vast poorhouse, a nest of paupers. I went into three of their lodgings.
Several Turkish families were in a large square room neatly divided into
little partitions with old mats hung on ropes. In each were as many bits
of carpet, mat and patchwork as the poor owner could collect, and a small
chest and a little brick cooking-place in one corner of the room with
three earthern pipkins for I don't know how many people;--that was
all--they possess no sort of furniture, but all was scrupulously clean
and no bad smell whatever. A little boy seized my hand and showed where
he slept, ate and cooked with the most expressive pantomime. As there
were women, Hekekian could not come in, but when I came out an old man
told us they received three loaves (cakes as big as a sailor's biscuit),
four piastres a month--_i.e._, eightpence per adult--a suit of clothes a
year, and on festive occasions lentil soup. Such is the almshouse here.
A little crowd belonging to the house had collected, and I gave sixpence
to an old man, who transferred it to the first old man to be _divided_
among them all, ten or twelve people at least, mostly blind or lame. The
poverty wrings my heart. We took leave with salaams and politeness like
the best society, and then turned into an Arab hut stuck against the
lovely arches. I stooped low under the door, and several women crowded
in. This was still poorer, for there were no mats or rags of carpet, a
still worse cooking-place, a sort of dog-kennel piled up of loose stones
to sleep in, which contained a small chest and the print of human forms
on the stone floor. It was, however, quite free from dust, and perfectly
sweet. I gave the young woman who had led me in sixpence, and here the
difference between Turk and Arab appeared. The division of this created
a perfect storm of noise, and we left the five or six Arab women
out-shrieking a whole rookery. I ought to say that no one begged at all.

_Friday_.--I went to-day on a donkey to a mosque in the bazaar, of what
we call Arabesque style, like the Alhambra, very handsome. The Kibleh
was very beautiful, and as I was admiring it Omar pulled a lemon out of
his breast and smeared it on the porphyry pillar on one side of the arch,
and then entreated me to lick it. It cures all diseases. The old man
who showed the mosque pulled eagerly at my arm to make me perform this
absurd ceremony, and I thought I should have been forced to do it. The
base of the pill