Society any nearer, now, the solution of the
vexed question of how Sundays should best be
spent, and which of our human Sabbaths is most
acceptable to the Divine Ordainer of all things?
That the seventh day, or the first day— for we
are scarcely agreed as to whether it is properly
number one or number seven— should not be
spent in cock-fighting seems clear enough; but
remember, again, that what I am telling of took
place in Africa, in a country governed by a
Roman Catholic power, numbering among its
subjects Turks, Jews, heretics, fire-worshippers,
and Pagan negroes. Man was made for the
Sabbath, they tell you, grimly scowling, north
of the Tweed. The Sabbath was made for man,
they hold in latitudinarian France, and even in
Lutheran Germany. But how is a government
to impose a Sabbath upon so many races of men,
and of so many ways of thinking? Religious
politics run as high in Algeria as elsewhere.
The Mahomedan Arabs call the Christians, dogs.
The orthodox Turks are continually expressing
a desire to defile the graves of the fathers and
mothers of the heterodox Moors, and both concur
in hating the schismatical Kabyles. The
negroes are mere idolaters and Obeahmen.
Turks, Moors, and negroes concur in loathing
and despising the Jews. The Gallicans in
Algiers hint that the Catholicism of the Spaniards
who colonise Oran is tinged with strange
heresies and excessive Mariolatry; and the
Maltese sailors resolutely refuse to pray to the
saints in the French calendar. The resident
British community import tracts, try a little
proselytism without any apparent results,
squabble among themselves, and make no secret
of their convictions that their neighbours are
going to Jehanum. As for the Jews, they look
upon Moslem and Nazarene alike, with the
feelings, harboured from time immemorial, but
harboured in an occult manner. And yet,
amidst this confusion of mosques, cathedrals,
chapels, synagogues, and Mumbojumbo houses,
Trappish convents, and marabout koubbas,
nobody in Algiers, extraordinary to relate,
thinks of quarrelling or fighting about Sunday.
Everybody enjoys his Sabbath as seemeth him
best.

To what causes must the absence of dispute
as to the observance of the Algerine Sabbath be
ascribed? To the warmth of the climate? To
the indolence or placability of the people? To
the tolerance of the clergy? Scarcely, I
conjecture. Hot as is the climate, and lazy the
people, there is enough activity and energy
about, to make Sunday the noisiest day in the
week. The clergy are just as intolerant as the
authorities will permit them to be, and the
priests of one sect, not being allowed to burn or
plunder those of another, take it out in preaching
against and cursing them. The real reason is,
that a casting vote in all matters, secular or
ecclesiastical, is given by the dominant power—
by the eminently tolerant, unprejudiced, and
unbelieving French government. I hope I
am not libelling that government by hinting
that, theologically, it is a little more than
sceptical. Sunday is a day when everybody
is allowed, and, indeed, expected, to make
merry; and the Gaul, being at bottom a light-
hearted and mercurial soul, he sees nothing very
wrong in the social organisation of a colony in
which there are three Sabbaths instead of one.

I will not say that I pursued precisely this
train of thought as the carriage bore us along
the very dusty road leading to the Café de
l'Ancienne Kiosque, and ultimately to Moustafa
Supérieur; but the roadside was fertile in
materials on which future reflections might be
founded. It was Sunday out on the most
extensive scale, and with the oddest combination
of Oriental and European characteristics.
Group after group of French soldiers, looking
like coveys of red-legged partridges, were
scattered along the broad highway, and in the
keen zest in which they were evidently enjoying
their Sunday offered a very marked contrast
to the English warriors whom you meet
listlessly wandering about the streets of provincial
towns, and whose mental condition never seems
to me to extend beyond these stages: first, that
of despair at not having money enough to get
drunk; second, that of having it, and being
drunk; third, that of having got sober and
wanting to get drunk again. The third stage
is analogous to, but not identical with, the
first. The British private, who has tasted the
sweets of the beer-shop, is in a position more
fully to appreciate the poetical reminder that the
sorrow's crown of sorrow is in the remembrance
of happiness. Ah! if under some blessed fiscal
dispensation the English soldier could only be
supplied with cigars three for a penny! He
would still visit the canteen, I suppose; but I
would lay any odds that he would not get tipsy
half so often, that he would not be half so
brutal, so stupid, or so disorderly, and that he
would not find time hang with such awful
ponderosity on his hands. Cigars three a penny!
My panacea is a cheap one. I have but one
addition to suggest; a theatre for twopence, in
lieu of the filthy public-house and the blackguard
music-hall. With cheap cigars and cheap
theatrical amusements you would soon find a
sensible diminution in your numbers of courts-
martial, in the inmates of your barrack cells,
and the number of your punishment drills, your
extra guards, your stoppages, and your bloody
stripes laid on the backs of poor brave fellows
who get into trouble because they do not know
what to do with themselves. Cigars three a
penny, I say, and Box and Cox for twopence, in
preference to the " Memoirs of Lieutenant
Melchesidec Bethel," that sainted subaltern
of foot, or the " Beatified Baggage-waggon
Woman," price thirteen shillings per thousand
for distribution.

Cigars three a penny were very common in
the mouths of the French warriors on the road
to Moustafa Supérieur. Scarcely a private but
had his cheap roll of tobacco; nor did his officers
seem to be too proud to smoke cigars at the same
price. Tobacconists will sell you so-called
Londres and Regalias at as high a price as ever you