him and vanished round a bend.  The kahvay-jee now approaches me, puffing his cheeks out like a penny balloon and jerking his thumb in the direction of the street door.  Seeing that I don’t quite comprehend the meaning of this mysterious facial contortion, he whispers confidentially aside, “pasha,” and again goes through the highly interesting performance of puffing out his cheeks and winking in a knowing manner; he then says-also confidentially and aside — “lira,” winking even more significantly than before.  By all this theatrical by-play, the kahvay-jee means that the pasha — a man of extraordinary social, political, and, above all, financial importance — has expressed a wish to see the bicycle, and is now outside; and the kahvay-jee, with many significant winks and mysterious hints of " lira,” advises me to take the machine outside and ride it for the pasha’s special benefit.  A portion of the street near by is " ridable under difficulties; " so I conclude to act on the kahvay-jee’s suggestion, simply to see what comes of it.  Nothing particular comes of it, whereupon the kahvay-jee and his patrons all express themselves as disgusted beyond measure because the Pasha failed-to give me a present.  Shortly after this I find myself hobnobbing with a small company of ex-Mecca pilgrims, holy personages with huge green turbans and flowing gowns; one of them is evidently very holy indeed, almost too holy for human associations one would imagine, for in addition to his green turban he wears a broad green kammer bund and a green undergarment; he is in fact very green indeed.  Then a crazy person pushes his way forward and wants me to cure him of his mental infirmity; at all events I cannot imagine what else he wants; the man is crazy as a loon, he cannot even give utterance to his own mother-tongue, but tries to express himself in a series of disjointed grunts beside which the soul-harrowing efforts of a broken-winded donkey are quite melodious.  Someone has probably told him that I am a hakim, or a wonderful person on general principles, and the fellow is sufficiently conscious of his own condition to come forward and endeavor to grunt himself into my favorable consideration.

Later in the evening a couple of young Turkish dandies come round to the khan and favor me with a serenade; one of them twangs a doleful melody on a small stringed instrument, something like the Slavonian tamborica, and the other one sings a doleful, melancholy song (nearly all songs and tunes in Mohammedan countries seem doleful and melancholy); afterwards an Arab camel-driver joins in with a dance, and furnishes some genuine amusement with his hip-play and bodily contortions; this would scarcely be considered dancing from our point of view, but it is according to the ideas of the East.  The dandies are distinguishable from the common run of Turkish bipeds, like the same species in other countries, by the fearful and wonderful cut of their garments.  The Turkish dandy wears a