Cheer and gladness were scat-tered abroad at the dawn of that day, and the small faces returned smile for smile and sparkle of eye for sparkle of eye. Fathers and mothers went about, their faces clothed in a new sweetness; much of care and wrinkling had vanished and much had dwindled; and the rough hands could not help clasping, with a pulsing gentleness, the soft warm hands that clung to the hand of a father or an elder brother.

It was as though the whole city — the mountain and the coast behind it and before it, the far and farther heavens above it — were pulsing and feeling, while a kindly sun warmed it, pouring it draughts of warmth and love, lining its eyes with the kohl of gay, graceful blossoms, and perfuming its breath with a flood of intoxicated sweetness.

It was a day full of expectation and fulfillment: it was the day of the feast.

The streets were crowded with a stream of the children of the feast, as though some mighty spring of life were sending forth gush after gush of radiant, delighted beings, merriment beaming from their faces, throbbing in their hearts, and quivering in their light feet in a harmony that was neither dancing nor human walking. Perhaps the city forgot its sorrows on that bright morning and kept no shady, darkened corners fit for pain and misery to fall into; perhaps wretchedness itself came out of the darkness of its shrinking and strolled through the streets glowing with the sun's heat, and swallowed long breaths of the fragrance of warmth and sweetness and beauty.

The small faces still smile, and the innocent eyes gleam with some-thing chaster than tomorrow's ambition and more luminous than

dreams: they were living child-hood, living the hour, entrusting one hand safely to the palm of a tender father while with the other tracing circles and lines in the air at one moment and, at another, resting assured of the holiday gifts waiting at home. The faces turned upward were pleased to see their benefactor envelop them in confidence and protection, then bent downward to caress with admiring glances a new suit, or a shoe still creaking in its newness and stiffness.

One of those faces was beaming like the rest on that contented morning, well pleased with the feast, with the big hand that guarded his little fingers, and with the feast's elegance in the measure that was his share of it. They walked among the thousands, a father and his son — every one of those thousands a world unto himself, conscious of it or not, though a single fever drove them all, so that it might seem to a pass-ing cloud — had it been granted leave to wrong the feast day and float above the city — that those thousands were a single being, not begrudging the sky that sheltered it current after current of the radiance of one and the same love.

But our little Wasim was not one to trifle and gamble away the feast's few hours in philosophical musings, after the night had all but gotten the better of him, with the holiday suit to beguile him through it.

And the holiday suit Wasim wore was not like its fellows: it was the first ever cut to his measure, not bought ready-made by his father. It marked a decisive date in his life, for it granted him the feeling of manhood and of worthiness. Had he not gone with his father to the cloth merchant, each of them choosing for himself the color he preferred, and each carrying his

piece of cloth to the tailor — the very same tailor? Had the tailor not looked at him smiling, with something of silent congratulation in his eyes — because he had become worthy of the tailor's hand taking his measurements? Wasim did not fail to note all these stages with a certain pride: to be consulted in the choice of a ready-made suit is one thing; to have a suit sewn to one's measure is quite another. And it pleased his innocent pride to be worthy of buying his clothes from his father's own merchant and his father's own tailor; had his father chosen him some other merchant and some other tailor, the picture would have been marred and its harmony spoiled.

A suit made to measure, in which the tailor's hand worked an act of creation, transforming it from a dead, limp piece of cloth — a well-proportioned piece of cloth that we measure in length and breadth, elementary in its dimensions, which we toss upon the shelf and it lies still, neither kicking with a leg nor pushing with a hand, from which we cut off spans and meters and it neither turns monstrous nor rebels. A suit made to measure you can watch growing before your eyes; you see its flatness turn to fullness and then to plumpness, its sprawl to poise, its retirement to being and standing. A suit made to measure is something other than the ready-made suit, which you see swinging with the indifference of the rabble amid dozens of its sis-ters; the merchant takes it down with a hooked pole and throws it before you on the counter for you to have your say about it, and you are near to loving it — until you discover that it carries a number supposed to stand for a certain size and length, and you are near to cursing it, except that you are weary of the old suit that clothes you and must needs buy a new one. And if it does not please you, the merchant returns it to its hanger and lifts it back to its place, and it swings once more...

But this suit speaks to you, because it is a suit made to mea-sure. You touch its buttons and each of them tells you that Naoum the tailor picked it out, then fixed its position, then fastened it there; and you test the length of the