Page:Syria, the land of Lebanon (1914).djvu/84

SYRIA, THE LAND OF LEBANON a dark business suit. He is a Pole by birth, a Roman Catholic by religion, a Turkish soldier by profession, and a gentleman by instinct and breeding. A son of the governor is also here. He is an attaché of the Turkish embassy at Paris, and one would take him for a cultured Frenchman. The wife of the attaché is a young American woman, a member of one of our best-known and wealthiest New York families.

Among the other guests in the seats of honor are a Greek priest, a Moslem mollah and a Druse emir. The senior missionary is telling the professor of philosophy how Yale used to play football back in the fifties, while the lady of the German consul is talking babies to the senior missionary's wife. The Welsh doctor, who used to live in Brazil, is talking French to the Italian professor from Cairo. The exporter of Damascus rugs is swapping Dakota stories with the Syrian editor who took the Arab troupe to the Chicago Exposition.

And in the middle of the field the official announcer is lifting up a megaphone to shout across the babel of tongues—

"Winner of the dromedary race, Saladin; second, Haroun al Raschid; third, Sinbad. The next event will be the high jump on enchanted carpets!"

At least, that is what one would expect to hear amid this brilliant theatrical setting. But instead the call comes in faultless English—

"All out for the hundred-yard dash!" [ 54 ]