Whether they be Arabs or Turks, or Copts, it is always the
same. They are a mean, false, cowardly race, I believe. They will
bear blows, and respect the man who gives them. Fear goes further
with them than love, and between man and man they understand nothing
of forbearance. He who does not exact from them all that he can
exact is simply a fool in their estimation, to the extent of that
which he loses. In all this, they are immeasurably inferior to us
who have had Christian teaching. But in one thing they beat us.
They always know how to maintain their personal dignity.
Look at my friend and partner Judkins, as he stands with his hands
in his trousers pockets at the door of our house in Friday Street.
What can be meaner than his appearance? He is a stumpy, short,
podgy man; but then so also was my Arab friend at Suez. Judkins is
always dressed from head to foot in a decent black cloth suit; his
coat is ever a dress coat, and is neither old nor shabby. On his
head he carries a shining new silk hat, such as fashion in our
metropolis demands. Judkins is rather a dandy than otherwise,
piquing himself somewhat on his apparel. And yet how mean is his
appearance, as compared with the appearance of that Arab;--how mean
also is his gait, how ignoble his step! Judkins could buy that Arab
out four times over, and hardly feel the loss; and yet were they to
enter a room together, Judkins would know and acknowledge by his
look that he was the inferior personage.
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