servants attending you; he must also provide and pay an ass for your conveyance, no matter if it be only to the other side of the street.  Your confidential man accompanies you, primed for replies to the “fifty searching questions” of the “servants’ hall.”  You are lifted off the saddle tenderly, as nurses dismount their charges, when you arrive at the gate; and you waddle upstairs with dignity.  Arrived at the sick room, you salute those present with a general “Peace be upon you!” to which they respond, “And upon thee be the peace and the mercy of Allah, and his blessing!” To the invalid you say, “There is nothing the matter, please Allah, except the health;” to which the proper answer-for here every

[p.53]sign of ceremony has its countersign[FN#10]-is, “May Allah give thee health!” Then you sit down, and acknowledge the presence of the company by raising your right hand to your lips and forehead, bowing the while circularly; each individual returns the civility by a similar gesture.  Then inquiry about the state of your health ensues.  Then you are asked what refreshment you will take:  you studiously mention something not likely to be in the house, but at last you rough it with a pipe and a cup of coffee.  Then you proceed to the patient, who extends his wrist, and asks you what his complaint is.  Then you examine his tongue, you feel his pulse, you look learned, and-he is talking all the time-after hearing a detailed list of all his ailments, you gravely discover them, taking for the same as much praise to yourself as does the practising phrenologist for a similar simple exercise of the reasoning faculties.  The disease, to be respectable, must invariably be connected with one of the four temperaments, or the four elements, or the “humours of Hippocrates.”  Cure is easy, but it will take time, and you, the doctor, require attention; any little rudeness it is in your power to punish by an alteration in the pill, or the powder, and, so unknown is professional honour, that none will brave your displeasure.  If you would pass for a native practitioner, you must finally proceed to the most uncomfortable part of your visit, bargaining for fees.  Nothing more effectually arouses suspicion than disinterestedness in a doctor.  I once cured a rich Hazramaut merchant of rheumatism, and neglected to make him pay for treatment; he carried off one of my coffee cups, and was unceasingly wondering where I came from.  So I made him produce five piastres, a shilling, which he threw upon the carpet, cursing Indian avarice.  “You will bring on

[p.54]another illness,” said my friend, the Haji, when he heard of it.  Properly speaking, the fee for a visit to a respectable man is 20 piastres, but with the rich patient you begin by making a bargain.  He complains, for instance, of dysentery and sciatica.  You demand L10 for the dysentery, and L20 for the sciatica.  But you will rarely get it.  The Eastern pays a doctor’s bill as an Oirishman does his “rint,” making a grievance of it.  Your patient will show indisputable signs of convalescence:  he will laugh and jest half the day; but the moment you appear, groans and a lengthened visage, and pretended complaints, welcome you.  Then your way is to throw out some such hint as