Agony of Expectation

Happy is the Mohammedan who dies on a pilgrimage to Mecca. His soul ascends with a special sanctity to paradise. On such a soul the sloe-eyed houris lavish sweetest sweetmeats, coyest caresses, deepest delights.

Therefore last week when the creaking old Fabre liner Asia burned to her water line in the Red Sea harbor of Jidda, out of some thousand pious Mecca pilgrims, 112 shrewd Mohammedans who knew a good thing when they saw it, refused absolutely to leave the ship, knelt on the burning deck, died in an agony of expectation. The few Occidental passengers, the crew and the remaining pilgrims were rescued by harbor craft, but the Asia, on which many a U. S. citizen has sailed from Manhattan to the Near East, burned for a total loss.

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