Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: the street from the direction of the Arab part of the town. In a few minutes they were brought to a standstill outside the door of the hotel, and Bob, wiping his forehead with a huge red pocket-handkerchief, began to make his excuses for being so late. ' Excuse me, ladies and gentlemen,' he began ; ' I am very much sorry to keep you waiting, but, as I was leaving home, my three wives began quarrelling, and I had to stop and give them all a flogging.' Having thus satisfactorily disburdened himself, as if it were the most natural thing in the world for an Arab donkey-driver to flog his wives, as no doubt it is. Bob proceeded to assign the donkeys to their several riders. The four ladies had duly allotted to them ' Mrs. Langtry,' 'Lottie Collins,' 'The Princess of Wales,' and 'Hoop-de- Doodm-Doo.' Then came the turn of the gentlemen, and all were rapidly in their saddles, on ' Mr. Gladstone, Gra-and Old Man,' 'President Roosevelt,' 'Joe Chamberlain,' ' Two Lovely Black Eyes,' and ' Keep your Hair on.' There only remained the Sheikh and the High- Church parson. The former was assigned a donkey whom Bob denominated ' Mr. Slowly Big,' explaining that the donkey would go slowly because the Sheikh was big. The orthodox cleric then put his foot into his stirrup in a pompous and deliberate manner, majestically mounted his animal, and sat there bolt upright with an air of conscious dignity, his long coat-tails flapping over the donkey's hind-quarters, his wideawake pressed well dawn on his forehead, and his neck nearly throttled by a stiff, closely-fitting collar. Altogether he presented a most comical and incongruous appearance. In slow, patronizing tones he said to Bob : ' And what shall be the name of my ass ?' Bob eyed him and his garb for a moment with a whim- DoNKKY-BOY. TH...