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Show j I " "f i "" A True Tale of Broadway (Not Arabian) Nights, and How the King p j with Fiery Desert 8 Sheik whose surprising wooing 1 v failed to w beautiful Mabel . . j THE cave man used to be tho symbol sym-bol of the masterful, he-man, red-blooded, treat-'em-rough-and- make-'em-like-it type of wooing. The cave man has become old-fashioned. Nowadays it's the Sheik. It all can be blamed on the best-seller novel of that name, wherein a beautiful j English girl exploring the desert is caught and courted by a fierce yet fascinating fas-cinating Sheik, whose methods are almost al-most 100 percent prehistoric. The novel was followed by music of the same name, with seductive Oriental B cadences. 9 A "movie" was next in order, and all SB over the country maidens watched it, Wm looked disdainfully at the very un-sheik- B ish young men who had brought them B. to the theater and longed for a desert- SD hot romance. Bj What will be the burning envy of B these maidens when they realize that an B honest-to-goodness Sheik of Egypt has B been in these United States? mm What will be their incredulity and B scorn when they learn that the fair S American girl who was the lucky object B1 of the Sheikish attentions went and H1 laughed them all off? B Great grief! B Let all who disbelieve hearken to the B tale of Mohammed Ali Ibrahim, nephew B to Fuad, King of Egypt and prince and B Sheik of the de?ert. It is a tale not of B Arabian but of Broadway nights. B Not long ago Prince Mohammed Ali : B Ibrahim, who had taken ship in France, B arrived in the United States. Presuma- B bly his trip had been undertaken shortly B after the Egyptians had paid the first in- B stallment on their income tax, for the B Prince's pockets proved to be very well lined. K He came, announcing his intention B to see the country, enjoy himself and put B a fQSt motor car through its paces out B on the Pacific Coast, where things are m said to roll along right rapid-like. In S short, he had come to America to lead B the life of a modern Sheik. B Instead of sitting in a saddle on a B swift Arabian courser, as he would have B done in his own country, he planned to B recline behind the wheel of a racing au- B tomobile. And with all the fervor with B which he would have sunk spurs in B flanks he was going to step on the gas. B A feature of the Sneik's entourage fl must receive mention. That was Blink B McCloskey, a pugilist, in whose veins B Irish blood is said to flow. Blink, who B had stepped many a round as a welter- B weight in Philadelphia, came in the ca- B pacity of secretary to the Sheik. Ho had Bj obtained his job by knocking out the for- H mer secretary. H The Prince had not been long in this H country before he made the conventional H remark that American women are the H most beautiful in the world. Nearly all H visitors to the United States voice tHbt H sentiment sooner or later. But coming H from a Sheik, it added significance. Bj To begin his conquests among the fair H ladies of this land, the Prince did not H even wait to arrive; Sheiks arerenowned H for their impatience and impetuosity. While on board ship he began to court H a pretty writer of "movie" scenarios, but H even there, at the very outset, he failed. Not even a Sheik, fresh from the sands H of Egypt, could impress a girl whose r Miss Mabel Withee, the h eroine of the romanre with a real She:k that turned out so differ tixtt ently from the way such romances do in Lhe films and the story books Rodolph Valentino in the Paramount production of "The Sheik" demonstrating how easy it is in the movies for a desert chieftain to have his way with the woman he loves imagination continually was dwelling on the redoubtable deeds of marvellous "movie" heroes. Next on the courting schedule of Prince Ibrahim was a charming "movie" actress, but she turned out to have a husband. That proved highly discomfiting discom-fiting in fact, defeating. In the bright lexicon of Sheiks, there is no such word as husband. Then the scion of Egypt tried again, for Sheiks are nothing if not persistent. This time, at the suggestion of the ingenious in-genious Blink, the Prince attended a musical mu-sical play at a certain New York theater, thea-ter, a play in which may be seen scenes of the Orient, harems, veiled women, and so forth. This, the crafty Blink calculated, showing more or less familiar ground, would restore the Sheik's shattered shat-tered morale. And it did! First the chorus tripped on, and, while they were veiled women, they weren't very much veiled. Then within range of the eagle eyes of the Sheik floated the winsome, wistful visage of Mias Mabel Withee. The Sheik more or less snorted. There was blood in his eye. He straightened up and for a moment it looked as if he might vault from the box on to the stage and change the plot of the play. It would have been an entirely Shefkish thing to do. But he didn't. And right there, as Mr. Briggs would say, was where he made his big mistake. What he did was to send Blink out to buy fifty American Beauty roses to be sent around back-stage to Miss Withee. T h i n k of ' it! A Sheik sending send-ing roses! How different dif-ferent from the way these desert lovers behave in the films and the story books. Mabel Withee was so favorably i m p r e ssed with the fra- f grant, long- J. stemmed A u roses that when a little later she received re-ceived a note which said, "Blink and I are sitting in tho upper right box. Please give us one of your beautiful smiles," she resolved re-solved to oblige yes, with a will. In the second act of th i play Mabel enters the palace pal-ace and in tho absence of the Sultan resolves to try out the throne, according to ' ''if the script. This she did. Then she rolled her eyes up to the upper right box l not according to the script. v There she observed tho Sheik and Blink. The former returned her gaze with ardor and intensity. That was something like what her reading and motion i picture going had led , her to ex pect from a iiJiifiHm Sheik. ' But Prince Ibrahim slacked up. There i-y: & he was, a surc- 1 enough Sheik, with training as : a pugilist to boot, B and he didn't so much as make a pass at Mabel. The Sheik in the novel would have scorn fully accused ac-cused his Egyptian Egyp-tian prototype of being afraid of b e ing penalized Mjig - V for unnecessary B ' . roughness, for in the course of the ; y entire courtship WsSstntf1 there is no rec ord that Ibrahim even so much as feinted with the left and swung with his right for I Mabel's jaw. a How was she to know he loved her? Instead of an r uppercut there was delivered Miss Withee to Mabel a as she looked small, square when the box. The in-Sheik in-Sheik first enue un-laid un-laid his burn- wrapped 1 1 ing eyes on and found en-her en-her and de- sconced there cided she in a satin nest was the only a piece of ju'' ""1 or k'm jewelry encrusted en-crusted with qjarklinf: gems, any one of which .vould have served admirably in a conventional engagement ring. The gift is said to have cost $20,000. If this be true, it may have caused the royal exchequer ex-chequer to mortgage in advance the second installment of the income tax to be paid by the good people of Egypt. The present was accompanied by a request that the Sheik Ali Ibrahim be allowed to call on Miss Withee in her dressing room. The request was granted and during the call Ali proposed to Mabel proposed in the most convention conven-tion Broadway manner. Now, had he been underneath the stars which illumine tho desert instead of the bright lights that make Broad-Way Broad-Way as day,, and had he been not in a stage dressing room, but in a striped tent with luxurious Oriental oppoint-Dients oppoint-Dients and incense perfuming the languorous lan-guorous air, the young Egyptian suitor might have risen to the occasion, seized the maiden, flung- her across the wheel of his Arabian steed or Rolls Royce and speeded away. But no. It seems that when not on his home grounds a Sheik is but as other men. The Prince is reported to have said something like: "Come live with me in my home by the Pyramids. We will happy be." To which Mabel sang back: "Live in a land where you must veil your face on the street? Be only one of a number of wives? No, never!" "Ah, the palace I would build for you on the banks of the Nile," the Sheik pleaded. "It would be filled with costly rugs from Persia and pearl inlaid furniture fur-niture from Turkey. You would have a barge as picturesque as the famous one in which Cleopatra rode down the Nile to meet Marc Antony down the Nile with its mystic beauty, garlanded with lotus blossoms. And the Pyramids standing stand-ing like mighty sentinels between its banks and the great stretch of the desert." Now, that may be poetic, but it is not Sheikinh. It is not the way American girls have been thought to believe those Ming desert chieftains woo. The net result E "i it all was that Mabel only giggled and hummed a bar or so of "My Castle y on the River Nile." fcft And so good looking young Ali 4Vsak Ibrahim despaired of his suit and lost Wlhi hope, at least temporarily, of winning the heart and hand of the little blond beauty who had so fascinated him. The fire and the intensity which char- j Hifts acterizes the courtships of those who dwell on the desert's burning sands all were there, but the Sheik kept them j NM locked in his breast. Mabel could only MUr 4 have suspected from the smouldering embers that seemed to glow in the black eyes of her lover. Those embers never j burst into flame. , . You see, the handsome Egyptian, proud of the Western civilization and polish he had acquired, had pressed his suit as do the calm and conventional td t men of the land he was visiting. He had ' given flowers, candy, gems, automobiles, surely a confession of interest and N u gratifying to any girl. But song, story and movie had taught Mabel Withee that a Sheik docs not "N give. He takes. mt So Mabel rejected the Sheik and he, , strange to say, accepted his dismissal. 111 The littlo actress simply laughed, as trt girls have since the world began when j they are not willing to take a man's proposal seriously. And instead of being j infuriated and carrying all before him in a masterful race, Ali Ibrahim meekly took ship and sailed away. But before he left, he made a vow. W "I will return in July," he promised, and there was a flash in his eyes that at j Hfc last betokened a real Sheik iv In July when the sun shines on New 1 York more nearly as it does on the Sahara desert, Mabel Withee had best j beware or there may be a different J story to tell of the Sheik's second j Sh wooing. j f.j |