You Are Laid Gently On The Reposing Bed; Somebody Brings A Narghile, Which Tastes As Tobacco Must Taste In Mahomet's

Paradise; a cool sweet dreamy languor takes possession of the purified frame; and half-an- hour of such delicious laziness

Is spent over the pipe as is unknown in Europe, where vulgar prejudice has most shamefully maligned indolence - calls it foul names, such as the father of all evil, and the like; in fact, does not know how to educate idleness as those honest Turks do, and the fruit which, when properly cultivated, it bears.

The after-bath state is the most delightful condition of laziness I ever knew, and I tried it wherever we went afterwards on our little tour. At Smyrna the whole business was much inferior to the method employed in the capital. At Cairo, after the soap, you are plunged into a sort of stone coffin, full of water which is all but boiling. This has its charms; but I could not relish the Egyptian shampooing. A hideous old blind man (but very dexterous in his art) tried to break my back and dislocate my shoulders, but I could not see the pleasure of the practice; and another fellow began tickling the soles of my feet, but I rewarded him with a kick that sent him off the bench. The pure idleness is the best, and I shall never enjoy such in Europe again.

Victor Hugo, in his famous travels on the Rhine, visiting Cologne, gives a learned account of what he DIDN'T see there.

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