Another Scamp Caught Up One Of My Loaded Pistols Before I Could Snatch It Out Of His Hand, And Clapped It To His Neighbour's Head; Fortunately, It Was On Half-Cock, And The Trigger Was Stiff.

Then a serious and majestic boy about six years old, with an inkstand in his belt, in token of his receiving a literary education, seized my pipe and began to smoke it with huge puffs.

I ventured laughingly to institute a comparison between the length of his person and the pipe-stick, when he threw it upon the ground, and stared at me fixedly with flaming eyes and features distorted by anger. The cause of this "bouldness" soon appeared. The boys, instead of being well beaten, were scolded with fierce faces, a mode of punishment which only made them laugh.

They had their redeeming points, however; they were manly angry boys, who punched one another like Anglo-Saxons in the house, whilst abroad they were always

[p.294] fighting with sticks and stones. And they examined our weapons,-before deigning to look at anything else,-as if eighteen instead of five had been the general age.

At last I so far broke through the laws of Arab politeness as to inform my host in plain words-how inconceivably wretched the boy Mohammed was thereby rendered!-that I was hungry, thirsty, and sleepy, and that I wanted to be alone before visiting the Harim. The good-natured Shaykh, who was preparing to go out at once in order to pray before his father's grave, immediately brought me breakfast; lighted a pipe, spread a bed, darkened the room, turned out the children, and left me to the society I most desired-my own.

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