The Sultan occasionally recompenses the faithful services of the slaves of the Imperial Seraï by giving them their liberty, accompanied by a donation sufficiently liberal to enable them to establish themselves in an eligible manner. On a late occasion, he emancipated an elderly woman, who had secured his favour by her unremitted attentions to one of his wives during a protracted illness; and, being light of heart at the moment, and perhaps curious to learn how she would act on such an emergency, he desired her to put on her yashmac, and to take a boat to Stamboul, where she was to hire an araba, and drive slowly about the city, until she saw an individual whom she desired for a husband; when, if he could be identified, she should be his wife within the week. His Imperial Highness was obeyed on the instant. One of the Palace caïques rowed to the door of the harem; and the freed slave, accompanied by an aged companion, stepped in, and was rapidly conveyed to Stamboul. On landing at “the Gate of the Garden,” she walked into the house of Hussein the watchmaker, with whose wife she was acquainted; and while the stripling son of the worthy Musselmaun was despatched for an araba, she took her place upon the sofa, and partook of the grape-jelly and coffee which were handed to her by her officious hostess. These were succeeded by the _kadeun-chibouk_, or woman’s pipe; and she had not flung out half a dozen volumes of smoke from her nostrils, ere all the harem of Hussein the watchmaker knew that she was free, and about to chuse a helpmeet from among the tradesmen of the city. At every “Mashallàh!” uttered by her auditors, the self-gratulation of the visitor increased; and she, who a day previously had not wasted a thought on matrimony, smoked on in silence, absorbed in dreams of tenderness and ambition. The araba was, of course, a full hour ere it appeared, for the arabajhe had to smoke his _narghïlè_, or water-pipe; and the arabajhe’s assistant had to repair the damages which the last day’s journey had done to the harness, and to wash away the mud that yet clung about the wheels; and after that there were comments to be made upon the horses, as they were slowly attached to the vehicle; and on the unusual circumstance of a Turkish woman hiring a carriage, without previously bargaining with the owner for the sum to be paid. But Yusuf, the son of Hussein, who found more amusement in watching the slow motions of the arabajhe than in keeping guard over his father’s chronometers, put an end to the astonishment of the party by informing them that the person who had engaged the vehicle was a slave of the Imperial Seraï; a piece of information which tended considerably to expedite the preparations of the coachman, and to excite the curiosity of his companions.