about a yard in diameter. By degrees the tambourine and the clapping of the hands and the songs grew louder, the steps of the dancers were quickened. They threw back their heads, and gazed upward passionately, as if they would look into the very heavens. They flourished their uplifted swords, and as their movements became more wild and excited, the bright steel flashed and bright eyes seemed to grow brighter. As one by one the dancers sank overcome with fatigue, others rose to replace them. Thus passed seven days and nights. Professional mourners were in constant attendance to keep up the excitement, and dances and dirges succeeded each other, with intervals of wild and hysterical weeping and shrieking. I remained about two hours in the room, and occasionally I watched from a window which overlooked it. I could see that the leader had a powerful influence over all present. A certain tone of her wild wailing voice drew tears from the eyes and produced hysterical emotion in some cases.
There are girls who have a morbid taste for the excitement thus produced, and are celebrated for the facility with which they fall into fits of uncontrollable weeping. The real mourners and the amateur actresses in these scenes are usually ill afterward, but the professional assistants do not appear to suffer from the fatigue or excitement, and they do not lose their self-control for a moment.
Poor Khalîl Sekhali never quite recovered the shock caused by this death. It became an epoch from which to reckon events throughout the district, where Elias had been so well known and so much respected. It was usual to say, "Such an event occurred before or after the death of Elias." And there was a saying current in Hâifa to the effect that "the men of the Sekhali family die always among strangers and away from home." But I suppose that the spell is broken now, for Khalîl, the old man, died in his own house, in January, 1860. I was not in Hâifa at the time, but I was informed that Khalîl had been staying at 'Akka and was very ill there. On his way back
