quito curtains in nights of heat. As shade is a convenience not always procurable, another necessary was a huge cotton umbrella of Eastern make, brightly yellow, suggesting the idea of an overgrown marigold. I had also a substantial housewife, the gift of a kind friend: it was a roll of canvas, carefully soiled, and garnished with needles and thread, cobblers' wax, buttons, and other such articles. These things were most useful in lands where tailors abound not; besides which, the sight of a man darning his coat or patching his slippers teems with pleasing ideas of humility. A 'dagger, a brass inkstand and penholder stuck in the belt, and a mighty rosary, which on occasion might have been converted into a weapon of offense, completed my equipment. I must not omit to mention the proper method of carrying money, which in these lands should never be intrusted to box or bag. A common cotton purse secured in a breast pocket (for Egypt now abounds in that civilized animal the pickpocket) contained silver pieces and small change. My gold, of which I carried twenty-five sovereigns, and papers, were committed to a substantial leathern belt of Maghrabi manufacture, made to be strapped round the waist under the dress. This is the Asiatic method of concealing valuables, and a more civilized one than ours in the last century, when Roderick Random and his companion "sewed their money between the lining and the waistband of their breeches, except some loose silver for immediate expense on the road." The great inconvenience of the belt is its weight, especially where dollars must be carried, as in Arabia, causing chafes and inconvenience at night. Moreover it can scarcely be called safe. In dangerous countries wary travelers will adopt surer precautions. A pair of common native khurjin or saddle-bags contained my wardrobe, the "bed," readily rolled up into a bundle; and for a medicine chest I bought a pea-green box with red and yellow flowers, capable of standing falls from a camel twice a day. The next step was to find out when the local steamer would start for Cairo, and accordingly I betook myself to the Transit Office. No vessel was advertised; I was directed to call every evening till satisfied. At last the fortunate event took place: a "weekly departure," which by-the-by had occurred once every fortnight or so, was in order for the next day. I hurried to the office, but did not reach it till past noon the hour of idleness. A little dark gentleman, so formed and dressed as exactly to resemble a liver-and-tan bull-terrier, who with his heels on the table was dozing, cigar in mouth, over the last Galignani, positively refused after a time, for at first he would not speak at all, — to let me take my passage till three in the afternoon. I inquired when the boat started, upon which he referred me, as I had spoken bad Italian, to the advertisement. I pleaded inability to read or write, whereupon he testily cried “Alle nove! alle nove!" (At nine! at nine!) Still appearing uncertain, I drove him out of his chair, when he rose with a curse and read 8 A. M. An unhappy Eastern, depending upon what he said, would have been precisely one hour too late. Thus were we lapsing into the real good old Indian style of doing business. Thus Indicus orders his first clerk to execute some commission; the senior, having "work" upon his hands, sends a junior; the junior finds the sun hot, and passes on the word to a "peon"; the peon charges a porter with the errand; and the porter quietly sits or dozes in his place, trusting that fate will bring him out of the scrape, but firmly resolved, though the shattered globe fall, not to stir an inch. The reader, I must again express a hope, will pardon the egotism of these descriptions: my object is to show him how business is carried on in these hot countries- business generally. For had I, instead of being Abdullah the Dervish, been a rich native merchant, it would have been the same. How many complaints of similar treatment have I heard in different parts of the Eastern world! and how little can one realize them without having actually experienced the evil! For the future I shall never see a "nigger" squatting away half a dozen mortal hours in a broiling sun, patiently waiting for something or for some one, without a lively remembrance of my own cooling of the calces at the custom-house of Alexandria. At length, about the end of May, all was ready. Not without a feeling of regret I left my little room among the white myrtle blossoms and the oleander flowers. I kissed with humble ostentation my kind host's hand in presence of his servants, bade adieu to my patients, who now amounted to about fifty, shaking hands with all meekly and with religious equality of attention, and, mounted in a "trap" which looked like a cross between a wheel-barrow and dog-cart, drawn by a kicking, jibbing, and biting mule, I set out for the steamer. ROBERT BURTON. ROBERT BURTON, an English humorist, born in Leicestershire in 1577, died at Oxford in 1640. He was educated at Oxford, entered the Church, and was appointed Rector of Seagrave, in his native county. He seems, however, to have resided at Oxford. He is said to have been benevolent and upright, though whimsical and a prey to melancholy. "The Anatomy of Melancholy," which mirrors the author's own mind and temperament, appeared in 1621, and is a storehouse of quotations from Greek and Latin authors. The book went through five editions during the author's lifetime. ALL MEN SUBJECT TO MELANCHOLY. (From the “Anatomy of Melancholy.”) MELANCHOLY, the subject of our present discourse, is either in disposition or habit. In disposition is that transitory melancholy which goes and comes upon every small occasion of sorrow, need, sickness, trouble, fear, grief, passion, or perturbation of the mind; any manner of care, discontent, or thought which causeth anguish, dullness, heaviness and vexation of spirit, any ways opposite to pleasure, mirth, joy, delight, causing frowardness in us, or a dislike. In which equivocal and improper sense, we call him melancholy that is dull, sad, sour, lumpish, ill-disposed, solitary, any way moved or displeased. And from these melancholy dispositions, no man living is free, no stoic, none so wise, none so happy, none so patient, so generous, so godly, so divine, that can vindicate himself; so well composed, but more or less, some time or other, he feels the smart of it. Melancholy in this sense is the character of mortality. "Man that is born of a woman is of short continuance, and full of trouble." Zeno, Cato, Socrates himself, whom Ælian so highly commends for a moderate temper, that "nothing could disturb him but going out and coming in, still Socrates kept the same serenity of countenance, what misery soever befell him" (if we may believe Plato, his disciple), was much tormented with it. Q. Metellus, in whom Valerius gives instance of all happiness, Natus in florentissima totius orbis civitate, nobilissimis parentibus, corporis vivus habuit et rarissimas animi dotes, uxorem conspicuam, pudicam, fœlices liberos, consulare decus, sequentes triumphos, etc., "the most fortunate man then living, born in that most flourishing city of Rome, of noble parentage, a proper man of person, well qualified, healthful, rich, honorable, a senator, a consul, happy in his wife, happy in his children, etc.," yet this man was not void of melancholy; he had his share of sorrow. Polycrates Samius, that flung his ring into the sea because he would participate of discontent with others, and had it miraculously restored to him again shortly after, by a fish taken as he angled, was not free from melancholy dispositions. No man can cure himself; the very gods had bitter pangs and frequent passions, as their own poets put upon them. In general, ut cœlum, sic nos homines sumus: illud ex intervallo nubibus obducitur et obscuratur. In rosario flores spinis intermixti. Vita similis æri, udum modo, sudum, tempestas, serenitas; ita vices rerum sunt, præmia gaudiis, et sequaces curæ, "as the heaven, so is our life, sometimes fair, sometimes overcast, tempestuous, and serene; as in a rose, flowers and prickles; in the year itself, a temperate summer sometimes, a hard winter, a drought, and then again pleasant showers; so is our life intermixed with joys, hopes, fears, sorrows, calumnies"; Invicem cedunt dolor et voluptas, there is a succession of pleasure and pain. "Medio de fonte leporum, Surgit amari aliquid in ipsis floribus augat." "Even in the midst of laughing there is sorrow (as Solomon holds); even in the midst of all our feasting and jollity, as Austin infers in his Commentary on the 41st Psalm, there is grief and discontent. Inter delicias semper aliquid sacri nos strangulat, for a pint of honey thou shalt here likely find a gallon of gall, for a dram of pleasure a pound of pain, for an inch of mirth an ell of moan; as ivy doth an oak, these miseries encompass our life. And it is most absurd and ridiculous for any mortal man to look for a perpetual tenure of happiness in this life. . . . We are not here as those angels, celestial powers and bodies, sun and moon, to finish our course without all offense, with such constancy, to continue for so many ages; but subject to infirmities, miseries, interrupted, tossed and tumbled up and down, carried about with every small blast, often molested and VOL. IV. - 25 disquieted upon each slender occasion, uncertain, brittle, and so is all that we trust unto. "And he that knows not this is not armed to endure it, is not fit to live in this world (as one condoles our time), he knows not the condition of it, where, with a reciprocality, pleasure and pain are still united, and succeed one another in a ring." Exi è mundo, get thee gone hence if thou canst not brook it; there is no way to avoid it but to arm thy self with patience, with magnanimity, to oppose thyself unto it, to suffer affliction as a good soldier of Christ; as Paul adviseth, constantly to bear it. This progress of melancholy you shall easily observe in them that have been so affected, they go smiling to themselves at first, at length they laugh out; at first solitary, at last they can endure no company, or if they do, they are now dizzards, past sense and shame, quite moped, they care not what they say or do; all their actions, words, gestures, are furious or ridiculous. At first his mind is troubled, he doth not attend what is said, if you tell him a tale, he cries at last, What said you? but in the end he mutters to himself, as old women do many times, or old men when they sit alone; upon a sudden they laugh, whoop, halloo, or run away, and swear they see or hear Players, Devils, Hobgoblins, Ghosts, strike, or strut, etc., grow humorous in the end like him in the Poet, sæpe ducentos sæpe decem servos [he often keeps two hundred slaves, often only ten], he will dress himself, and undress, careless at last, grows insensible, stupid or mad. He howls like a wolf, barks like a dog, and raves like Ajax and Orestes, hears Music and outcries which no man else hears.. AN ABSTRACT OF MELANCHOLY. WHEN I go musing all alone, Thinking of divers things foreknown, Pleasing myself with phantoms sweet, |