[14] I think this shows why to this day a Spaniard who professes to be an educated person will often wipe his or her mouth upon the tablecloth. Not many weeks ago I saw the elegantly dressed daughter of a Spanish member of Parliament perform this semi-oriental feat in an hotel at Granada. Montaigne would judge this _señorita_ with benevolence; not so, I fear, my compatriots. Similarly, it is considered rude in Spain to stretch yourself; but not to spit upon the dining-room floor, or pick your teeth at table. The same author proceeds to relate his experiences at bed-time. "Having supp'd and solaced ourselves with muddy beverage and Moresco music, we all composed ourselves to sleep: about twenty were allotted to lodge in this small chamber, whereof two were Christians, three Jews, and the rest Moors; every one made his bed of what he wore, which made our English constitutions to wish for the morning." [Illustration: V ARMCHAIR (_17th Century. Museum of Salamanca_)] Among the Mussulmans all this has undergone no change. Do we not find their present furniture to be identical with that of distant centuries?--a characteristic scarcity of portable articles of wood; the isolated box (_arqueta_ or _arcón_) which serves the purpose of our clumsier chest of drawers or wardrobe;[15] carpets and decorated leathers; the tiny, indispensable table; the lack of knives and spoons; ornaments to regale the eye rather than commodities which the hand might seize upon and utilize? Such was, and is, and will continue to remain Mohammedan society throughout the world; and these descriptive passages of life in seventeenth-century Morocco might have been penned with equal truth in reference to the Spanish Muslim of a thousand years ago. [15] Mr. Cunninghame Graham, visiting a Caid's house in present-day Morocco, noted, as the only furniture, "leather-covered cushions, the cover cut into intricate geometric patterns; the room contained a small trunk-shaped box." The furniture of the Moorish mosques was also of the scantiest. "They are," to quote once more from Lancelot Addison's amusing little brochure, "without the too easy accommodations of seats, pews, or benches. The floor of the Giámma is handsomely matted, and so are the walls about two feet high. If the roof be large and weighty, it is supported with pillars, among which hang the lamps, which are kept burning all the night." At one point of his expedition the reason for such paucity of furniture was vividly expounded to our tourist. A Moor indignantly exclaimed to him that it was "a shame to see women, dogs, and dirty shoes brought into a place sacred to God's worship, and that men ... should have chaires there to sit in with as much lascivious ease as at home."[16] [16] _West Barbary_, p. 150.