all. The Eastern robe is common among us.
We wear sashes and girths about our loins. We
wear beards and we pray openly in the
market-place. We carry our superstitions into the
business and concerns of life. Yonder stands a
fine house on a commanding site; it would let
for a rental of two thousand pounds sterling
yearly, but it remains unfinished because the
owner had a dream or a presentiment that if he
added another stone to it some evil would befal
him. The reason is known to all the town, and
no one considers it surprising that a man should
forego two thousand a year for such a cause.
We have lucky and unlucky days; lucky and
unlucky numbers. We have one very beautiful
belief: it is that if we sin our punishment will
fall on those we love. We do not willingly
pronounce the name of death. We would on no
account tell a friend that he looked well, or happy,
or fat, or take leave of him on the threshold of a
door, or look at the moon over the left shoulder,
or start on a journey without sitting down just
before quitting the house. We believe in the
evil eye, and in dreams and charms and omens.
We are a people of soldiers, and despise the
pursuits of trade. We are intolerant of Jews,
who form a class apart and live by themselves.
The poorer sort wear a distinctive dress; it is
the old Eastern robe so oddly modernised with
collar and buttons, that it looks like a sentry-box
coat on a swell in Punch. Formidable
gangs of dog banditti infest our streets, and
canine footpads lurk in every corner and archway.
Many of us have strange names, part
Greek part Turkish, with Russian terminations
in off or ski or ovski. The cold Eastern beauty,
the fine delicate nose, the shrewd eye, the slight
nervous form, is common among us. We eat
much with spoons from bowls and basins. Yonder
glides a man with rapid step and unquiet
glance: his head and shoulders are dressed like
those of a Greek at Rhodes or Chios, but his
legs are cased in trousers and shoes from a
German slop-shop. What is the heavy round cap
on yonder men's heads but the turban in
disguise? and what are their long gowns and bare
necks, and calico breeches, but traditions and
recollections of the East.

But it is not only in our outward appearance
and manners that we resemble the old population.
We have, above all, the same unthrift.
We are like the heedless heirs of a noble estate,
who never think of counting the cost of bad
management. We have never studied the useful
sentence, " There is that which scattereth
and yet increaseth." Our elders (when they
reflect on such things at all, which is but
seldom) put their faith rather in the weak old
proverb that " a penny saved is twopence
gained," and we spend the saved twopence on a
ride in a wheelbarrow. What can we do
besides? From October till May our high streets
and squares are dangerous bogs. Ten yards
beyond the town limits our roads are altogether
impracticable to city-bred pedestrians. If we
venture out on foot we return home without
our shoes. There are great holes in our roads
a yard deep. People may go from one end of a
long street to the other before they can find a
ford; and at last be forced to call a wheelbarrow
to ferry them across. A gentleman going to a
ball may be bogged, wheelbarrow and all, in the
middle of a broad street, and obliged to wade
through an open drain to shore; or he may
become fixed in the mud, so as to render it necessary
that he should be pulled out by main force.
No townsman goes to market on foot in winter
time. Even the stout peasantry and hardy German
colonists, both men and women, wear high
fisherman's boots, to enable them to flounder
about. Stilts would serve the purpose better,
but our soil is so soft that their wearers would
immediately plant themselves, and might perhaps
strike root before they would be pulled up.
In summer we sometimes cannot see a yard
before us for dust. Three hours after heavy rains
we are still blinded by it. In spring we have
hail, rain, snow, blow, mud, and dust, all
together. In autumn we are bogged one side of
a street in mud and have to buffet with a dust-heap
on the other.

So the first thing which strikes a stranger in
our town is the number and shabbiness of our
carriages. A London brougham would be
knocked to pieces in a month among our ruts
and holes. The paint and lining and smartness
of it would be spoiled in a week. It would
kill our spindle-shanked galloways to draw it.
We prefer wheelbarrows with two ponies so
tied to them that the little creatures are seldom
both in one hole at the same time, and may
thus pull each other occasionally out of a difficulty.
These wheelbarrows (droschky is the
local name for them) are built on very weak
springs. There is always a good deal of make-shift
and a good deal broken about them. To
sit in them is as bad as going across country on
a lame horse. Some people compare their
motion to the labouring of a ship in distress during
rough weather; and complain of a sensation
resembling sea-sickness. However, we dress in
mud or dust-coloured clothes, according to the
season, and go pitching and tossing about in
them gaily on our voyage. Women and children
often get wrecked or stranded, and sometimes
even an experienced navigator is killed or
seriously injured. An Englishman was recently
killed by a jolt while riding in a droschky. This
constant familiarity with danger breeds the usual
contempt of it, and gives a certain air of
determination and gallantry to our manners in the
street very surprising to a foreigner.

There is a good deal of eye disease among us
from the dust, and a great many bald folk. We
suffer much from the terrible evils of want of
exercise. We are nervous, hypochondriacal,
afflicted much with headaches and liver
complaints. We are given to tea and stimulants
and late hours. To go out for a walk is merely
to take a roll in the dust, and horsemanship is
not fashionable among us. People use
carriages and droschkys who in other countries
seldom quit their legs: small clerks, apprentices,
shop people, and servants. A cook going