the flame and smoke came the rhythm of drums, and hand-clapping, and the deep roaring of a tribal chorus. I crept up quietly to look, and found an immense fire, in a ring of hundreds of Ateiba, all sitting on the ground one next the other, and gazing intently on Shakir, upright and alone in their midst, the leader of their song and dance; he had thrown off his cloak, so that he stood up in only his white head cloth and his white robes, and the powerful firelight was reflected on these and on his tense features. He threw up his head as he sang, and whenever at the close of a

which is Wadi Hamdh, or rather the confluence of the four great valleys Tubja, Hamdh, Ais, and Jizil. The course of the main stream was full of asla wood, just as at Abu Zereibat, with the same leprous hummocky bed all covered with sand-blisters, but happily only about two hundred yards across. We rode over it, and on some miles farther, when we halted in a place like a wilderness garden, waist deep in juicy grass and flowers, among which our camels sated themselves in an hour.

HE

AN ARABIAN DUST STORM

full sleeves fell back to his shoulders, leaving his thin arms bare in a wizard's gesture. The tribe round him beat time to his steps. with their hands, and bayed out the choruses at his nod. The circle of trees outside the range of the firelight, where I stood, was alive with Arabs of stranger tribes whispering to one another, as they listened to the war dances and ballads of the Ateiba.

I

ANOTHER ATTEMPT TO BLAST THE RAILROAD

IN THE morning we determined on another trip to the line, to make new experiments with the automatic mine which had only halfsucceeded at Aba el Naam. Old Dakhil Allah agreed to come himself this time, since the project of looting a train tempted him, and with us went about forty of the Juheina and one of the chiefs of the Ateiba, Sultan, a boon friend of Abdulla and Shakir, and a goodtempered, hare-brained fellow. We took a machine-gun and its soldier crew with us, to settle our train if we caught it, and were clear of the camp by mid-afternoon.

We rode along Wadi Ais nearly to its mouth into Hamdh, finding it very green, and full of excellent pasture, for it had flooded twice already that winter. Then we bore off to the right a little, across a ridge and down to a place where there were many Harb tents. Dakhil Allah halted among these, expecting to be entertained, but they and he were old enemies, and they ignored him. He was very angry at this breach of the Sherif's peace, and sent off word at once to Abdulla, that the offenders might be brought to book. They gave us a sheep, however, so we had a proper meal, and then slept in the sand, rather distressed by a sharp shower of rain before midnight. However, the next morning was dry and hot, and we rode on into the huge plain

sun so baked the clean sandy soil that my bare feet could not endure it, and I had to put on sandals, much to the amusement of the Juheina whose soles were as tough as hide. As the afternoon advanced the sun became dimmer, but the heat increased more and more, with an oppression and sultriness about it that constantly took me by surprise, so that I was always turning my head to see if somebody was not standing just behind me, shutting off the air. There had been long rolls of thunder all morning in the hills, and the two peaks of Serd and Jasim were wrapped in folds of dark blue and yellow vapor that looked motionless and substantial. A few minutes after we had marched again I looked back at them, and noticed that part of the yellow cloud off Serd was coming slowly in our direction, against the wind, raising scores of dust devils before its feet. The cloud was nearly as high as the hill, and, as it approached, it put out two dustspouts, tight and symmetrical columns like chimneys, one on the right and one on the left of its front. Dakhil Allah looked ahead and to each side for shelter but saw none, and warned me that the storm would be heavy.

When it got nearer the wind, which had been scorching our faces with its hot breathing changed suddenly, and blew bitter cold and damp upon our backs. It also increased greatly in violence, and at the same moment the sun disappeared, blotted out by thick mists of yellow air over our heads. We stood in a horrible faint light, ochre-colored and fitful. The brown wall of cloud from the hills was now very near, rushing changelessly toward us, and three minutes later it struck us, making a loud grinding sound, wrapping us in a blanket of dust, with large stinging grains of sand in it, twisting and turning in most

violent eddies, and meanwhile advancing eastward at the speed of a strong gale.

The internal whirling winds had the most disquieting effects on us. We had put our backs to the storm to ride before it, but these side blasts tore our tightly held cloaks free from our hands, filled our eyes, and robbed us of all sense of direction, by turning our camels right or left from their course; sometimes they were blown completely around. Once we were all clashed together in a vortex, while large bushes, tufts of grass, and even a small tree were torn up by the roots, in a dense wave of the soil about them, and were driven against us, or blown over our heads with dangerous force. We were never blinded -it was always possible to see for seven or eight feet each side-but it was risky to look out, since, besides the sand, one never knew if one would not meet a flying tree, a rush of pebbles, or a spout of dust.

RAIN IN THE DESERT

HE storm lasted for eighteen minutes, and then leaped forward from us as suddenly as it had come. Our party was scattered over a mile or more, and before we could come together-while we and our clothes and camels were all smothered in dust, yellow and heavy with it from head to foot-down burst torrents of thick rain, and muddied us to the skin. The valley began to run in little splashes of water, and Dakhil Allah urged us across it quickly. The wind chopped once more, this

down to the others, and dressed thankfully: but on our way to the level we had an accident -an Ateibi with us slipped, at one very sharp ledge where there was a deep drop of fifty feet into a gorge, and pitched over headlong. He fell on his head and smashed his skull to pieces.

When we got back, my hands and feet were too numbed to serve me any longer and I lay down and shivered for an hour or so, while the others buried the dead man in a little valley. When they were returning they suddenly found themselves face to face in the rain with a man on a camel, who was crossing their track. He fired a shot at them, and they fired back, but ineffectually, and the evening swallowed him up to the westward. This was most annoying, for surprise was our main ally, and we could only hope that he would not return and give warning about us to the Turks. We then mounted again to get closer and find where we were, but had hardly started when down the wind in the misty valley there came very loudly the mess call of Turkish bugles. Dakhil Allah at once understood that in that direction lay Madahrij, a small station below which we meant to work, and so we steered by the sound rather angry again, for it spoke of supper, and in this wet night we could not hope to make a fire and bake bread from the flour and water in our saddle-bags, but for lack of other food we would have to go hungry.

LAYING A DOUBLE MINE

before it in great sheets like spray. It beat through our cloaks in a moment, and moulded them close to our bodies, and chilled us to the bone.

W!

AN ACCIDENT IN THE HILLS

WE REACHED the hill-barrier to the east about three o'clock, but found the valley of our road bare and shelterless, and colder than ever. After riding up it for three or four miles we halted, and climbed a great crag in front to see the railway which Dakhil Allah said lay just beyond. The wind was so strong at that height that I could not hold on to the wet and slippery rocks, for the bellying out of my cloak and skirts. I took them off, and climbed the rest of the way naked, more safely and hardly colder than before; but the effort proved entirely useless. The air was too thick for me to distinguish anything. So I worked

evening, in conditions of invisibility which made it quite useless to look for a machine-gun position: so in despair I finally pitched on Kilo 1121 (from Damascus) and laid my mine there. It was a complicated mine, with a central trigger to fire two charges thirty yards apart simultaneously: for we hoped by this trick to get the locomotive in whichever direction it was traveling. We spent four hours burying the mine, for the rain had caked the surface and rotted the ground. Our feet made huge tracks everywhere, on the flat and on the bank, as though a school of elephants had danced on it. Hiding them was quite impossible, so we did the other thing, and trampled the line to the north and to the south for hundreds of yards, ourselves and our camels, so that it looked as if an army had crossed the valley there, and the mine-place was no better and no worse than the rest. Then we went back to where it might be possible to

put a machine gun next day, and cowered down miserably in the open, waiting for the light. The cold was dreadful, so that our teeth chattered and we made involuntary hissing noises, and our hands were so cramped that we could not open or close them.

T

IN SUSPENSE

HE clouds had disappeared by dawn, and a red sun came up over the very fine broken hills facing us east of the railway. By midday it was nearly as hot as it had been the day before, and we were looking everywhere for shade. Before this, however, we had had two thrills. The first was a patrol from the south, which walked up inspecting the line before allowing the morning train to run over it. When they reached our footmarks they halted in astonishment, and sounded every inch of the ground to find out what we had been doing. But the mine was well concealed, and so they found nothing: yet the time of their search passed slowly for us. The second was the coming of the train, a heavy train of nine loaded trucks, full of women and children, civil refugees from Medina. It ran right over the mine without exploding it. As an artist I was furious, as a soldier deeply relieved, for women and children were not the spoils we wanted.

When the Juheina heard the train they all rushed up to the crest of our protecting ridge to see it. The Turks had a working party only a quarter of a mile from us, and our appearance was too much for them. They fled back into Madahrij, at least five thousand yards away, and from their trenches round it opened rifle fire at us. They must have sent news of us down the line, because the next station, Hedia, also came to life. We moved northward to some large trees, from whose shade we could watch the line at our ease, and we sat there till sunset in full view, to annoy the Turks, who fired on us at intervals. Incidentally, of course, we held up the traffic.

About five o'clock in the afternoon, things were quiet, so we mounted again and rode out toward the railway. Madahrij revived in a paroxysm of shooting. When we reached the line we dismounted, and all, led by Dakhil Allah performed the sunset, prayer between the rails. It was probably the first prayer of the Juheina for a year or more, and I was a novice: but from a distance we passed muster, and the Turks appeared quite bewildered. As soon as

it was dusk I went off to find out why the mine had failed. This was best done by myself, but the Juheina were so interested that they had to come too. They brought my heart into my mouth by swarming all over the rails while I searched. It took me an hour to find where the mine was, so well had it been hidden. Laying one is dangerous work, but having to scramble in pitch darkness, up and down a hundred yards of rail, feeling for a trigger buried in heavy ballast made me glad I was insured, and sorry for the others, for the two charges were so powerful that they would have rooted up fifty yards of the bank, and probably killed us all. To be sure that would have completed the Turks' bewilderment.

At last I found the mine, and discovered by touch that the action had sunk one-sixteenth of an inch, due to bad setting, or to a subsidence in the rain. I re-set it, and then, to explain ourselves to the enemy, we began blowing up bridges and rails and telegraph poles at top speed, doing a great deal of damage in a few minutes. Afterward, we mounted our camels and rode fast down the windy valley into the plain of Hamdh. Old Dakhil Allah was too pleased with the mess we had made of the line to go soberly. As soon as he was on the sandy flat he beat his camel into a canter, and we all pounded after him madly in the colorless moonlight. The going was perfect, and we never drew rein for three hours. We over-rode our machine-gun and its escort who had gone on early in the afternoon, because they were slowmoving and we had to take precautions against the Turkish cavalry at Hedia. The soldiers heard our yelling rout coming through the night, and thought us enemies of sorts, and let fly at us with their Maxim: but it jammed after half a belt, since they were former tailors from Mecca and unhandy with it, so we captured them with much laughter.

We slept lazily long in the morning, and breakfasted at Rubiaan, the first well in Wadi Ais, on unleavened bread. As we were smoking after breakfast, just before re-mounting. we heard the distant roar of a great explosion behind us on the railway, and wondered if the mine had been found out or had done its duty.

In the evening scouts came in and said that at daybreak the Turks had brought up a repair train from Hedia, and the mine had exploded fore and aft of it. This was everything we had hoped, and, singing, we rode back to Abdulla's hospitable camp.

T

HE country at large, as well as the alumni and friends of Yale, may well be interested in the personality of Yale's new president. I do not propose to attempt a critical analysis of his qualifications; a friend is not usually best fitted for such a task. But a friendship extending through a period of more than thirty years has given me an opportunity to know certain things about the formative influences of his life and the development of his tastes, interests, and activities, which I am glad to share with the readers of the WORLD'S WORK.

It was of course generally assumed that the new president would be a son of Yale or at least of New England. At the first meeting of the regents of a southern state university for the purpose of choosing a president a short time ago, the oldest regent arose and said, "I trust this state is great enough, when seeking a president for its university, to ask not where he was born but what he is." A similar thought A similar thought seems to have been in the minds of the Yale corporation. Yet if any New Englander is at all uneasy in mind because of the selection of a man who has spent his early years in Michigan and most of his professional life in Chicago, he may be reassured by the fact that the new president was at least born in Vermont, and that nearly all of his ancestors on both sides had been for many generations

dwellers in Rhode Island. Indeed, the original Thomas Angell entered the state in the days and, if I mistake not, in the company of Roger Williams. As with most of the early settlers, this ancestry for the most part got its living from the soil. Dr. Angell's maternal grandfather, Alexis Caswell, however, was for thirtyfive years a professor of mathematics in Brown University and closed his academic career with a term of four years as president of that institution. He may possibly be regarded as responsible for originating what may now almost be said to be taking on the character of a presidential habit. But it is the long and distinguished career of Dr. Angell's father which is of chief significance in that respect. A graduate of Brown University, engaged for a time in journalism, he was early chosen president of the University of Vermont, where he served for six years prior to his election to the presidency of the University of Michigan. He served in the latter position for thirty-eight years, and died in 1917, leaving a name of honor and affectionate remembrance.

The University of Michigan, from which Angell received his bachelor's degree in 1890 and master's degree in 1891, combined with the family environment to exercise a strong formative influence upon his personal, cultural, and educational ideals. The present writer was fortunate enough to be an instructor in the