Page:Arminell, a social romance (1896).djvu/512

 ALLAH'S SLIPPER.

occupied an entire chapter with dippers, it may seem to the reader to be acting in excess of what is just to revert in the ensuing chapter to the same topic; but if we mention dippers again, it is in another sense altogether.

In an oriental tale, a sultan was unable to conceive how that a thousand days could seem to pass as a minute, or a minute be expanded into a thousand days. Then a magician bade a pail of water be brought into the royal presence, and invited the sultan to plunge his head into it. He did so, and at once found himself translated to a strange country where he was destitute of the means of life, and was forced to support existence by hard labour as a porter. He married a wife, and became the father of seven children, after which his wife died, and as he was oppressed with old age and poverty, he plunged into a river to finish his woes, when—up came his head out of the pail of water. He stormed at the magician for having given him such a life of wretchedness. "But, sire," said the magician, "your august head has been under water precisely three seconds."

Now I do not mean to say that this story is applicable to my hero and heroine in all its parts. I do not mean that their history and that of the sultan fit, when one is applied to the other, as do the triangles A B C and D E F in the