He called the goatskins used for carrying water 'beastly skins,' and sometimes strengthened a mild sentence with an expletive.
I do not think he ever went so far in this way as another dragoman who, riding out from Haifa one fine morning with an English lady, pointed to Mount Carmel and observed: 'Bloody fine hill, madam!' He knew how to adapt his language to his audience.

But it is curious that a man whose speech in Arabic was highly mannered, in English should have cultivated solecisms.

That he did cultivate them as an asset of his stock-in-trade I can affirm, for he would invent absurd mistakes and then rehearse them to me, with the question: 'Is that funny?
Will that make the English laugh ?' For clergymen he kept a special manner and a special store of jokes.
When leading such through Palestine he always had a Bible up before him on the saddle; and every night would join them after dinner and preach a sermon on the subject of the next day's journey.

This he would make as comical as possible for their amusement, for clergymen, he often used to say to me, are fond of laughter of a certain kind.
One English parson he bedevilled utterly by telling him the truth--or the accepted legend--in such a form that it seemed false or mad to him.
As they were riding out from Jaffa towards Jerusalem, he pointed to the mud-built village of Latrun and said: 'That, sir, is the place where Simpson catch the foxes.' 'Ah ?' said the clergyman.

'And who was Simpson ?' 'He was a very clever gentleman, and liked a bit of sport.' 'Was he an Englishman ?' 'No, sir; he was a Jew.