what we could want, and why she was made
a show of to Europeans. The dignity of her
appearance checked our somewhat boisterous
gaiety, and we remained gazing at her in
silence—a circumstance that did not seem at
all displeasing; for she smiled approvingly at
us and at herself, glancing down over her
splendid attire, of which she was evidently
very proud. All our ideas of slavery were
at once confounded; and it was not until
some time afterwards that we understood the
difference between the purchase of human
beings to put them to hard labour and the
purchase of them as members of a family.

We might at last have had some conversation
with this bride for sale; but suddenly
a tempest of human voices again whirled
along the gallery. We were unceremoniously
hurried out of the boudoir just in time to
find ourselves in the midst of a dozen fierce-
looking jellabs, armed with clubs and headed
by an old man with a white beard, which he
accused us of defiling. He was the master
of the place; and a mighty rage he was in.
The scene that ensued was so confused so
many people spoke at once that we could
not make our apologies appreciated; and,
though, we distributed small pieces of money
right and left to the whole garrison, and
thereby warded off some of the blows aimed at
us, yet we could not, in any degree, pacify
the old gentleman, who, being past the age of
action, offered us his beard to pull, slapped
his face, took off his turban and threw it on
the ground—all to denote that we had
unjustifiably violated his domicile—and so we had.
Mingling, therefore, entreaties with counter-
thrusts, opening a way with piastres when
we could not do it with blows, taking the
bruises we received as good humouredly as
possible, we managed to scramble down the
staircase and get into the street, where our
donkey-boys, who had heard of our danger,
were beginning to whimper and collect a
crowd. Getting into the saddle as fast as we
could, we galloped off towards the European
quarter, where we related to many unbelieving
Franks the story of our visit.

DREAMERS.

I AGREE, to a certain extent, with Mr.
Luke Higginbotham, of Friars' Alley, in his
reprobation of dreamers. And I say this,
well knowing that he suspects me of belonging
to the class. It may seem paradoxical to
state that the place which I sometimes occupy
at the great wine-merchant's table is due to
his low estimate of my understanding. Such,
however, is the fact. The city magnate, who
has not been fortunate in attracting to his
board persons of quality or taste, deigns, for
the reason I have given, to command such
society as mine. His leading instinct was,
doubtless, to be obsequious; but, finding no
patron to flatter, he obeyed the second
marked impulse of his nature, and became
dogmatical.

Now, I am, so to speak, a man made to
order for the gratification of this propensity.
Originally Mr. Higginbotham's clerk, and
now but the salaried manager of a modest
wine house in the country, there could be no
better foil to the Bacchic potentate, who
boasts domains in Andalusia, on the Rhine-
steeps, and in Champagne, and whose
territories I have often pictured as flowing with
rivers of tawny gold, of crystal with foaming
eddies, of ruby smooth, swift, and deep—all
hurrying to some great festive ocean which
laves the coasts of an ideal Naxos. It is this
tendency on my part to picture, to imagine—
or, as Mr. Higginbotham phrases it, to
dream—that yields one of the main points of
his superiority, and of his consequent
satisfaction in our intercourse. For example, last
Thursday, after one of those stately and
frigid dinners sometimes given at his villa in
Berkshire, and at which, for the sake of my
present employer, I am compelled to assist,
our host produced a sample of his rarest
Assmannshausen. After testifying to its
excellence, I ventured to observe that the
wine in question gained an added zest from
the picturesqueness of its native region, that
those green steeps which hem in the Rhine
gorge, with all its old-world life and natural
beauty, gave a stimulus even to the palate—
that, in fact, it would have been quite another
thing to have quaffed the same fluid if
derived from some level and uninteresting
district.

I was allowed to state this doctrine without
serious interruption. True, Mr. Chipfield,
the curate, had ejaculated "Now, really!" in
the first stage of my proposition, and Mr.
Thorneyside, the attorney, was at no pains to
repress a contemptuous chuckle. They had
been trained to their patron's humour, and
might have shown their disdain for me yet
more emphatically but for Mr. Higginbotham
himself. Even as the experienced angler
checks the impatience of the tyro to strike,
so did our host raise a warning and expressive
hand, which plainly said—"Wait, wait,
gentlemen—only give him line enough."
Awhile, in careless mood, he dallied with his
watch-seals, smoothed his portly chest, and
telegraphed with an eye of cruel humour to
his confederates. As I concluded, however,
he grew erect—stiff and peremptory was he
as his highly-starched collar, his short,
inflexible fingers, or his iron-grey, stubbly hair
—he took the rod into his own hands, and
prepared to land me.

"Been up the Rhine, Thorneyside?"
inquired my tormentor, with a wink.

"Not I—I've my hands too full," said the
lawyer, with the air of one who thanked the
Maker of the world that he had seen very
little of it.

"Been up the Rhine, Chipfield?" pursues
the querist.