Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 12, No. 30, September, 1873

I winced, and a deeper glow came into Fanny's cheek.

"You will give her my letter? I would have written to her also, but it was indeed only this morning that I heard. You will give her that?"

"I have kept it for her," I said quietly; and the adieus were over.

    SARAH C. HALLOWELL.

[TO BE CONTINUED.]

HOW THEY "KEEP A HOTEL" IN TURKEY

The charity of Islam is an article of practice as well as of faith, and manifests itself in ways astonishing to visitors from Christian lands. Thus, the impunity—nay, the protection and sympathy—afforded to the street-beggar, and the way in which the very poor divide their crust with those still more poverty-stricken than themselves, surprise the stranger who observes the scene in the open streets. Then, too, the public fountains, which are charitable offerings from pious persons, are more numerous in Constantinople than in any other city in the world. Nor does the law of kindness restrict itself to man. Islam has anticipated Mr. Bergh, and "The Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals" had as its founder in the Orient no less a personage than Mohammed, whom "the faithful" revere as the Messenger (Résoul) of God, and whom we improperly term Prophet. The Koran specially inculcates kindness to the brute creation, and so thoroughly does the Mussulman obey the mandate that the streets are filled with homeless, masterless dogs, whose melancholy lives Moslem piety will not abridge by water-cure, as in Western lands. This is the more curious because the dog is an unclean animal, whose touch defiles the true believer. Therefore no one keeps a dog, or harbors him, or does more than throw him a bone or scraps of food.

Should a camel fall sick in the desert, or break a limb, his master does not mercifully put him out of his pain, but leaves him there to die "when it pleases Allah." The same sentiment runs through the whole of Eastern life, and it is notably manifested in religious foundations, which also serve as schools, and in khans or caravansaries, which are the Eastern substitutes for hotels. The khans had their origin in charity in the good old times of primitive Mohammedanism, before its simplicity was lost by contact with other creeds. They were wayside buildings intended for the use of commercial travelers or pilgrims, affording shelter from storms and protection from wild beasts, but no further accommodation. The hospitable doors were ever open, but the apparition of "mine host," ready to offer you board and lodging for a reasonable compensation, was undreamt of in the early Turkish philosophy. Every traveler literally "took up his bed and walked "—or rode—away in the morning, leaving the room he had tenanted as bare as he found it. Everybody had to bring his own cooking utensils, provender and materials for making a fire.

What in other countries is left for commercial enterprise to effect for the sake of profit is accomplished here by pious people, who leave legacies for the purpose, and never figure in newspapers, before or after death, as the reward of their munificence or charity. Many a wayworn traveler has blessed the memory of those truly religious men or women on reaching the rugged walls of a khan after a long day's ride under a Syrian sun or the pitiless down-pours of rain characteristic of the same region.

Some of these khans on the road to Damascus or other large Eastern cities are spacious buildings, and the scene presented within them when some caravan stops overnight, or several parties of travelers meet there, is picturesque in the extreme. Everybody wears bright-colored garments and everybody is armed, and the grunt of the camel and bray of the donkey make night, if not musical, certainly most melancholy to the untrained ear.

But innovation has crept in, and the city khan is now a kind of bastard hotel, with a rude host, who makes you pay for your own lodging and the provender of your animal; and as part and parcel of the establishment you also find a coffee-shop, coffee being the primal necessity of Oriental well—being, taking precedence even of tobacco, which, however, always accompanies it. There is always a bazaar close by, at which you can purchase savory kibabs of mutton and other cooked food. Men are no more ashamed to eat in the street than they are to pray there; so you may see multitudes taking their meals al fresco at the hours of morning, midday or sunset, after prayers.

Neither does the Mussulman need elaborate bed and bedding for his repose. He does not undress as we do, but only loosens his garments, without taking them off, and stretches himself on top of his bed or rug, as the case may be. When the weather is cold, he takes off his shoes, but wraps his head and the upper part of his person tightly in his blanket or shawl, at apparent risk of suffocation. Keeping the feet warm and the head cool, which is our great sanitary law, is reversed by the Turk, for he keeps his head covered and his feet uncovered as much as he possibly can. In the morning he gets up, shakes himself, tightens his garments, performs his matutinal ablutions, and his toilet is made for the day. Under these circumstances it will be seen that many things which we should regard as essential necessaries in our hostelry, would be pure superfluities to our Turkish or Arab brother.

Of course, in these places you meet a great mixture of nationalities and all classes and conditions, for the rich, in the absence of other hotel accommodations, must use them as well as the poor; only, as every man brings his own things with him, you find more luxury and comfort in some of the arrangements than in others. You may see rich merchants from Bagdad or Damascus sitting on piles of costly cushions, attended by obsequious slaves, and smoking perfumed Shiraz out of silver narghiles, whose long, snake-like tubes are tipped with precious amber and encircled by rows of precious stones worth a prince's ransom. Huddled together, in striking contrast to this picture, you may see, crouched on their old rugs and smoking the common clay chibouque, a bevy of street-beggars, also enjoying themselves after their fashion.

These khans serve also as shops or bazaars for the traveling merchant, Persian or Turk, who is ever ready to show you his wares, without seeming to care much whether you buy or not.

The city khans are very simply built in a quadrangle, with small rooms, like convent cells, running all round it. These are used both as sleeping-rooms and shops. The stables for the animals and the store-rooms are in a covered corridor beneath. As there are permanent residents here, and valuable merchandise and other articles stored away, there is a gate strongly bolted and barred, and often sheathed in iron, and a gate-keeper, generally to be seen sleeping or smoking, whose sole business is to prevent the entrance of improper or suspicious persons.

The evenings at the khan used to be, and sometimes still are, enlivened by the presence of the almés or dancing-girls, whose ancestors may have danced the same wild and wanton dances before Cleopatra. The singing-girls, monotonously chanting the same dolorous and drowsy tunes, with imitation guitar accompaniment on the sââb were also wont to wound the drowsy ear of night for the diversion of the guests. Drowsier and more sleep-compelling still were the interminable tales spun out by the professional story-teller, giving ragged versions of the Arabian Nights' Entertainments for the delectation of the tireless native listeners.

In those old days, too, the khans used to be the resort of the slave-merchants, who kept stowed safely away, for inspection and purchase, Circassian, Georgian or more dingy beauties, to suit all tastes. But civilization, in its encroachments on Turkey, has compelled the cessation of open sales of either white or black slaves in public places, though so long as the social and domestic system of the East remains unchanged, the sale of women for the house or harem will continue. It is conducted, however, with more privacy, and Christians are not permitted the privilege of viewing the proceedings. This restriction has taken away from the khans one of their former great attractions.

To European or American travelers accustomed to the ease, luxury and profusion of our modern hotels, where the guests enjoy more comforts than most of them get at home, this kind of entertainment for man and beast certainly does not seem attractive. Yet there is enjoyment in it when the khan is tolerably free from fleas and "such small deer," and one is accustomed "to roughing it," and blessed with a good appetite and digestion.

Yet, truth to tell, it is more picturesque than pleasant at the best—more gratifying to the eye than to the other senses, especially to those of smell and hearing. For the odors arising from Turkish or Arab cooking are not those of Araby the Blest; and the close contiguity of the beasts of burden assails both the senses named more pungently than pleasantly. Besides, the Oriental, generally making it a rule to wrap up his head carefully in the covering, snores stertorously throughout the night; so that silence, which we regard as necessary for repose, does not rule over the khan; and when daybreak comes, the startled traveler may imagine Babel has broken loose again, since both men and animals rise with the dawn, and make most diabolical noises to indicate that they have risen.

Enterprising Europeans have set up many hotels in Eastern cities, but they are almost exclusively resorted to by strangers or Europeans resident in the country. Even the high Turks, lapped in luxury and sybaritic in their habits of personal ease, prefer their own hotel system to ours, carrying all their comforts along with them, and a retinue of servants to take charge of them. You will very rarely see a Turkish gentleman, even if educated in Europe, stopping at Messeir's or any of the great Eastern hotels on the European plan.

At Messeir's in Constantinople, or at Shepheard's hotel in Cairo—places of historic interest almost, through the vivid descriptions of travelers like the authors of Eothen and The Crescent and the Cross—a most motley medley of Western nationalities may be encountered, the adventurers, tourists and wanderers of the world congregated there during the winter months, and presenting a panoramic view of all the peculiar phases and contrasts of European civilization, more antagonistic there than elsewhere. There you see the German savant with his round spectacles, round face and round figure; the lean and restless Frenchman; the imperturbable Englishman, drinking his bottled beer under the shadow of the Pyramids; and the angular American, more curious, but more cosmopolite, than any of them. The returning Englishman or Englishwoman who has spent twenty years in India also presents an anomalous type, proving how climate and mode of life may alter the original; for it is curious to contrast the round, rosy faces of the fresh English girls outward bound with the sharp, sallow faces and flashing, restless eyes which characterize those who are returning. The babel of tongues at these tables-d'hôte, where conversations are being carried on in every European language, is most perplexing at first, though French and English predominate. Altogether, for the student of character there is no better field than one of these European hotels in the East—none where the lines of difference can be found more sharply defined; for travel and contact with strangers appear only to bring out the contrasts more clearly, and produce a more direct antagonism, instead of softening down or assimilating them, as one might expect.

Very few travelers see the city khans—fewer still ever venture to pass a night within their walls. Even on the routes of desert-travel the pilgrims for pleasure avoid them, substituting their own tents for the stone walls, and confiding in the arrangements made by their dragomen or guides, who contract to make the necessary provision for all their wants for a stipulated sum—one-half usually in advance, the balance payable at the expiration of the trip. To do these men justice, as a rule they provide liberally and well in all respects, their reputation and recommendations being their capital and stock in trade for securing subsequent tourists. Yet it cannot be doubted that this system has robbed the Eastern tour of some of its most salient and striking peculiarities, and has deprived the traveler of much opportunity for insight into the real life of the Oriental, only to be seen while he is journeying from place to place, since his own house is generally closed against the stranger, and it is only in the khan that a glimpse of his mode of life can be obtained.

The khan, like the harem, is one of the peculiar institutions of the East, and will probably so continue, in spite of the advancing tide of European civilization; which, however it may affect the outer aspects of that life, has as yet made little impression on its more essential features. The men may wear the Frank dress (all but the hat, which they will not accept), may smoke cigars instead of chibouques, and drink "gaseous lemonade" (champagne), in defiance of the Prophet's prohibition; the women may send from the high harems for French fashions, and "fearfully and wonderfully" array themselves therein; but in other respects the people will stubbornly adhere to their own social system and habits of life.

It follows that the traveler who goes to the East to study the manners and customs of its people will get only an imperfect and outside view if he makes himself comfortable in one of the hybrid European hotels we have described, instead of braving the picturesque discomforts of the Oriental hotel or khan, which he will find endurable by taking a few preliminary precautions easily suggested to him on the spot.

    EDWIN DE LEON.

OUR MONTHLY GOSSIP

THE CALIFORNIAN AT VIENNA

I am in bonds and fetters through not understanding the German tongue. It is a weary torture to be a stupid, uncomprehended foreigner. I am lost in a linguistic swamp. It is necessary to employ one man to talk to another. The commisionnaire does not understand more than half I say. What might he not be interpreting to the other fellow? The most trivial want costs me a world of anxiety and trouble. I desired some blotting-paper. I went to a little stationery shop. I said, "Paper! paper! für die blot, you know. Ich bin Englisher—er: ink no dry; what you call um? Vas? vas? Hang it!" They took down all sorts of paper—letter-paper, wrapping-paper, foolscap, foreign post. I tried to make my want known by signs. I made myself simply ridiculous. The shopkeeper stared at me in perplexity, disgust and despair. Then he discussed the matter with his wife. I fretted, perspiring vigorously. I went away. I went to a commissionnaire at my hotel. It required five minutes to explain the matter to him. He discussed the matter with the portier. The portier is quite buried under gold lace and brass buttons. The commissionnaire returns to me. He thinks he knows what I require, but is not quite certain. All this trouble for a bit of blotting-paper! It is so with everything. Every little matter of every-day life, which at home to think of and do are almost identical, here costs so much time, labor and anxiety! My strength is all gone when I have purchased a paper of pins and a bottle of ink. Breakfast and dinner task me to the utmost. The slightest deviation from established custom seems to act on the people at the restaurant like a wrong figure in a table of logarithms. It required three days to convince a stunted boy in a long-tailed coat that I did not wish beer for dinner. He would bring beer. I would say, "I don't want beer! I want my—some dinner." He would depart and take counsel with the head-waiter, and I would feel as if I had been doing something for which I ought to be corrected. The latter functionary approaches and exclaims with domineering voice, "Vat you vants?" I reply with meekness, "Dinner, sir, if you please." He brings me an elegantly bound book containing the bill of fare. But it is in German: I look at it knowingly: Sanscrit would be quite as intelligible. I put my finger on a word which I suppose means soup. I look up meekly at the functionary. He glowers contemptuously upon me. He recommends me to an underling, and bustles off to guests more important. There are in the dining-hall French, German, Italian, English and Japanese. Tongues, plates, knives and forks clatter inside—wheels roll, rumble and clatter over the stony pavement outside. I wait for my soup. Hours seem to lag by. I appeal in vain to other waiters. Life is too busy and important a matter with them to pay any attention to me.

The aristocratic German waiter is cool and indifferent. It is beneath his dignity to approach you within half an hour after you sit down. He knows you are hungry, and enjoys your pangs. He is sensible of every signal, every expression of the eye with which you regard him. To appear not to know is the chief business of his life. He will with the minutest care arrange a napkin while a half dozen hungry men at different tables are trying to arrest his attention. Before I met this man my temper was mild and amiable: I believed in doing by my fellows as I would be done by. Now I am changed. I never visit the Vienna restaurant but I dwell in thought on battle, murder, pistols, bowie-knives, blood, bullets and sudden death. After eating a meal it requires another hour to pay for it. A nobleman, dressed de rigueur, condescends to take my money after he has made me wait long enough. There are two of these officials at the hotel. One in general manner resembles a heavy dealer in bonds and government securities—the other a modest, charming young clergyman of the Church of England. One morning, when the atmosphere was very sultry, I ventured to open a window. The dealer in government securities shut it immediately, and gave me a look which humiliated me for the day. I said I wanted, if possible, air enough to support life while eating my breakfast. He said that was against the rules of the house: the windows must not be opened. There was too much dust blowing in the street. What were a few common lives compared to the advent of dust in that dining-room?

You must live here by rule. Novelty is treason. It is the unalterable rule of life that because things have been done in a certain manner, so must they ever be done. It requires almost a revolution to have an egg boiled hard in Vienna. I said at my first meal, "Ein caffee und egg mit hard." It may be seen that I speak German with the English accent. The eggs came soft-boiled. I suppose that the nobleman who attended on my table went to the prince in disguise who governed the culinary department, and informed him of this new demand in the matter of eggs. It is presumable that the prince pronounced against me, for next morning my eggs were still soft-boiled. Then I braced myself up and said, "See here! I want mine zwei eggs, you know, hard, hard! You understand?" The nobleman looked at me with contempt. The eggs came about one-tenth of a degree harder than the previous morning. I resolved to gain my point. I saw how necessary it was to put more force, vigor, spirit and savagery into my culinary instructions to the nobleman. This despotism should not prevail against me. When the free, easy and enlightened American among the effete and crumbling monarchies of Europe shrieks for hard-boiled eggs, they must be produced, though the House of Hapsburg should reel, stumble and totter.

I said on the third morning, "Haben Sie ein hot Feuer in your kitchen?" Ja. "And hot Wasser?" Ja. "And will you put this hot Feuer under the said hot Wasser, and in that hot Wasser put the eggs and keep them there zehn Minuten, zwanzig Minuten, or a day or a week—any length of time, so that they are only boiled hard, just like stones, brickbats, rocks, boulders or the gray granite crest of Yosemite? I want mine eggs hard." Then I ground my teeth and looked wicked and savage, and squirmed viciously in my chair. There was some improvement in the eggs that morning, but they were not hard boiled.

The Viennese spend most of their time in the open air, drinking beer and coffee, reading light newspapers, eating and smoking. In the English and American sense they have neither politics nor religion. The government and the Church provide these articles, leaving the people little to do save enjoy themselves, float lazily down life's stream, and die when their souls become too spiritualized to remain longer in their bodies.

I am fast becoming German. I have my coffee at nine: it requires two hours to drink it. Then I dream a little, smoke a cigar and drink a glass of beer. At twelve comes dinner. This I eat at a café table on the sidewalk, with more beer. At two I take a nap. At five I awake, drink another glass of beer, and dream. From that time until nine is occupied in getting hungry for supper. This occupies two hours. Then more beer and tobacco. Some time in the night I retire. Sometimes I am aware of the operation of disrobing, sometimes not. This is Viennese life. One day merges into another in a vague, misty sort of way. Time is not checked off into short, sharp divisions as in busy, bustling America. From the windows opposite mine, on the other side of the street, protrude Germans with long pipes. They sit there hour after hour, those pipes hanging down a foot below the window-sill. Occasionally they emit a puff of smoke. This is the only sign of life about them.

The window-sills are furnished with cushions to lean on when you gaze forth. The one in mine is continually dropping down into the street below, and a man in a brass-mounted cap, who calls himself a "Dienstmann," does a good business in picking it up and bringing it up stairs at ten kreutzers a trip. The kreutzer is a copper coin equivalent to an English farthing. Every day here seems a sort of holiday, and in this respect Sunday stands pre-eminent.

The ladies, as a rule, are fine-looking, shapely, well-dressed and particular as to the fit of their gaiters and hose—a most refreshing sight to one for a year accustomed to the general dowdiness which in this respect prevails in England. Most of the English girls seem to have no idea that their feet should be dressed. The Viennese lady is very tasteful. She is neither slipshod nor gaudy. I never beheld more dainty toilettes. Everything about them, as a sailor would say, is cut "by the lifts and braces."

Vienna abounds in great bath-houses. I have tested one. I wandered about the establishment asking every one I met for a warm bath. Some pointed in one direction, some in another, and after blundering back and forth for a while, I found myself before a woman. For fifty kreutzers she gave me a ticket. Then she called for Marie. Marie, a black-eyed, bright German girl, came. She went to a shelf and burdened herself with a quantity of linen. Then she signed for me to follow. I did so in an expectant, wondering and rather anxious frame of mind. Marie showed me into a neatly-furnished bath-room. She spread a linen sheet in the tub, and turned on the water. I waited for the tub to fill and Marie to depart. Marie seemed in no hurry. I pondered over the possibilities involved in a German "Warm-bad." Perhaps Marie will attempt to scrub me! Never! At last she goes. I remove my collar. Suddenly Marie returns: it is to bring another towel. There is no lock on the door—nothing with which to defend one's self. I bathe in peace, however. On emerging I examine the pile of linen Marie has left. There is a small towel, and two large aprons without strings, long enough to reach from the shoulders to the knees. I study over their possible use. I conclude they are to dry the anatomy with. On subsequent inquiry I ascertained that they were to be worn while I rang the bell and Marie came in to substitute hot water for cold.

The American commission to the exhibition occupies a bare, disconsolate, shabby suite of rooms. They resemble much the editorial offices of those ephemeral daily papers which, commencing with very small capital, after a spasmodic career of a few months fall despairingly into the arms of the sheriff. I had once occasion to visit the commission on a little matter of business. What that was I have forgotten: I recollect only the multiplicity of doors in those apartments. When I turned to depart, I opened every door but the proper one. I went into closets, private apartments and intricate passages, and after making the entire round without discovering egress, I made another tour of them, but still could not find where I had entered. A solitary American was seated in the reading-room looking weary and homesick, and I asked him if he could tell me the right road out of the American commission. He said he hardly knew: this was his first visit, but he'd try. So both of us went prospecting around and opening all the doors we met, while a deaconish old gentleman behind a desk looked on apparently interested, yet offering nothing in the way of information or suggestion. I presume, however, this is the only amusement the man has in this forlorn place. I was beginning to think of descending by way of the windows when the strange American at last found a door which led into the main entry, and we both left at the same time, glad to escape.

I will do one side of the American department in the exhibition stern justice. It commences with a long picture placed there by the Pork Packers' Association of Cincinnati, descriptive of the processes which millions of American hogs are subjected to while being converted into pork. There are hogs going in long procession to be killed, and going, too, in a determined sort of way, as if they knew it was their business to be killed. Then come hogs killed, hogs scalded, hogs scraped, hogs cut up into shoulders, hams, sides, jowls; hogs salted, hogs smoked. Underneath this sketch are a number of unpainted buggy and carriage wheels; next, a pile of pick-handles; not far off, a little mound of grindstones; after the grindstones, a platoon of clothes-wringers; next, a solitary iron wheel-barrow communing with a patent fire-extinguisher; following these a crowd of green iron pumps, with sewing-machines in full force. Such is a bit of the American department.

It is the fashion here that every one should have a growl at the general slimness and slovenliness of our department. Every one gives our drooping eagle a kick. This is all wrong. We can't send our greatest wonders and triumphs to Europe. There is neither room nor opportunity in the building for showing off one of our political torchlight processions, or a vigilance-committee hanging, or a Chicago or Boston fire, or a steamboat blow-up, or a railway smash-up. Were the present chief of the commission a man of originality and talent, he might even now save the national reputation by bundling all the pumps, churns, patent clothes-washers, wheel-barrows and pick-handles out of doors, and converting one of the United States rooms into a reservation for the Modocs, and the other into a corral for buffaloes and grizzly bears. These, with a mustang poet or two from Oregon, a few Hard-Shell Democrats, a live American daily paper, with a corps of reporters trained to squeeze themselves through door-cracks and key-holes, might retrieve the national honor, if shown up realistically and artistically.

    PRENTICE MULFORD.

GHOSTLY WARRIORS

So strong a resemblance exists between a battle-scene of a mediaeval Spanish poet and the culminating incidents of Lord Macaulay's Battle of the Lake Regillus, as to justify somewhat extended citations. Of the Spanish writer, Professor Longfellow says, in his note upon the extract from the Vida de San Millan given in the Poets and Poetry of Europe, "Gonzalo de Berceo, the oldest of the Castilian poets whose name has reached us, was born in 1198. He was a monk in the monastery of Saint Millan, in Calahorra, and wrote poems on sacred subjects in Castilian Alexandrines." According to the poem, the Spaniards, while combating the Moors, were overcome by "a terror of their foes," since "these were a numerous army, a little handful those."

And whilst the Christian people stood in this uncertainty,
Upward toward heaven they turned their eyes and fixed their thoughts on high;
And there two persons they beheld, all beautiful and bright,—
Even than the pure new-fallen snow their garments were more white.

They rode upon two horses more white than crystal sheen,
And arms they bore such as before no mortal man had seen.

Their faces were angelical, celestial forms had they,—
And downward through the fields of air they urged their rapid way;
They looked upon the Moorish host with fierce and angry look,
And in their hands, with dire portent, their naked sabres shook.

The Christian host, beholding this, straightway take heart again;
They fall upon their bended knees, all resting on the plain,