and the quiet, simple, out-of-door life which these
luggers in the race of civilisation lead.

Let me describe a single street in. the chief
bazaar, and it will, in its general features, stand
for all streets: though the arms bazaar is more
mediæval, and the drug bazaar with its dim lights
and horse-shoe entrance, more intensely Oriental.
But I take the Bezestein and its Slipper street
because it is Eastern without being exceptional.
My street is a plain vaulted tunnel, lighted by
small side apertures, its roof is everywhere white-
washed, and round the small dungeon-like
windows meanders a thready pattern of blue flowers.
This is all the ornament. Below, on either
side the avenue, run the shops, each shop with
its two yards or so wide of counter show-
room, and behind, a little inner room for richer
goods, entered by a low stone arch, which gives
it a dog-kennel look. In and out of this, works a
little handsome fat Armenian shop-boy, dragging
out bales of poniards, silk purses in heaps,
embroidered handkerchiefs, Syrian scarfs, inlaid
boxes, or sequin bracelets. But the master
sits brooding, and never rises except in the
moment's excitement preceding the visitor
making the purchase or departing in peace.
Between the banks of shops, runs the uneven earth
floor of the street, with the slinking wild dogs
foraging with their usual idle pertinacity. On
the low counters in the next street, breast high
in spongy Broussa bath towels, striped silks
white and rose colour, bales of Manchester
prints brown and purple, sit the Turks, cross-
legged, pipe in mouth, slippers parallel before
them. But here we have all slippers, and among
these stands a lean nimble Greek boy, haranguing
on the merits of a pair, fit for a sultana, that he
holds on his hands like gloves. They are very
dainty so small that only a fairy queen .could
wear them, had they heels and are made of pink
and blue satin, starred and banded with seed
pearl, in a manner fit for the fair Persian.

"Bono Johnny!" he calls out as he sees a
Frank pass, and the words are echoed by a Jew
tout, who runs to my elbow; but when he sees I
disregard his stacks of yellow leather (canary
colour) boots, heavy red slippers, and patent
leather shoes, and that I bear towards Zenope's
shop, the Armenian general store, he slaps one
slipper in the other, and calls out after me in a
noisy, taunting, irritating voice:

"Bad man, Zenope, cheat man; no good, no
bono, Zenope you lose piastre ah, you
Johnny! Yah! Allah!" and upon turning round
to hear if he has anything more to tell me, I
obstruct the road for two Turkish women, who
at once slap me in a petulant contemptuous way,
and growl out something about "infidel," which I
bear patiently, partly from prudential reasons,
partly from remembering the gallant Spanish
proverb, "White hands do not hurt"—though this
hardly applies, for, looking again through their
shroud-like yashmaks, I see they are Abyssinian
negresses, with the usual blubb'er lips and
scolloped right cheek. At all these slipper shops,
among gorgeous slippers sewn with gold thread
or spangles, and fringed with silver tissue, I see
everywhere that loose patent leather overshoe
which the Turkish gentleman generally wears to
slip off at the mosque door.

I pass a marble tank, into which falls a broad
silvery web of musical water, and turning down
a cross street, find myself at Zenope's. I
know the shop, because a little signboard
with that Eastern name on it hangs across
the street, and also because three fox-eye'd
Jew touters who have been hanging on my
skirts denouncing my certain ruin, now call out
with one voice:

"Zenope bono— ll good, Zenope; English-
men all buy Zenope—beads, slippers, daggers
—everything Zenope." Indeed, there is no
time to retreat, for Zenope, a sleek, short, well-
to-do-looking Armenian, with the deep rich
darkness in his eye that Armenians have, comes
forward, bowing and asking me to enter in the
European manner, plus a little not unpleasing Oriental
abjectness. No cross-legged Turk here—in
fact, no out-of-door display—but only a little
well of a room, lighted from the top, and hung
with silk robes, camel's-hair cloaks, and
trophies of amber-coloured shields, and Janissary
maces. No couch to lie on here, no pipes, no
touching of breast and brow, for Zenope is as
bland and dignified as the richest shopkeeper in
Bond-street. He claps his hands—one of my
gang of Jews comes smiling in from the
outside. He rolls me up two cigarettes in a
moment, and praises something he sees my eye
resting on. Zenope whispers him—he flies for
lemonade. If I were at a Turkish shop, this my
friend Haaman, or Lazarus, would interpret,
and gain a handsome per-centage; here, too, he
will have the per-centage, but he has no need to
interpret. Zenope knows I have come chiefly to
look at things, and tries to find out my
weaknesses. From what I ask about at this first
visit, he will lay traps for me twenty visits
hence. He lets me have, he says, small things,
such as perfumes, &c., for nothing to-day,
because he knows I am a rich English effendi,
who will go home laden with presents, and
because I shall return to-night to Misseri's and tell
gentlemen how cheap everything at Zenope's is.

Then, he takes down from the wall, and out of
nooks and pigeon-holes, and off shelves, all sorts
of rubbish in the worst condition. He takes
down an Arab haik of black camel's hair, with
rich gold-thread embroideries over the shoulders
and hood, which he recommends as indestructible
for travelling; he streams out before me
coarse ruggy Persian shawls (reds, blues, and
yellows), and looking always as if they were
turned on the wrong side; he drags out, and
dusts with solemn care, crackled old tea-caddies
inlaid with chessboard patterns of mother-of-
pearl, so old and dry that the lozenge flakes are
half loose; he unhooks rusty maces and paltry
poniards with clumsy carved handles; he tires
me with sequin bracelets, and beautiful twists of
silver wire such as the Sinope people have
manufactured for generations; he makes me
smell the best Albanian otto of roses, and
flourishes about great rattlesnake bunches of