There are also interesting things to watch outside the monastery gate. Temporary coffee-houses and eating places are established there in abundance, and the hum of festivity that arises from them may be heard afar among the cypresses of the surrounding Turkish cemetery. I must add that spirituous liquors are dispensed with some freedom; for the Greek does not share the hesitation of his Turkish brother in such matters, and he considers it well-nigh a Christian duty to imbibe at Easter. To imbibe too much at that season, as at New Year’s and one or two other great feasts, is by no means held to impair a man’s reputation for sobriety. It is surprising, however, how soberly the pleasures of the day are in general taken. As you sit at a table, absorbing your own modest refreshment, you are even struck by a certain stolidity in those about you. Perhaps it is partly due to the fact that the crowd is not purely Greek. Armenians are there, Bulgarians, Albanians, Turks too. Then many of the pilgrims are peasants, come in ox-carts from outlying villages and dazzled a little by this urban press. They listen in pure delight to the music that pours from a hundred instruments. The crowning glory of such an occasion is to have a musician sit at the table with you, preferably a hand-organ man or a gipsy with his pipe. Gipsy women go about telling fortunes. “You are going to have great calamities,” utters one darkly when you refuse to hear your fate. “Is that the way to get a piastre out of me?” you ask. “But afterward you will become very rich,” she condescends to add. Other gipsies carry miniature marionette shows on their backs in glass cases. Wandering musicians tempt you to employ their arts. Vendors of unimaginable sweets pick their way among the tables. Beggars exhibit horrible deformities and make artful speeches. “May you enjoy your youth!” is one. “May you know no bitternesses!” exclaims another with meaning emphasis. “May God forgive your dead,” utters a third. “The world I hear, but the world I do not see,” cries a blind man melodramatically: “Little eyes I have none.” Diminutives are much in favour among this gentry. And every two minutes some one comes with a platter or with a brass casket sealed with a big red seal and says, “Your assistance,” adding, “for the church,” or “for the school,” or “for the hospital,” if you seem to fail to take in what is expected of you. Your assistance need not be very heavy, however, and you feel that you owe something in return for the pleasures of the occasion.