If by chance you (clad in Oriental garb) had sent on your lantern to a friend’s house by your servant, and had leisurely followed it five minutes after the hour of eight, you were sure to be met, stopped, collared, questioned, and captured by the patrol.  You probably punched three or four of them, but found the dozen too strong for you.  Held tightly by the sleeves, skirts, and collar of your wide outer garment, you were hurried away on a plane of about nine inches above the ground, your feet mostly treading the air.  You were dragged along with a rapidity which scarcely permitted you to answer strings of questions concerning your name, nation, dwelling, faith, profession, and self in general,-especially concerning the present state of your purse.  If you lent an ear to the voice of the charmer that began by asking a crown to release you, and gradually came down to two-pence half-penny, you fell into a simple trap; the butt-end of a musket applied a posteriori, immediately after the transfer of property, convicted you of wilful waste.  But if, more sensibly, you pretended to have forgotten your purse, you

[p.120]were reviled, and dragged with increased violence of shaking to the office of the Zabit, or police magistrate.  You were spun through the large archway leading to the court, every fellow in uniform giving you, as you passed, a Kafa, “cuff,” on the back of the neck.  Despite your rage, you were forced up the stairs to a long gallery full of people in a predicament like your own.  Again your name, nation,-I suppose you to be masquerading,-offence, and other particulars were asked, and carefully noted in a folio by a ferocious-looking clerk.  If you knew no better, you were summarily thrust into the Hasil or condemned cell, to pass the night with pickpockets or ruffians, pell-mell.  But if an adept in such matters, you insisted upon being conducted before the “Pasha of the Night,” and, the clerk fearing to refuse, you were hurried to the great man’s office, hoping for justice, and dealing out ideal vengeance to your captors,-the patrol.  Here you found the dignitary sitting with pen, ink, and paper before him, and pipe and coffee-cup in hand, upon a wide Diwan of dingy chintz, in a large dimly-lit room, with two guards by his side, and a semi-circle of recent seizures vociferating before him.  When your turn came, you were carefully collared, and led up to the presence, as if even at that awful moment you were mutinously and murderously disposed.  The Pasha, looking at you with a vicious sneer, turned up his nose, ejaculated “’Ajami,” and prescribed the bastinado.  You observed that the mere fact of being a Persian did not give mankind a right to capture, imprison, and punish you; you declared moreover that you were no Persian, but an Indian under British protection.  The Pasha, a man accustomed to obedience, then stared at you, to frighten you, and you, we will suppose, stared at him, till, with an oath, he turned to the patrol, and asked them your offence.  They all simultaneously swore-by Allah!-that you had been found without a lantern, dead-drunk, beating respectable people,