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Updated: May 8, 2025
But the widow had desired her to give up all thought of the idol-maker and his belongings, speaking with contempt of the gate-keeper's worthy wife. Just at that time Selene also left the city, and now Arsinoe's longing for her old friends grew to a passionate craving to see them again.
No other idol-maker between Honan and Nanking employed so many clay-gatherers or so many modellers; yet, with all his riches, his avarice increased till at length he employed men whom he called 'agents' and 'travellers, who went from house to house selling his idols and extolling his virtues in verses composed by the most illustrious poets of the day.
Were he to ply his trade in the light of day, the Muslim zealots of the city would speedily tear him in pieces as an idol-maker. "Though some of them make pictures also," he explained, "not here but in Esh-Shâm and other places. They quote in excuse some fetwah of the learned. I have no appeal; for did I quote their fetwah they would call it blasphemy."
But the widow had desired her to give up all thought of the idol-maker and his belongings, speaking with contempt of the gate-keeper's worthy wife. Just at that time Selene also left the city, and now Arsinoe's longing for her old friends grew to a passionate craving to see them again.
That is a different thing from trying to move both legs forward at the same time. The one is democracy; the other is demolatry. It is better to catch the idol-maker than to smash each idol. It would be an endless task to hunt down all the masks, the will-o'-the-wisps and the shadows which divert us from our real purpose. Each man carries within himself the cause of his own mirages.
"An idol-maker, an idol-maker," he cries, "who can find no worshippers for his wares! Better the sailor before the mast or the soldier in the field." His thoughts break away, and he begins to dream of a life of action. It would be a fine thing, he thinks, to start away in a ship for South America, where there are forests and mountain ranges almost unknown.
As is the case with the ignorant, when beaten by their antagonist in fair argument, they shake the chain of rancor; like Azor, the idol-maker, when he could no longer contend with his son Abraham in words he fell upon him with blows, as God has said in the Koran "If thou wilt not yield this point, I will overwhelm thee with stones:" He gave me abuse, and I retorted upon him with asperity; he tore my collar, and I plucked his beard: He had fallen upon me and I upon him, and a crowd had gathered round us enjoying the sport.
Debarred from Christian society, hardly less than Muslim, by his English education and his Protestantism, he was a pariah in his own land. This very morning, sketching a gateway in the town, he had been beaten by some Muslim boys and called an idol-maker; and, traversing a Christian hamlet among the gardens, had been reviled and pelted by its Orthodox inhabitants.
For and this is the third lesson from that tree of Truth we learn to doubt, not the perfection of our idols, but the divinity of their creator. And it would seem that this is quite as it should be. So long as the idol-maker will be a slave to his creatures, so long should the idol survive and the maker go back to useful dust.
But the widow had desired her to give up all thought of the idol-maker and his belongings, speaking with contempt of the gate-keeper's worthy wife. Just at that time Selene also left the city, and now Arsinoe's longing for her old friends grew to a passionate craving to see them again.
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