He Told Me
He Was Sick, And Wished To Have A Little Blood Taken From Him; But I
Had No
Sooner, tied up his arm and displayed the lancet, than his
courage failed, and he begged me to postpone the
Operation till the
afternoon, as he felt himself, he said, much better than he had
been, and thanked me kindly for my readiness to serve him. He then
observed that his women were very desirous to see me, and requested
that I would favour them with a visit. An attendant was ordered to
conduct me; and I had no sooner entered the court appropriated to
the ladies, than the whole seraglio surrounded me - some begging for
physic, some for amber, and all of them desirous of trying that
great African specific, BLOOD-LETTING. They were ten or twelve in
number, most of them young and handsome, and wearing on their heads
ornaments of gold, and beads of amber.
They rallied me with a good deal of gaiety on different subjects,
particularly upon the whiteness of my skin and the prominency of my
nose. They insisted that both were artificial. The first, they
said, was produced when I was an infant, by dipping me in milk; and
they insisted that my nose had been pinched every day, till it had
acquired its present unsightly and unnatural conformation. On my
part, without disputing my own deformity, I paid them many
compliments on African beauty. I praised the glossy jet of their
skins, and the lovely depression of their noses; but they said that
flattery, or, as they emphatically termed it, honey-mouth, was not
esteemed in Bondou.
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