the exact opposite of
the fair-skinned, fair-haired Yuleima, joined the coterie in the harem
of the palace of the prince. She had been bought with a great price and
smuggled into Stamboul, the story ran, a present from a distinguished
friend of his father, little courtesies like this being common in
Oriental countries, as one would send a bottle of old Madeira from his
cellar or a choice cut of venison from his estate, such customs as is
well known being purely a matter of geography.

The chief blackamoor, a shambling, knock-kneed, round-shouldered,
swollen-paunched apology for a man, with blistered, cracked lips,
jaundiced pig eyes, and the skin of a terrapin, looked her all over,
grunted his approval, and with a side-lunge of his fat empty head,
indicated the divan which was to be hers during the years of her
imprisonment.

One night some words passed between the two over the division of
bonbons, perhaps, or whose turn it was to take afternoon tea with the
prince--it had generally been the new houri's, resulting in
considerable jealousy and consequent discord--or some trifle of that
sort (Joe had never been in a harem, and was therefore indefinite),
when the blackamoor, to punctuate his remarks, slashed the odalisque
across her thinly covered shoulders with a knout--a not uncommon mode
of enforcing discipline, so Joe assured me.

Then came the great scene of the third act--always the place for it, so
dramatists say.

The dark-skinned houri sprang up, rose to her full height, her eyes
blazing, and facing her tormentor, cried:

"You blackguard"--a true statement--"do you know who I am?"

"Yes, perfectly; you are Yuleima, the daughter of the Bagdad merchant."

The fourth act takes place on the outskirts of Stamboul, in a small
house surrounded by a high wall which connects with the garden of a
mosque. The exposure by the eunuch had resulted in an investigation by
the palace clique, which extended to the Bagdad merchant and his
family, who, in explanation, not only denounced her as an ungrateful
child, cursing her for her opposition to her sovereign's will, but
denied all knowledge of her whereabouts. They supposed, they pleaded,
that she had thrown herself into the Bosphorus at the loss of her
lover. Then followed the bundling up of Yuleima in the still watches of
the night; her bestowal at the bottom of a caique, her transfer to
Stamboul, and her incarceration in charge of an attendant in a deserted
house belon