What glorious times, Oliver, the old Turks must have, sitting, on a sultry day like this, listening to the cool plashing of their fountains, and smoking their chiboques—egad!—until they fall asleep, and dream of dark-eyed Houris smiling on them, amid the fragrant groves and by the cool rivers of a Musselman Paradise. What a pity we were not born in Turkey, you a Bashaw of three tails, and I the Sultaun of Stamboul! How we would have stroked our beards—and smoked our pipes—and given praise to the prophet as we drank our sherbert, spiced, you know, with a _very_ little of the _aqua vitæ_, that comfort of comforts to the inner man! We could then have dressed like gentlemen, and not gone about, as we do now, breeched, coated, and swaddled in broadcloth, like a couple of Egyptian mummies. Just imagine yourself in a dashing Turkish dress, with a turban on your head, and a scimitar all studded with diamonds at your side, with which—the scimitar I mean—you are wont to slice off the heads of infidels as I slice off the top of this pyramid of ice-cream—help yourself, for it’s delicious! I think I see us now, charging at the head of our spahis against the rascally Russians, driving their half starved soldier slaves like chaff before a whirl-wind, and carrying our horse-tails and shouting “Il Allah!” into the very tents of their chieftains. What magnificent fellows we would have made! Ah!—my dear boy—you and I are out of our element. Take my word for it, a Turk is your finest gentleman, your true philosopher, the only man that understands how to live. He keeps better horses, wears richer clothes, walks with a nobler mien, smokes more luxuriously, drinks more seductive coffee, and kisses his wife or ladye-love with better grace, than any man or set of men, except you and I, “under the broad canopy of heaven” as the town-meeting orators have it. And let me tell you this last accomplishment—this kissing gracefully, “_secundum artem_”—is a point of education most impiously neglected amongst us. Kissing is a science by itself. Let us draw up to the window where we can drink in the perfume of the garden, and while you whiff away at your meerschaum, I will prove the truth of my assertion. One has a knack for talking after dinner—I suppose it is because good steaks and madeira lubricate the tongue.