vile coffee and large lumps of coarse, whity-brown sugar wrapped up in browner paper.  On the shelves and ledges are rows of well-thumbed wooden boxes, labelled with the greatest carelessness, pepper for rhubarb, arsenic for Tafl, or wash-clay, and sulphate of iron where sal-ammoniac should be.  There is also a square case containing, under lock and key, small change and some choice articles of commerce, damaged perfumes, bad antimony for the eyes, and pernicious rouge.  And dangling close above it is a rusty pair of scales, ill poised enough for Egyptian Themis herself to use.  To hooks over the shop-front are suspended reeds for pipes, tallow candles, dirty wax tapers and cigarette paper; instead of plate-glass windows and brass-handled doors, a ragged net keeps away the flies when the master is in, and the thieves when he goes out to recite in the Hasanayn Mosque his daily chapter “Ya Sin.[FN#29]” A wooden shutter which closes down at night-time, and by day two palm-stick stools intensely dirty and full of fleas, occupying the place of the Mastabah or earthen bench,[FN#30] which accommodated purchasers, complete the furniture of my preceptor’s establishment.

[p.69]There he sits, or rather lies (for verily I believe he sleeps through three-fourths of the day), a thin old man about fifty-eight,[FN#31] with features once handsome and regular; a sallow face, shaven head, deeply wrinkled cheeks, eyes hopelessly bleared, and a rough grey beard ignorant of oil and comb.  His turband, though large, is brown with wear; his coat and small-clothes display many a hole; and, though his face and hands must be frequently washed preparatory to devotion, still they have the quality of looking always unclean.  It is wonderful how fierce and gruff he is to the little boys and girls who flock to him grasping farthings for pepper and sugar.  On such occasions I sit admiring to see him, when forced to exertion, wheel about on his place, making a pivot of that portion of our organisation which mainly distinguishes our species from the other families of the Simiadae, to reach some distant drawer, or to pull down a case from its accustomed shelf.  How does he manage to say his prayers, to kneel and to prostrate himself upon that two feet of ragged rug, scarcely sufficient for a British infant to lie upon?  He hopelessly owns that he knows nothing of his craft, and the seats before his shop are seldom occupied.  His great pleasure appears to be when the Haji and I sit by him a few minutes in the evening, bringing with us pipes, which he assists us to smoke, and ordering coffee, which he insists upon sweetening with a lump of sugar from his little store.  There we make him talk and laugh, and occasionally quote a few lines strongly savouring of the jovial:  we provoke him to long stories about the love borne him in his student-days by the great and holy Shaykh Abd al-Rahman, and the antipathy with which he was regarded by the equally