professional help. A doctor in small practice who
has succeeded in running over a rich City man
by accident, could not leap upon the suffering
creature with more polite alacrity and overflowing
philanthropy than did handsome Benjamin
on me.

In a moment Benjamin was by my side, had
performed his salutation, and entered on a short
but brilliant dragoman and cicerone's career.
The Turk smiled, Benjamin smiled; they looked
on me as a dead hare between the paws of two
strong-limbed greyhounds, agreeing, yet
uncertain how to divide him. The Turk took up
his arm, and lectured on it gracefully; all other
passers-by, even that tall eunuch, in rose-colour
silk and patent boots, are to him now indifferent;
it is the rich English sultan he wants to land.

The story ran thus, and was on the whole
episodical. Neither Benjamin nor the Turk
supposed I understood them:

Benjamin. – Now, then, old Eski-Beski, out
with your story for this infidel sultan, and how
much am I to get?

Turk.—Allah be merciful, my son, Benjamin;
one piastre is, I think, enough for thee, from
this rich infidel's treasure (curse and wither
him!); tell him I lost my arm when I was a
groom of the great Pasha; and—

Myself.—Why don't you tell me what he says,
Benjamin?

Benjamin.—He says, your Excellency, may
your life be long, your wives beautiful, and your
offspring numerous; that he once rode fiery
Turcoman horses for his Sublime Highness, and
that on a certain day, as he was in the Atmeidan,
where the column is, under which much gold and
treasure was buried by Constantine, a soldier's
djereed struck the untamable beast (defile his
grave!), and that after a dreadful struggle,
leaving hoof marks, still to be seen on the wall
of the mosque of the Sultan Achmed, he was
thrown and his arm broken. This wound would,
however, with Allah's blessing, have soon
recovered, had not a poor dervish, to whom he had
refused alms (this was a fine side-wind touch—I
winced, as they both saw, and Benjamin spat to
hide a laugh), cursed him in the name of Allah
and the Prophet. From that time the arm got
worse and worse, the bone sloughed, a hopeless
running set in, and at last, to escape death, or
a lingering disease (even more horrible than
death), he had the arm cut off, and there it is.

At this conclusion, as, indeed, had been the
case at the end of every sentence, Benjamin
sighed, and the little old Turk turned up his
eyes, "Thanks be to God!" as if losing a bone
were, in his opinion, rather one of kind
Providence's best bonuses.

I looked much satisfied, and took up the
arm and weighed it, as you are expected to do
with a friend's baby.

Said I to Benjamin, in a friendly and duped
voice, "That is a great deal of English for a
little Turkish."

Not a "levator labii superioris" moved its
pullies, as that young dragoman replied:

"Thanks be to Allah" (these Jew touts and
parasites always affect Turkish phraseology),
"he has given the people of this worthy man"
—the Turk nodded and stroked his beard,
seeing he was mentioned, and readjusted the
loose arm—"a brief, yet beautiful language."

"Ask him," I said, assuming a solicitous
tone, "for how many piastres he will sell this
embalmed limb, of which Allah has deprived him."

Here a long and intricate conversation ensued
between Benjamin and the Turk; for this great
result had never suggested itself to even
Benjamin's sanguine and precocious mind. It
sounded like a grinding up of my old friends
the Turkish numerals. Each rogue seemed
what young ladies call, "doing the scales" with
the numerals. Now, "bir" (one) came up, then
you heard, "own" (ten), now "elli" (fifty),
then presently, "yüz" (one hundred).

They stopped. Benjamin advanced, with all the
fun out of his eyes, and put on the semblance of
a herald dictating terms. He spoke gravely,
which did him credit; and the old Turk bent
forward with all the eagerness of Shylock before
the Doge:

"In the month of Abib of this year,
Mustapha Effendi says, chilibi (sir), a rich pasha,
whose name he has an objection to mention,
reined up his horse just where you, chilibi,
stand, and offered him five hundred piastres—
good money—not paper—for that treasure of an
arm, but Mustapha refused, and dismissed him
with his blessing."

I placed three silver piastres (sixpence sterling
in all), bright as spangles, in the dead hand
palm, wished worthy Mustapha a "Peace be
with you!" to which he returned a "God forbid
that I should forget you!" and walked away;
to the jackal Benjamin I flung a large copper
piece, much to his instant loathing and horror;
and, as I truged quickly off, with a surreptitious
glance back at the exploding mine, I
saw both rogues, as if by agreement, spit
execratingly on the ground, and exclaim, loud
enough for me to hear them, in one deep breath:

"Allah! hai guideh kafer!" (Allah! what
a hideous infidel!)

Heaven forgive me, how many rogues I have,
in my small way, led on to exhibitions of
lying and hypocrisy—smugglers, with cigars in
red pocket-handkerchiefs, at London street
corners; foreign princes in distress, outside
Wyld's Globe; castaway sailors in the City-road;
mechanics with clean aprons, pelting first-floor
windows in Gower-street with hymns; and soapy-
faced secretaries of fraudulent charities. I have
many sins to answer for, and these stand high
amongst them.

Let not the patient reader imagine, however,
that the city of the Sultan is infested with
beggars like Naples; where eyeless men lay
hold of you as you walk up the Toledo; where
there is a complete competition of rival stumps
and sores, and where, at every shop door,
parasites still more odious abound, who "beg a
thousand pardons, but may they be allowed the
inInite happiness of removing a speck of mud
from Eccelenza's coat-tail."