his demand. Nothing can be recovered if not paid down. Mr. Cronin" (the
doctor travelling with them), "with all his practice at Aleppo, got fees
only once or twice the whole time. He and Groves both despair of it here."

English patients when they use to their doctor the familiar phrase, "I put
myself entirely in your hands," little think how completely and
practically this was understood by these Bagdad doctors, who considered
that a dollar in the hand is worth two promised _after_ treatment of a
case, and who, when they once had patients "in their hands," held them
tight!

It is clear, I think, from the following entry that Newman did not approve
thoroughly of Mr. Groves's methods of learning Arabic, any more than he
seems to do of his "monthly visits" to the Arabs. He says that a friend of
theirs, who had recently joined them, had studied Arabic and Persian
twenty-eight years, and is an accomplished Orientalist, yet he "ridicules
English notions of learning." Our religion, poetry, philosophy, science,
are so opposed to everything here "that, he says, nothing but long time in
the country can make an Englishman intelligible on religious subjects." To
confirm this theory that a perfect knowledge of the language of the people
to be taught is an absolute essential in a missionary--it is known, for an
absolute fact, that missionaries have been eight years in India preaching
until even they became convinced that sometimes they gave a totally wrong
impression of what they were trying to teach to the natives, and therefore
gave up all further efforts at teaching until they had learnt the language
more _thoroughly_, and had it at their finger's--or, to speak more
correctly, tongue's--end.

Eventually Mr. Groves came to the conclusion that for a long time to come
"the wisest method" was to "avoid controversy with the Moslems." He formed