expected it to have taken. I looked round
more in curiosity and alarm, and saw on a small
doorway stone, seated, and bowing gravely to
me, the little celebrity whom I trust I may be
permitted to call my very worthy friend, Nano
Pupisillo, the frostbitten, but still worthy,
scion of an old Greek stock. (Why an old
stock should be better than a new stock, or
what a new stock means, I never could yet
ascertain, believing myself all souls of equal value
before God—but I use the jargon of the day.)

Milton, meeting for the first time Sir Geoffry
Hudson at the corner of Fleet-street, by St.
Bride's Church, could not have been more amused
and astonished than I was to see the little man—
a most choice twinkle of self-satisfaction on his
droll face, staring old eyes, and fatuous protruding
mouth—performing the Eastern salutation, with
all the decorum of a French dancing-master newly
appointed, by some strange coincidence, Sultan.
It was a salute that would almost have become a
gentleman, but that in a humble patient way
which made one quite love the little fellow—it
had a touch, the slightest in the world, of
mendicancy—it was a little too thrust forward, a
little too much obtruded on attention, for it
suggested, in the tenderest, and yet most
unmistakable manner, "Alms, for the love of Heaven,
for a poor little abortion, permitted to live for
some good and gracious purpose; feed him,
therefore, in the name of Allah, who made both
him and thee, both the great Sultan and this
thy poor dwarf."

He bent, and bowed, and touched his heart with
his hand, like a little duodecimo Lord Chesterfield;
then, without vulgarly screaming and
scolding for alms, or without driving texts
into me to torment me into charity, Pupisillo
gracefully began telling me his age and
prospects, and branching off into general matters of
national and political importance, irrelevant but
entertaining.

It really made me ashamed, to look at that
little bundle of humanity—that little lump of
intelligence—that man who, compared with a fat
friend of mine then in my mind's eye, looked
but as a pimple, a creature with a large
caricature head, spindly spider hands, and no body
or legs at all to mention—to see him, not
cynical, not a black dwarf, not a misanthrope, not
a hermit, nor a critic, nor a bilious, malicious
historian, but a cheery, sociable, happy being,
always smiling in his own queer, droll way,
and rather enjoying his publicity than otherwise.
And here was my friend "the hot blood,"
Lacy Rocket, the Queen's messenger, whom I
just left cheapening a Persian poniard in the
Arms Bazaar, with, life, spirits, and the reversion
of eight thousand a year and a baronetcy, always
yawning and being bored with every amusement
and pleasure that luxury and extravagance could
suggest! Only one hope of amusement left
him, and that he pines for—elephant-shooting;
not having this, he vows human nature is
a fool and the world "a hass." Rather than be
blase at five-and-twenty, I would cut off my legs,
send them home in a hamper, via Marseilles,
and turn mendicant dwarf in the streets of
Stamboul. Pupisillo was thirty-five, this little man
told me confidingly; he was not yet married,
though he hoped (here he smiled rather vainly)
that that happy event would not be long deferred.
He was cheerful, thanks be to God, and grateful
for many mercies. As to moving about, of course
he could not; he was carried every day in a basket
to some special station that he selected, now
this side, now the other side, of the bridge. His
father still lived, and was a good father to
him.

It completed my moral lesson, and gave me
infinite delight when I put some piastres in the
little screwed-up hand, to see those strange
eyes twinkle with tears, the little crooked hand
move ceremoniously to the breast and forehead,
and the little mandarin body bob up and down
with a serious yet droll politeness till I was out
of sight. Why this little Greek dwarf had
never been bought for a Turkish household,
I don't know, but I suppose the want of
legs made Pupisillo more naturally an object of
charity.

Jesters, I suppose, are now changed to
theatrical clowns, but the real Eastern dwarf still
flourishes in Turkey. I saw him several times:
now, with important face elbowing his way
through the Pera crowd, with bowed legs,
splay feet, enormous head and hydrocephalic
prominency of brain; now, with a settled look of
ridiculous refinement, holding the hand of some
black eunuch who, with turban of lemon-coloured
cashmere and crimson sash, was preceding one
of the little painted egg-shell carriages in which
the whitewashed and rouged ladies of some great
man's hareem were taking the air: the dwarf's look
of monstrous malice and vanity setting off the
childish beauty and inane splendour of Lolah,
Katinkah, and Dudu, who, in gold-coloured,
violet, and chocolate satins, peered through their
yashmak wrappings like painted corpses whose
dead beauty is horrible to behold.

In street shows, Stamboul is not rich, for the
Turks are a serious people who go to bed early,
and who, even if they did not, dare not venture out
in unlighted streets when they know that at night
the very paving-stones turn into dagger-blades.
The few sights there are, being of the humblest
kind, are all by day, and are intended more
for the mere lounger and stranger than for
the Turk pur sang, the lord and master (as
long as he can keep it) of this once Christian
country.

To get a relish of the safety of home,
the traveller in Turkey has only to remember
that anywhere, and at any time, a half involuntary
shout of execration at the Prophet, or a
self-asserting blow at a true Mussulman of any
"position"—by which snob word I mean, of
course, wealth—a sacred pigeon killed in the
"Birds' Mosque," a defiant shout in St. Sophia,
a stone thrown into a room of dancing
dervishes, and in three minutes his rash blood would
probably smoke on the pavement.

It was a day so hot, that you might have
cooked a chop in five minutes on my friend the