Show I A PARADISE OF IDLENESS Where the Dluhdis Followers Are I Rewarded With All the Sent suous Pleasures That man Can Conceive I Nor perhaps could the Mahdi better encourage the sinking spirits of men encamped en-camped with but scanty shelter and a still more scanty commissariat out upon the burning eyescorching deserts of the Soudan ever swept with duststorms driven along by the fierce khamsin the stifling harmattan dry grain their food alkaline water their drink and dreary marching and wounds and death their only service That prophet ill sustains his holy call who finds not heavens to suit the tastes of all And Mohammed and Mohammed Achmed his servant it must be confessed have found one very suitable indeed to the tastes of Arab folk Their songs and their speech are filled with phrases significant of the yearning of those wild sons of a sterile land for the pleasures of green trees sweet smelling flowers and bubbling water Religion offers them these men of hard lives and stern workas the one supreme delight of the after worldthe luxury of idleness They are not even to take the trouble to turn upon their beds of roses to eat and drink for exquisite beings blessed with perpetual girlhood will always beat be-at their side to offer them all they want before they can even ask for it The fruit will bend down to their lips the fountains of exquisite sherbets rise to II them They are never to grow older than the prime of manhood and if they I choose need never no never all through the cycles of immortality stir an inch from the spot where angelic arms carry ing each from the battlefield have laid him down on the perfumed sward under the tooba tree No more camels to drive No more infidels to shoot them Peace and plenty perpetual youth and sacred I laziness The birds even in the boughs I are only to sing in numerous fashion No earsplitting clamorous song will be heard there The aboreal choir will all be beautiful nightingales singing through veils as it were the softest whisperings of melody that shall never be the same long enough for the listeners to recognize a tune twice The perfumes in the same way will glide imperceptible from one fragrance to another and each in turn will be new and exquisite The sherbets will be nectareous blends of all the hydromies somas and meads that poets have devised for happy heroes in the Cities of Rest and Elysian Fields and are to pass by subtle transmutati 1 from rose to pomegranate pome-granate and from citron to date from orange to grape and so on through all the pippins and berries of paradisiac orchards or-chards flavored with such fruits as saints have worked miracles with such as tempted Eve such as the champions of Christendom knew of as the pilgrims found in the Masters garden as heroes and goddesses have striven forthe apples of bliss and immortality The louris tootIthe t darkeyed maids abovecven they are not to weary the eye by monotony Sixty is the smallest allowance the half rations as it were of a common ordinary sort of true hi liever In exceptional cases they are to be in number beyond counting and at the wish of their possessor they will change their age their features and their voice It is not enough that they shall each be perfect way Then to think of it superadded super-added to all this the perpetual coolness of thick foliage overhead and gentle breezes and above all utter and inviolable in-violable laziness It is no wonder then that the Mahdis soldiers released from the drudgery of beasts of burden only to march and fight in the desperate Soudan escaped from the tyranny of petty masters to fall under the relaxing despotism of a fanatical leader should go to their deaths lightly They believe with a stern faith every iota of the promises of future pleasures held out to them and on that belief gladly stake the wretchedness of their life and risk the brief agony of death on the battle field Faith frenzied faith once wedded firm and fast To some dear falsehood hugs it to the last And those who were in the Soudan bore ample testimony to the amazing bewildering bewil-dering recklessness and disregard of pain with which these soldiers of the Mahdi came charging on to their fate The truth is they looked beyond the British squares at the green groves of paradise para-dise The glitter of the grim bayonets before them was as nothing to the radiance radi-ance of the great gates they could see opening for ° them In front the flash of rifles and the lowrolling smoke of the cannon dull masses of men in gray and camels in tumultuous motion But fu ther off and visible only to the eyes of those onrushing fanatics were the fluttering of robes of green silk the shimmer of golden ornaments Here close at hand were the furious roar of the artillery the pitiless piti-less fusilade the fierce clamor of men givingand receiving death but above it ill the ears of the true believer quickened quick-ened by his mortal wound caught the sweet hitings of heavens singing birds the murmur of the breeze in the leaves the babblings of the fountains of Zem zem the whispered caresses of those hidden hid-den pearls the maids I So they came on in a rush all together or in small parties or even singly to meetthe death which leads to paradise Out from the bush and from behind rocks they came on one against 100 dancing and shouting What if they fell It was an infidels hand that laid them I low Their end was achieved Or if they reached the believers line and drovctheir spears home before they went down before their bullets all the greater was the gain all the larger was the ful ness of eternal bliss The leaders of slam have always known how to avail themselves of this intense confidence in the immediate possession of paradise Mohammed himself never failed to employ em-ploy it to the utmost and his successors MI many a field of victory have proved its potency The Moslem sees his reward actually within his arms length He has only to strike and it is his If he kills or is killed kill-ed he is assured of the prophets favor and if he dies killing he is doubly secure The lives of such men are after all but dull processes Their language their philosophy prove that they feel this themselves They do not cling to tfe asa as-a precious provision but are ready to throw it away Allahs will be done and there is an end of it Of the more practical aspect of the mahdis proclamation proclama-tion the fact that his followers are clamoring clam-oring to be allowed to go to Mecca we for the shall probably hear more later in Moslems creed the performance of the greater pilgrimage is i in itself a passport to paradise For the present however it is enough noticed thestrange phenomenon to have of latter days to these such appeal of an app history and to have hinted at the pathos which underlies it Here fighting in the that is now torrid Soudan under a sun in the midst of a country brought to the miseries of famine by three years of war we had a military leader calling upon his troops to stand by him and to rally for further effort with a promise of shady trees and cool water They are not to I strike for country or for sovereign or for God but for refreshing draughts and the I smiles of the houris of heaven And this suffices London Telegraph |