortitude and expands the soul. It gives
one the feeling of being a shareholder in Infinity !
Thinking of human pride and the fate of
Empires while traversing a desert on the way
to Medina (in 1938) and brooding over the
vastness of God's Empire these lines came to me
near Rabegh:
" A thousand years of human pride J
To Him are but a day. f
His realms uncounted phantoms hide, I
Of Empires in decay." f
In his vision of Now and Hereafter, Sir Nizamat