Within recent years much has been done, both by the Jewish Alliance and the Scottish and English Mission Schools, to educate boys and girls, and there is certainly a great improvement. Jews are fatalists, and are convinced that the decrees of fate are unalterable, yet they imagine that Providence may be cheated and thus deterred from its purposes. Accordingly, if Joseph happens to fall ill, and there is a likelihood of his dying, they forthwith change his name into, we will say, Benjamin, and they expect that when the Angel of Death arrives to fulfil his mission he will think he has made a mistake, and gone to the wrong house. So everyone in the room keeps addressing the invalid as Benjamin, and, should he recover, they all congratulate themselves on their masterly deception. Another expedient, but principally connected with children's ailments, is to trap the malevolent demon who has induced the sickness, and this they profess to do by laying a trail of sugar from the child's sick-bed to a well. The greedy demon follows the track, and gets drowned! Dread of the evil-eye is as prevalent with the Jews as with the other races in Turkey. They believe that there are certain malignant spirits in existence who are envious of men's happiness and do all they can to destroy it, especially when any self-praise or praise by others has been expressed by the lips. This power, it is further believed, is not restricted to demons, but is also shared by individuals, especially those possessing blue eyes. Quite an elaborate series of antidotes or prophylactics are adopted as a preservative against such influence, the most potent of which is to prefix to each commendation the magic spell-word _Mashalla_--_i.e._, "In the name of God." To this may be added the power of the blue bead, the evil spirit having a great predilection for that colour. Hence, if you praise a child for its beauty, and it happens to wear blue beads, the spirit's attention will be so absorbed with the bead that it will not hear your remarks. Another preservative is garlic, which has a repellent effect on the evil spirit. As a consequence, everything in Turkey that has to be protected from the evil-eye is decorated either with the one or the other, and you seldom see a horse, a draught ox, or even a donkey, that has not a string of blue beads about its neck. Children wear these charms on their caps; and the prows of boats, the roofs of houses, cages of birds, and even hovels have a bunch of garlic suspended with strings. It is even stated that bouquets of flowers formed of spices, and in the centre of which garlic is nestled, are sent as a present to the mother of a new-born infant, as a safeguard both to herself and the child.