reservations, highly rational notions as concerns the eatable and the drinkable.  His endless variety of kabobs and pilaus is worthy of all commendation; and his sherbets, which refresh without a sting or a resipiscent headache next morning, are no doubt the style of phlegm-cutters and gum-ticklers which one had better patronize pretty exclusively while between the tropics.  The gentleman of the circumcision whom I had for host was, I suspect, something of an epicure, and his cooking was such as I found eminently toothsome.  My dinner was on the floor at the polite hour of eight, after which he would come to me for a short talk and to chant a little Persian poetry.  At nine he was due in his harem, which, he gave me to understand, was a populous establishment.

For my special service he detailed, to my surprise, not a man, but a young woman, who, I take it, was in bonds.  Under considerate Hindoo and Mohammedan masters slavery is, however, the lightest of hardships, and the damsel appropriated to wait on me, if she were not a slave, could not have been lighter-hearted.  A student of all the natural products of the East, I did not neglect while there to bestow a proper share of study on Indian womankind; and as my Fyzabad abigail was a noteworthy specimen of her species, I may as well gratify the curiosity of the untraveled to know what she was like.  Such as she was the queen of Sheba would perhaps have been if scoured very bright and pared shapely.  Her name was Dilruba, which signifies, being interpreted, “Heart-ravisher.”  She may have been seventeen or eighteen; she was of a good height and elegantly proportioned, with a well-set neck, sloping shoulders, and fine bust; and her carriage had that stately and sylph-like grace which no words can depict, and which is found nowhere on earth but among the Orientals.  Her hands and feet were exquisitely small and symmetrical.  Her arms, which were bare to the shoulder, displayed everything of fullness, rotundity and lines of beauty that could be desired.  Their hue and delicacy of texture would have reminded a connoisseur of brownish satin.  Her waist, tight-cinctured, was—­which is the highest praise—­not ultra-fashionable, and the undulations of her gauzy drapery disclosed, as she receded, enough of ankle and crural adjacency to furnish hints of improvement to most classical sculptors.  Her lips, I regret to say, were too liny, and not of the true ruby tint, but with the exception of her mouth all her features were, not to say more, good.  As to her eyes, I should do injustice by any attempt to describe them.  An object must be susceptible of calm and dispassionate contemplation if one would analyze it afterward without complete disaster.  A very irresistible little piece of orientality she must indeed have been, perchance the reader will conclude.  And yet, if the reader is a man and a brother—­that is to say, a brother white man—­I answer him he is altogether in too great a hurry.  He has forgotten her color;