I cannot quite state why the tendency toward Orientalism--Oriental dress--all the manner of an Oriental monarch--has taken full possession of me: but so it is: for surely I am hardly any longer a Western, 'modern' mind, but a primitive and Eastern one. Certainly, that cravat in the frame has receded a million, million leagues, ten thousand forgotten aeons, from me! Whether this is a result due to my own personality, of old acquainted with Eastern notions, or whether, perhaps, it is the natural accident to any mind wholly freed from trammels, I do not know. But I seem to have gone right back to the very beginnings, and resemblance with man in his first, simple, gaudy conditions. My hair, as I sit here writing, already hangs a black, oiled string down my back; my scented beard sweeps in two opening whisks to my ribs; I have on the _izar_, a pair of drawers of yomani cloth like cotton, but with yellow stripes; over this a soft shirt, or quamis, of white silk, reaching to my calves; over this a short vest of gold-embroidered crimson, the _sudeyree_; over this a khaftan of green-striped silk, reaching to the ankles, with wide, long sleeves divided at the wrist, and bound at the waist with a voluminous gaudy shawl of Cashmere for girdle; over this a warm wide-flowing torrent of white drapery, lined with ermine. On my head is the skull-cap, covered by a high crimson cap with deep-blue tassel; and on my feet is a pair of thin yellow-morocco shoes, covered over with thick red-morocco babooshes. My ankles--my ten fingers--my wrists--are heavy with gold and silver ornaments; and in my ears, which, with considerable pain, I bored three days since, are two needle-splinters, to prepare the holes for rings. * * * * * O Liberty! I am free.... * * * * * While I was going to visit my old home in Harley Street that night, at the very moment when I turned from Oxford Street into Cavendish Square, this thought, fiercely hissed into my ears, was all of a sudden seething in me: 'If now I should lift my eyes, and see a man walking yonder--just yonder--_at the corner there_--turning from Harewood Place into Oxford Street--what, my good God, should I do?--I without even a knife to run and plunge into his heart?' And I turned my eyes--ogling, suspicious eyes of furtive horror--reluctantly, lingeringly turned--and I peered deeply with lowered brows across the murky winds at that same spot: but no man was there.