on Friday
morning, that being the Mohammedan Sabbath, or at least "meeting day,"
as it is called.

At each successive stage of the scholastic career the schoolmaster
parades the pupils one by one, if at all well-to-do, in the style
already alluded to, collecting gifts from the grateful parents to
supplement the few coppers the boys bring to school week by week. If
they intend to become notaries or judges, they go on to study at Fez,
where they purchase the key of a room at one of the colleges, and read
to little purpose for several years. In everything the Koran is the
standard work. The chapters therein being arranged without any idea
of sequence, only according to length,--with the exception of the
Fatihah,--the longest at the beginning and the shortest at the end,
after the first the last is learned, and so backwards to the second.

Most of the lads are expected to do something to earn their bread at
quite an early age, in one way or another, even if not called on to
assist their parents in something which requires an old head on young
shoulders. Such youths being so early independent, at least in a
measure, mix with older lads, who soon teach them all the vices they
have not already learned, in which they speedily become as adept as
their parents.

Those intended for a mercantile career are put into the shop at twelve
or fourteen, and after some experience in weighing-out and bargaining
by the side of a father or elder brother, they are left entirely to
themselves, being supplied with goods from the main shop as they need
them.

It is by this means that the multitudinous little box-shops which
are a feature of the towns are enabled to pay their way, this being
rendered possible by an expensive minutely retail trade. The average
English tradesman is a wholesale dealer compared to these petty
retailers, and very many middle-class English households take in
sufficient supplies at a time to stock one of their shops. One reason
for this is the hand-to-mouth manner in which the bulk of the people
live, with no notion of thrift. They earn their day's wage, and if
anything remains above the expense of living, it is invested in gay
clothing or jimcracks. Another reason is that those who could afford
it have seldom any member of their household whom they can trust as
housekeeper, of which more anon.

It seems ridiculous to send for sugar, tea, etc., by the ounce or
less; candles, boxes of matches, etc., one by one; ne