It was in Brusa that we went out to purchase some ‘stuffs for dress’--not that we contemplated making for ourselves ten robes each to the value of a thousand golden pieces, like the lady of Baghdad, but that we had heard rumours of certain of the Brusa silks which were suited to less extravagant requirements. It was a hot, steaming afternoon; we hired diminutive donkeys and rode down Brusa streets and under the many domes of the bazaar. The quick, short steps of the donkeys clicked over the cobble stones; we looked round us as they went at the rows and rows of shop-counters, the high vaults which arched away to right and left ward, the courtyards open to the sky, set round with shops, grown over with vines, gleaming with sunshine at the end of some dark narrow passage, the people standing about in leisurely attitudes, and the donkeys, which walked diligently up and down, carrying now a veiled woman sitting astride on her padded saddle, now a turbaned Turk, and now a bale of merchandise. At length we came to the street of the silk merchants, and dismounted before the shop of an old Turk who was sitting cross-legged within. He rose, and with many polite salaams begged us to enter, and set chairs for us round the low enamelled table. We might have been paying a morning call: we talked--those of us who could speak Turkish--of Sa’di and the musical glasses, we sipped our cups of delicious coffee, we puffed our narghilehs--those of us who could derive any other pleasure from a narghileh than that of a strong taste of charcoal flavoured with painted wood. Presently the subject of silks was broached, and set aside again as unworthy of discussion; after a few more minutes our--host, shall I say?--laid before us a bundle of embroideries, which we examined politely, complimenting him upon his possessions. At length, as if the idea had just struck him, though he knew perfectly well the object of our visit, he pulled a roll of silk from a corner of the shop and laid it before us. We asked tentatively whether he would not permit us to see more, and the business of the afternoon began. The stuffs were certainly charming. There were the usual stripes of silk and cotton, there were muslins woven with tinsel lines, coarse Syrian cottons, and the brocades for which Brusa is famous, mixtures of cotton and silk woven in small patterns something like a Persian pattern, yellow on white, gold on blue, orange on yellow. No doubt we paid more for our purchases than they were worth, but not more than the pleasure of a delightful afternoon spent in the old Turk’s company was worth to us.