It is not improbable that this ancient custom of presenting a visitor with a new dress as a token of welcome, a symbol of rejoicing at his presence, may have led to many of the general customs which have prevailed, and do still, of having new clothes at any season of joy or festivity. New clothes are thought by the people of the East _requisite_ for the due solemnization of a time of rejoicing. The Turks, even the poorest of them, would submit to any privation rather than be without new clothes at the Bairam or Great Festival. There is an anecdote recorded of the Caliph Montanser Billah, that going one day to the upper roof of his palace he saw a number of clothes spread out on the flat roofs of the houses of Bagdat. He asked the reason, and was told that the inhabitants of Bagdat were drying their clothes, which they had newly washed, on account of the approach of the Bairam. The caliph was so concerned that any should be so poor as to be obliged to wash their old clothes for want of new ones with which to celebrate this festival, that he ordered a great quantity of gold to be instantly made into bullets, proper to be shot out of crossbows, which he and his courtiers threw, by this means, upon every terrace of the city where he saw garments spread to dry. FOOTNOTES: [5] Book viii. chap. 48. [6] Ciampini, Vetera Monimenta, cap. xiii. [7] "Licia qui texunt, et Carmina; Carmina Musis, Licia contribuunt, casta Minerva, tibi. Ast ego rem sociam non dissociabo, Sabina, Versibus inscripsi, quae mea texta meis." [8] "Sive probas Tyrio textam sub tegmine vestem, Seu placet inscripti commoditas tituli. Ipsius haec Dominae concennat utrumque venustas: Has geminas artes una Sabina colet." CHAPTER VI. THE DARK AGES.--"SHEE-SCHOOLS." "There was an auncient house not far away, Renown'd throughout the world for sacred lore And pure unspotted life: so well they say It govern'd was, and guided evermore Through wisedome of a matrone grave and hore, Whose onely joy was to relieve the needes Of wretched soules, and helpe the helplesse pore: All night she spent in bidding of her bedes, And all the day in doing good and godly dedes." Faerie Queene. "Meantime, whilst monks' _pens_ were thus employed, nuns with their _needles_ wrote histories also: that of _Christ his passion_ for their altar-clothes; and other Scripture- (and more legend-) stories in hangings to adorn their houses."--Fuller, Ch. Hist., B. 6.