United States or Western Sahara ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
In the meantime, I went down to the Turkish houses, to cultivate the acquaintance of a singular character I met on board the steamer. He is a negro of six feet four, dressed in a long scarlet robe. His name is Mahommed Senoosee, and he is a fakeer, or holy man, from Timbuctoo.
Sometimes a fakeer trusted a shade too far in the protection of his sacredness. In the middle of a tally-sheet of Feringhea's, who had been out with forty Thugs, I find a case of the kind.
Coleridge and Alexander Knox have changed the minds, and with them the acts, of thousands; and when they are accused of having originated, unknowingly, the whole "Tractarian" movement, those who have watched English thought carefully can only answer, that on the confession of the elder Tractarians themselves, the allegation is true: but that they originated a dozen other "movements" beside in the most opposite directions, and that free-thinking Emersonians will be as ready as Romish perverts and good plain English churchmen to confess that the critical point of their life was determined by the writings of the fakeer of Highgate.
Sometimes a fakeer trusted a shade too far in the protection of his sacredness. In the middle of a tally-sheet of Feringhea's, who had been out with forty Thugs, I find a case of the kind.
Our new companion was armed to the teeth, having a long gun with a heavy wooden stock and nondescript lock, and a sword of excellent metal. It was, in fact, a weapon of the old Greek empire, and the cross was still enamelled in gold at the root of the blade, in spite of all his efforts to scratch it out. He was something of a fakeer, having made a pilgrimage to Mecca and Jerusalem.
The Vizier then gave orders for the guard to mount their horses, and the Sultan resolved to accompany the Vizier, the fakeer being carried between two of the guards to point out the scene of the encounter.
When she heard of the errand on which the messengers had come, she sent for them when the Fakeer was out, and said to them: "Give me the bag of gold mohurs, and you shall take my little daughter to marry the Muchie Rajah." At these words the poor girl went down to the river very sorrowful, for she saw no hope of escape, as her father was from home.
In a retired spot, resting himself under a tree, was a holy person a naked black fakeer, thin and skinny, and whitey-gray all over with ashes. By and by to the elephant stables, and I took a ride; but it was by request I did not ask for it, and didn't want it; but I took it, because otherwise they would have thought I was afraid, which I was.
This one, so old, so long ago gone down into oblivion, reads with the same freshness and charm that attach to the news in the morning paper; one's spirits go up, then down, then up again, following the chances which the fakeer is running; now you hope, now you despair, now you hope again; and at last everything comes out right, and you feel a great wave of personal satisfaction go weltering through you, and without thinking, you put out your hand to pat Mithoo on the back, when puff! the whole thing has vanished away, there is nothing there; Mithoo and all the crowd have been dust and ashes and forgotten, oh, so many, many, many lagging years!
But presently they came to a shrine, where a Fakeer performed miracles. "Ah!" said the priest, "here are the true grounds of faith. The peacock was but an adminicle. This is the base of our religion." And he beat upon his breast, and groaned like one with colic. "Now to me," said the virtuous person, "all this is as little to the purpose as the peacock.
Word Of The Day