forty, was squatted upon a beautiful Turkish rug at
the base of a granite column; his class of boys, numbering thirty, were
squatted in a half-circle facing him, their slates on the matting before
them. The professor had a small black-board which he had propped up so
that all could see it, and there on its surface I saw inscribed that
enemy of my own youth, a sum in fractions--three-eighths of seven-ninths
of twelve-twentieths of ten-thirty-fifths, and so on; evidently the
terrible thing is as savage as ever! The professor grew excited; he
harangued his pupils; he did the sum over and over, rubbing out and
rewriting his ferocious conundrum with a bit of chalk. Slender Arabian
hands tried the sum furtively on the little slates; but no one had
accomplished the task when, afraid of being remarked, I at last turned
away.

The outfit of a well-provided student at El Azhar consists of a rug, a
low desk like a small portfolio-easel, a Koran, a slate, an inkstand,
and an earthen dish. Instruction is free, and boys are admitted at the
early age of eight years. The majority of the pupils do not remain after
their twelfth or fourteenth year; a large number, however, pursue their
studies much longer, and old students return from time to time to obtain
further instruction, so that it is not uncommon to see a gray-bearded
pupil studying by the side of a child who might be his grandson. To me
it seemed that two-thirds of the students were men between thirty and
forty years of age; but this may have been because one noticed them
more, as collegians so mature are an unusual sight for American eyes.

All the pupils bow as they study, with a motion like that of the bowing
porcelain mandarins. The custom is attributed to the necessity for
bending the head whenever the name of Allah is encountered; as the first
text-book is always the Koran, children have found it easier to bow at
regular intervals with an even motion than to watch for the numerous
repetitions of the name. The habit thus formed in childhood remains, and
one often sees old merchants in the bazaars reading for their own
entertainment, and bowing to and fro as they read. I have even beheld
young men, smartly dressed in full European attire, who, lost in the
interest of a newspaper, had forgotten themselves for the moment, and
were bending to and fro unconsciously at the door of a French cafe. A
nation that enjoys the rocking-chair ought to understand this. Some of
the studen