Adventure, February 20, 1922 — page 6: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

4 - offering ignorant advice. The second most important reason, I be- lieve, was that he, and the few in authority over him, had discovered that I had-no ax to grind. Life isn’t worth while to me if I’ve got to worry over other people’s morals or be a propagandist; to my way of looking at it, a man has a hard enough job to keep his own conscience from getting indigestion, while getting all the fun in sight, and there’s no fun whatever in forcing your opinions on other folk. And the other fellow’s job is difficult enough without our Life’s a great ~ game and the measure of our own cussedness _. upsets most calculations, like the joker in. _ a pack of cards. _. about the same date or vintage. is the measure with which we get cussed. So I had fitted unofficially into one or ’ two tight places and officialdom was there- fore pleased to let down the bars that re- . strain the general tourist. But there was a third reason: I was utterly unknown in Hebron, and it is the unknown entity that There were likely-enough other reasons, but I did not know them. Behold Grim and me on a blossomy May morning, ‘mounted on two Bikaneeri camels left over from the-war, swinging along the road to Hebron in gorgeous sunshine at a cushiony, contenting clip. The camels were less conspicuous in that landscape than the regulation Ford car would have been and you can’t travel fast enough even with gasoline to get ahead of the wind-borne word of mouth that ever since the Deluge has proved nearly as quick, -if not quite so truthful always as the tele- graph. To make us-even less worth com- ment we wore the Arab costume that fits even a white man into the picture, and is comfortable past belief. Our other clothes were in the saddle-bags. I know why the Jews want Palestine. I would want it too, if the world weren’t so full of other things I haven’t yet seen_and admired. You feel like Abraham, on camel- back up in those hills, only without his responsibilities. One of Abraham’s direct descendants met us coming the other way, close to where the road winds by the Pools of Solomon. He was in a one-horse carriage of’ the mid- Victorian era, drawn by an alleged horse of On his head was a Danbury-made Derby hat and _he had a horse-shoe sec in his necktie, ya Adventure his thumbs stuck into his suspenders and his feet on the seat in front. But he passed us the time of day in ancient Hebrew, and Grim, who has studied that language for Intelligence Department purposes, stopped to answer him. At the end of half-a-dozen sentences it was obvious that Grim knew more of the language than the other did. The revival of dead speech takes time, and there are not so many in the country yet who can use the old tongue fluently although Zionists usually begin a conversation with. it for propaganda purposes. “Talk English,” Grim suggested. “What? You know English? Where d’you learn it?” “In the States. Where else?” “What? You lived in the States? What did you come hack here for? Lots of room in the States for you fellers—good money— good living—get the vote an’ everything. Where’s your home now? Hebron?” Grim nodded. The Jew pulled out a ar. “Well, I’ve just come from telling ’em in Hebron that they all ought to emigrate to the U.S.A.” “‘Would they listen?” “‘Good listeners. They listened so good, they got my watch and chain while I was talkin’, an’ they’d have had my pocket- ‘book if I hadn’t locked it up in Jerusalem before I came away. Smoke cigars? Try this one. Say: if you come across a gold watch an’ chain with the initials A.C. done on it in a monogram across the back, just send word to Aaron Cohen at the New Hotel Jerusalem, and there’ll be a good reward for-you. I went an’ complained at the Governorate, but that schoolboy they’ve made governor can’t do nothing about it. Take if from me, he’s got no brains and no police-force. Tl buy the watch back and you tell *°em so—a good reward to whoever brings it, and no questions asked. Better have this cigar, hadn’t your” = - But you don’t smoke cigars on ae back, at least not if you want to avoid being taken for a foreigner. ‘“‘Was the watch valuable?” him. “Would I worry about it if it was a cheap one? If it was a nine-carat case d’you think I’d have called the young governor all the names I did, and risk my life in the swk* “Bazaar. Grim asked (C©@) (©) OO