Two little slave girls, who giggled at us all the while, brought in a samovar much after the Russian pattern, and silver boxes of broken cone sugar and of European biscuits. Our host made tea in the native fashion, brewed with quantities of sugar and flavoured heavily with mint; green tea, of course. He filled our cups again and again, though he would take nothing, till we too wished we respected Ramadan, for we were told by our Jewish friend that it would be impolite to drink less than five or six cups. Along with this refreshment the silver sprinklers were passed us by the giggling little blacks, that we might sprinkle our clothes, and no doubt they thought we needed perfuming, though they did not hold their noses, as other Europeans have told me they often do when close to Nazarenes. Perhaps their master had instructed them in good behaviour, for he was indeed a gentleman, and he had travelled on one occasion to London and to Paris. It was at this point, when the Moor, with immaculate fingers, sprinkled his own long white robes, that one could appreciate their feeling that we are filthy people. We wear the same outer garments for months, and they are never washed; indeed, we wear dark colours that the dirt may not show; here we had entered upon this gentleman’s precious carpets with our muddy boots, where a sockless Moor would shift his slippers. And they have habits too which make for bodily cleanliness, habits which they know we have not, as, for instance, that of shaving the hair from every part of the body but the face. Our conversation was chiefly on comparisons of customs, our host noticing that we shaved our faces, the Moors their heads, and we remarking--for he was too polite--that we kept on our shoes when we entered a house, whereas the Moors wore their fezzes or their turbans. He said that he had beheld in London the extraordinary sight of a pair of ordinary Moorish slippers set upon a table as an ornament; and he had seen also the woman sultan, Queen Victoria.