a very solemn place. I expected that
the spiced odors of Araby were going to steal over my senses now, but
they did not. A copper-colored skeleton, with a rag around him, brought
me a glass decanter of water, with a lighted tobacco pipe in the top of
it, and a pliant stem a yard long, with a brass mouth-piece to it.

It was the famous "narghili" of the East--the thing the Grand Turk smokes
in the pictures. This began to look like luxury. I took one blast at
it, and it was sufficient; the smoke went in a great volume down into my
stomach, my lungs, even into the uttermost parts of my frame. I exploded
one mighty cough, and it was as if Vesuvius had let go. For the next
five minutes I smoked at every pore, like a frame house that is on fire
on the inside. Not any more narghili for me. The smoke had a vile
taste, and the taste of a thousand infidel tongues that remained on that
brass mouthpiece was viler still. I was getting discouraged. Whenever,
hereafter, I see the cross-legged Grand Turk smoking his narghili, in
pretended bliss, on the outside of a paper of Connecticut tobacco, I
shall know him for the shameless humbug he is.

This prison was filled with hot air. When I had got warmed up
sufficiently to prepare me for a still warmer temperature, they took me
where it was--into a marble room, wet, slippery and steamy, and laid me
out on a raised platform in the centre. It was very warm. Presently my
man sat me down by a tank of hot water, drenched me well, gloved his hand
with a coarse mitten, and began to polish me all over with it. I began
to smell disagreeably. The more he polished the worse I smelt. It was
alarming. I said to him:

"I perceive that I am pretty far gone. It is plain that I ought to be
buried without any unnecessary delay. Perhaps you had better go after my
friends at once, because the weather is warm, and I can not 'keep' long."

He went on scrubbing, and paid no attention. I soon saw that he was
reducing my size. He bore hard on his mitten, and from under it rolled
little cylinders, like maccaroni. It could not be dirt, for it was too
white. He pared me down in this way for a long time. Finally I said:

"It is a tedious process. It will take hours to trim me to the size you
want me; I will wait; go and borrow a jack-plane."

He paid no attention at all.

After a while he brought a basin, some soap, and something that seemed to
be the tail of a horse. He made up a pro