Author.  “Childhood must precede manhood; that is the order of nature.”

Collector.  “Ay, ay, our birth was slow, and painful; Servia, as you say, is yet a child.”

Author.  “Yes, but a stout, chubby, healthy child.”

A gleam of satisfaction produced a thaw of the collector’s ice-bound visage, and, descending to the street, I accompanied him until we arrived at a house two stories high, which we entered by a wide new wooden gate, and then mounting a staircase, scrupulously clean, were shown into his principal room, which was surrounded by a divan a la Turque; but it had no carpet, so we went straight in with our boots on.  A German chest of drawers was in one corner; the walls were plain white-washed, and so was a stove about six feet high; the only ornament of the room was a small snake moulding in the centre of the roof.  Some oak chairs were ranged along the lower end of the room, and a table stood in the middle, covered with a German linen cloth, representing Pesth and Ofen; the Bloxberg being thrice as lofty as the reality, the genius of the artist having set it in the clouds.  The steamer had a prow like a Roman galley, a stern like a royal yacht, and even the steam from the chimney described graceful volutes, with academic observance of the line of beauty.

“We are still somewhat rude and un-European in Shabatz,” said Gospody Ninitch, for such was the name in which the collector rejoiced.

“Indeed,” quoth I, sitting at my ease on the divan, “there is no room for criticism.  The Turks now-a-days take some things from Europe; but Europe might do worse than adopt the divan more extensively; for, believe me, to an arriving traveller it is the greatest of all luxuries.”

Here the servants entered with chibouques.  “I certainly think,” said he, “that no one would smoke a cigar who could smoke a chibouque.”

“And no man would sit on an oak chair who could sit on a divan:”  so the Gospody smiled and transferred his ample person to the still ampler divan.

The barber now entered; for in the hurry of departure I had forgotten part of my toilette apparatus:  but it was evident that I was the first Frank who had ever been under his razor; for when his operations were finished, he seized my comb, and began to comb my whiskers backwards, as if they had formed part of a Mussulman’s beard.  When I thought I was done with him, I resumed the conversation, but was speedily interrupted by something like a loud box on the ear, and, turning round my head, perceived that the cause of this sensation was the barber having, in his finishing touch, stuck an ivory ear-pick against my tympanum; but, calling for a wash-hand basin, I begged to be relieved from all further ministrations; so putting half a zwanziger on the face of the round pocket mirror which he proffered to me, he departed with a “S’Bogom,” or, “God be with you.”