talked over, as the girl's people need to reflect, and also to make a searching inquiry about the man. If the answer be in the negative, it must be made very tactfully and politely. In some parts of Turkey they have a curious way of letting the proposers know that their offer has been declined. Over their ordinary shoes people almost always wear goloshes, and on entering a house they take them off and leave them in the entrance-hall. The servants of the house make a point of arranging the goloshes heel outwards, in such a way that when the visitor goes out he can put his feet straight into them, without having the trouble of turning them round. Now, when the agent of suitor for a lady's hand, on leaving the house, finds that her goloshes are turned with the toes towards her, she knows that the proposal has been declined. Thus a man gets betrothed to a woman without being permitted to see his beloved fiancée until the wedding formalities are over and the marriage ceremonies are completed. Astounding tales have been related of what has sometimes happened when a husband has thus seen his wife for the first time. In one town, a man who, from the reports he had heard, was deeply in love with his betrothed, actually left the house and ran away when he drew up the long and beautifully embroidered veil that covered the lady, now his wife, and discovered that she was the ugliest creature his imagination could picture. It is easy to conceive the feelings in such a case of a man who has, on the flattering descriptions of the professional marriage-brokers, been led to believe up to the last moment in the angelic appearance of his wife. How terrible must be his disappointment when, on the day of his marriage, he unveils his dreamt-of 'beauty' and beholds a face rough and painted in the vain endeavour to conceal the ravages of smallpox, or distinguished by an ultra-Israelitish nose and topped with a pretentious wig. The unhappy case of such a disappointed husband must not, however, be overstated. Fortunately for him he does not often see other female faces, and his notions on the subject of what real beauty is are necessarily restricted by his want of experience. He is naturally of a contented disposition, believes in kismet in this as in other things, and so these physical defects do not greatly disturb his peace of mind, and it is only very rarely that he runs away from his wife.