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their brethren. The head of this society is called the parnass, and when a death is reported he takes with him at the least five of his associates, and if the death be a fashionable one sometimes as many as fifty, to wash the body of the deceased internally and externally, and in accordance with the social position of the defunct his corpse gets more or less buckets of water poured over it. The parnass then dresses the body in a white shroud, puts

fort, though humble, reigned throughout, | rules of which certain Jewish gentlemen and we were able to pay Mahmed some are associated together for the object of genuine compliments on his abode. The gratuitously attending to the funerals of Dünmeh houses are, on the Turkish principle, divided into haremlik and selamlik, and whilst Mahmed and I remained in the large open room which formed the men's quarter, my wife was admitted into the harem, a small room on the right divided off by a curtain, where were seated on the floor, crosslegged on cushions, Alià, the wife of Mahmed, and her two friends, Smaïr and Fatmèh, three as uninteresting women as it had ever fallen to my wife's lot to meet. They were en-it on the bier, and has it conducted to the gaged in crochet and gossip, and apparently were, like all Turkish women, without a particle of education. They never leave their houses without the yashmak, and their windows are as scrupulously lat ticed as those of any Turkish harem.

Whilst my wife was paying her visit to the ladies, Mahmed showed me his bedroom, which was without a window except into the outer room, and offered nothing remarkable except the large text from the Koran in a frame and a battle-axe of magnificent proportions, the exact use of which my host did not seem inclined to communicate.

After we had discussed various topics with Mahmed whilst drinking coffee and smoking cigarettes, and after many failures to draw him out on the subject of his sect, in desperation I determined to put to him a leading question, so I said in as off-hand a manner as I could muster, "What is your other name, Mahmed ?" At first he affected to misunderstand my question, but as the truth became evident to him a very evil expression spread over his face and he was silent. I was thus warned to proceed no further, but at the same time the truth of the fact as we have seen stated in their rules was evident; the Dünmehs have two names, the one, like Mahmed, Turkish and publicly in use, the other a secret Jewish name known only to their own community.

As far as the ceremonies attending marriages and death are concerned they out wardly conform to those in usage amongst the Turks, and whether they have any private functions in connection with these Occasions I was never able to ascertain. From the very scornful way one of them laughed when I spoke of a Jewish funeral, I suspect they do not go to the same excesses as their brethren of Salonika; nor could I learn that they have a corporate body like the Jews which corresponds to the Misericordia at Florence, and by the

vast Jewish cemetery outside the walls; the friends and relatives, therefore, have nothing whatsoever to do with the funeral beyond attending to wail whilst the rabbis sing songs of distress suitable to the occa sion. On the return to the house of mourning the nearer relatives get a rabbi to cut off a portion of their skirts; this is a Jewish sign of grief, and as he does this he says, "God be blessed, who judges according to truth." Then follows the funeral repast, with its seven courses of different kinds of food, dried fruits, eggs, etc., and as each course is put upon the table the officiating rabbi gives it a special benediction. For seven days after a burial a Jewish family remains in the house of mourning; the men do not go to their shops in the bazaar, the women do not sit at their doors and gossip; a Jewish family at Salonika when in mourning prefers to sit on the floor and utter wails pitiable to listen to.

Such customs as these, I have every reason to believe, the Dünmehs have abandoned for the more sober Turkish funeral, which admits of no heartrending scenes, and is conducted with more of our Western simplicity. Anent the births of Dünmehs, my wife found the ladies inclined to be very communicative on this topic. I fancy ladies always are, and the three females in Mahmed's harem told some very curious facts concerning the entrance into this world of the followers of Sabbatai Sevi; but as they do not throw any special light on the subject of our people, except as making them appear a trifle more peculiar, I will not enter into further details.

During our stay at Salonika we saw many Dünmehs, but took a great dislike to them. Perhaps it was owing to our knowledge of the life of duplicity which they lead; perhaps it was owing to their stolid determination to tell us as little as possible concerning themselves; and we

quite agreed with Rabbi Nehemiah that they are a loathsome people; but far from banishing them from our minds, our interest in them increased in proportion to the difficulty of obtaining the information we required.

the seven girls frocks!-gowns for the elder children, who grew apace. Through her window she saw them pass, tall, beautiful maidens with fair hair, like corn, as yellow and as shining, and eyes blue, and cheeks like wild roses. Among the darkhaired, dark-eyed, and sallow-skinned natives, they were looked at with surprise and a little envy. They kept themselves aloof from the village children-not that they were proud, not that they shared their father's prejudices, but that they had enough of companions among themselves. They were an attached family; they had been nurtured in love, and the love their father had poured into their infant hearts had filled them and overflowed towards each other. They had, indeed, their little quarrels, but they passed like April gusts, leaving the sunshine brighter after the cloud, and the landscape fresher for the shower.

As for other renegades in Salonikafor the town is full of them - I think we respected them much more than the Dünmehs, though I must admit to being rather afraid of them ever since I inadvertently approached a harem of Pomaks, or renegade Bulgarians. These creatures are refugees from the lately emancipated mountain provinces, and dwell in constructions of canvas and old bits of tin which they have erected in the corridor of a lovely mosque which was once a Byzantine church, a perfect gem of architecture, and which was engrossing my attention so much that I did not perceive the trap I was falling into until I heard the screams of "Harem!" uttered by many women, Then, at times, Josephine's work fell coupled with unpleasant missiles directed from her fingers. and she sat with the at my head, which caused a hasty and un-needle in her hand, poised and motionless, dignified retreat on my part. The Pomaks looking before her. It was not the his and Karajovili, renegade Wallachians, toric muse who then visited her and raised who inhabit a village near Salonika, are a mirage picture of castles and knights amongst the wildest and most ungovern- jousting, and gay ladies looking on in the able races on the Balkan peninsula. The most picturesque of costume; or of taplatter have a very bad reputation in the estried chambers, in which walked Van neighborhood for brigandage; but the Dyck figures with long hair and Steenchief point, as far as I could gather, was kirks, and rapiers clinking and spurs jinthat they still preserve in their mosque gling, and lapdogs of King Charles's breed the very Bible on which some centuries snapping—it was a muse who is nameago they swore to renounce Christianity less, a Cinderella muse, thrust aside by her sisters, and clean forgotten, the muse of unfulfilled aspirations, clothed in white with a hawthorn crown, and eyes filled with tears, and bare feet dripping blood.

and become Moslems.

Of characteristics and curious racial developments Macedonia is a perfect museum, and Salonika is the capital thereof, and the only place where the study can be carried on with any degree of safety; and one almost fears though perhaps one ought to say hopes that when another government enters Macedonia these quaint traits of an era which is not ours will have passed away.

J. THEODORE BENT.

From Chambers' Journal.
RICHARD CABLE,

THE LIGHTSHIPMAN.

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What were the visions raised before the brooding mind of Josephine, sitting at ease in the enchanted palace, sent to sleep and made motionless in the midst of work? The picture brought up by the magic wand of the muse was a humble one-of a little cradle, in which lay a sleeping babe, with one small hand out, and a coral resting on the quilt; of a baby snuggling into her bosom at night, and sobbing, and being patted, patted, patted by the hour, and talked to half pitifully, half wearily, to coax it to sleep; of a child growing up, standing at her knee and learning to thread beads, and whilst threading, repeating, "Once

BY THE AUTHOR OF MEHALAH," JOHN HERRING," upon a time, when Jenny Wren was

66 COURT ROYAL," ETC.

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young; of a young maiden-like Mary
in growth and beauty and sweetness and
innocence, looked up to and loved by all
the village, and adored by her mother,
who only lived and thought for her.
day-dream went no further. Oh, if she

Her

could have had a child to love and labor | everywhere kill costume-but we have for, to cherish and talk to, to kiss and social habits, and the habits of our lowerlaugh to and weep over!—her solitude middle class, of the yeoman and the tenwould not have been so depressing, her ant farmer, are those of our great-grandpain not so unrelieved. Bessie Cable had fathers; they crack the same free jokes, endured years of suffering, yet what was and their wives laugh at them, as our hers to that of Josephine, for Bessie had great-grandmothers laughed; and they her child to love? She looked for the time drink till they are merry, and upset their when the fair faces of Richard's daughters light carts coming home from market, and passed her window, and her ear was alert fall into the ditch, just as our great-grandto catch every tone and inflection of their fathers tumbled under their tables. The sweet voices, whenever they came into the wives are thrifty, and great at cordials and shop to buy the groceries needed for their supplies of linen; and they as girls had home. worked samplers, which they retain in married life framed on their walls, to be tokens of their skill with the needle; just as did these ancient ladies in our dining room who look down on us out of their tarnished frames and through cracked varnish.

When they came to be fitted on, her slim white fingers trembled, and she could not well see what were the defects to be remedied, because her eyes were clouded. Finally, the seven dresses were finished and sent to the cottage, and then each had a little packet of sweet things neatly wrapped up in the pocket; for that the children came and thanked Miss Penruddock, for they supposed the kind shopkeeper had put them there.

With such dear children about him, Richard had a home complete in joys, and he needed not another inmate. He could dispense with his wife, who was not the mother of these lambs; surely, he did not imagine the solitude of the girl, who was without an associate of any kind.

After Josephine had done the frocks, other work came in. The servant maids at the parsonage wanted this and that; and then some of the farmers' wives sent for her to come to work at their houses. She found that thus only could she obtain continuous work. At the farms she was well treated, given plenty of food, somewhat coarse, but wholesome, served in a rough way, and partaken with the laboring men from the land. There was also plenty of conversation going on, but it was wholly confined to local gossip- the misdoings of this young woman, the shameful conduct of the parson in preaching at Soand-so, and the favoritism of the schoolmaster among the children. The maladies of the family, of the cattle, of the ducks and hens, were discussed with intolerable prolixity, and with a breadth of language unsuitable to the narrowness of the subject. The costume of the Continental peasant is a century behind the fashion of the present. The Black Forester wears the knee-breeches and long coat and waistcoat that were the dress of gentlemen in the time of our great-grandfathers; and the Tyrolean peasantess wears the short bodice of our great-grandmothers. We have no costume in England - slopshops

In the eastern counties, the old race of small farmers and yeomen have well-nigh disappeared, or rather they bid fair to disappear, before the gentleman farmer with his thousand acres; but the agricultural depression which has cut down these big men has spared the little, and they are reappearing again. In the west of England there are very few mammoths, only small men, and the small men make the money and stand the stress of hard times.

The class among which Josephine went was quite different from that in the servants' hall at Bewdley. That class was one of the spoiled tools of luxury, young men and girls transplanted from cottages where they had lacked everything but the barely necessary, to a house where they lacked nothing, but rioted and surfeited on abundance. In their homes they had been subjected to the rough moral control of village opinion; in the hall, they were a law unto themselves. They had been brought up in freedom and frankness; and they found themselves in a region where they must practise dissimulation as part of their qualification. They resembled wild flowers brought into a forcing-house, treated with strong manures and much bottom heat. But where Josephine now went, it was among wild flowers in their natural element; they were fresh, strong, rough-stemmed; not brilliant or choice, but natural. In the servants' hall, an atmosphere of absurd affectation had prevailed; Mr. Polkinghorn talked of his ancestors; and the maids languished, minced their words, and imitated the easy motions of the ladies they saw. In the farmhouse, the fresh air blew, all was natural and hearty, but the fresh air was somewhat charged with the

reek of stable and cowhouse.

From the and these were laid as had been the bunches of blossom.

farmer down to the servant, all were blunt, dull, noisy, ignorant, free in their talk, but with a healthy downright sense of the just and moral, and with great kindliness of heart and readiness to assist one another. Josephine was obliged to carry her sewing-machine when she went to the farmhouses, scattered at considerable distances from the church town where was the post-office where she lived. As the winter drew on, the nights were dark and the weather stormy. She was often wet through and tired, and the burden of the sewing-machine was almost more than she could bear. She did not like to ask to be assisted with it; the sturdy country girls thought nothing of such a weight, and did not mind a wet through and a trudge in the mud, so that she was not volunteered assistance.

When she reached her lodgings, she was sometimes so exhausted that she flung herself on her bed, too fagged to take off her wet things; and thus she would have lain and fallen asleep, had not the kindly postmistress looked after her, and insisted on her getting up and putting on dry clothes. Every Sunday morning early, she went to the cob cottage in the lane that led to Rosscarrock, with a little basket in her hand, and laid on the windowledge of the children's room seven little bunches of flowers, rosemary and mignonette, a monthly rose and marigold, such simple flowers as she could beg of the farmers' wives where she worked on the Saturday. And every Sunday the seven girls went to church with these flower posies in their bosoms "the pixy present," they called them, and always wondered whence they came; and little thought that they came from the strange young woman with the wonderful voice, that the vicar's wife had lately taken into the choir. Did Richard guess? He asked no questions; but his mother said to him, when he happened to be home on Sundays: "Do you see these pretty posies? The little maids found them again this morning on their window-sill. Smell them, Richard; how sweet they are they scent the room." "We shall have grand flowers when we come to Red Windows," he said. "No; I will not smell them; they give me a headache; take them away.'

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The winter frost killed most flowers; but the feathery seed-heads of the traveller's joy, with bramble leaves of carmine and orange and gamboge and sap-green, with a rose-hip or two, made nosegays as beautiful and rich as any made of flowers,

Christmas morning came, and Josephine started from her bed as the day began to break. She had made seven of the prettiest little posies of white chrysanthemums, which had flowered on untouched by frost, and they were surrounded by the green fronds of the crane's-bill.

What was that? Her heart stood still, as, undressed, in her night attire, with a white bunch in each hand, and her dark hair down her back, she stood listening. What was that? A sound she knew well, but had not heard for long. Again! What was it? In the room or outside? Then a cry of joy. "My Puffles! my Puffles! You dear one! Who has brought you here?"

Her bullfinch, in the cage that she had sorrowfully parted with at Bewdley, was in her window. Who had brought it her? Who had thought of her sorrowing to be without her bird? Who but he who had let it go and caught it again!

That Christmas day, clear and sweet rang out the voice of Josephine in the song of the angels, and her heart beat with hope.

CHAPTER LIII.

RED WINDOWS AGAIN.

THE house progressed. By Christmas, the roof was on; then the plasterers and the carpenters went to work, not fast, but leisurely. They kept holiday on Christmas day, and on old Christmas, and at New Year; and they knocked off work early on Saturdays, and came to work late on Mondays. They had much information to impart to each other, and all were called together to consult on every detail. When it was wet weather, they came and looked at the work and went away; and charged half a day's work for looking on the work and deciding to do nothing. When the masons were ready to build, the stones were not ready for them to build with, or the mortar was not mixed; so they waited and talked, and charged for having been on the spot with nothing to do. When it came to plastering, they were short of laths or short of nails, or short of sand or short of lime short of everything except reasons for doing nothing. So with the carpenters. They went to work to do the thing the wrong way; and when it was done, and they were convinced it was wrong, they went to work and pulled it to pieces again; and recommenced doing it in another way. When the rain fell or

"I'm priming, your worship," answered the painter,. "as you were primed afore you drew on your clothes and insignia." Now, it is reasonable enough that fig

colored pink first, and painted with clothing to taste, afterwards; but why windows? why doors? why skirting-boards?

there was frost, masons, plasterers, carpenters, plumbers, and painters wanted to work outside, and saw clear reasons why it was impossible to do anything inside; and as the rain hindered or the frost pre-ures representing human beings should be vented, they went away with their hands in their pockets and sat under a shed, looking at the front of the house and the rain or the frost; and charged for their desire to work when it was not possible to work. When the sun shone and the air was warm, they wanted to work indoors, and there were unanswerable reasons why the work out of doors could not be got on with. However, in spite of all these difficulties, the house progressed, but progressed so slowly as to astonish even the masons and carpenters, and plumbers and plasterers and painters themselves, and to comfort them greatly. They were not going to kill the goose off-hand that laid the golden egg, but pick him to pieces feather by feather.

The plumbers laid the lead, and the manons walked over it with hobnailed shoes, making holes in it which required a revision and a patching with solder of the lead which was quite new; and when the glass was put into the windows, the carpenters drove planks through the panes, necessitating new glazing. And the ironmonger brought grates that would not fit the chimneypieces, and invoked the masons to pull out the mantelpieces again and put them in afresh. Then he made holes in the plaster for the bell-wires so ragged and so big that the plasterers must needs come and mend them up again. Lastly, the glazier put his hand into putty or white paint and smeared a circle in the midst of every pane, to give work to a woman to clean the windows.

The painter performed wonders; he colored all the woodwork of the house flesh-color, and called that priming. Why it should be primed flesh-color, he did not say. I remember how there stood over the market hall in Launceston and it stands there still - a clock on which are two figures with hammers, that strike the hours and the quarters. Many years ago, the civic authorities ordered the repainting of these automata. Then a painter went up on a scaffold and primed them, after the manner of painters, flesh-color. The mayor issuing from the guild-hall saw this, and was frightened or shocked, and with mayoral mantle and gold chain of office about his shoulders, ran up the ladder and said: "What are you about? We don't want to have Adam and Eve here."

A recent writer on natural law and the moral order holds up to scorn the hermit lobster, which does not build its own shell, but seeks a ready-built house into which to slip. The writer of that book never had to do with the erection of a manse for himself, I presume, or he would have taken off his hat and bowed to the hermit lobster, and pointed him out as an example of instinct so acute that it reached wisdom.

Richard Cable had accepted the builder's rough estimate of cost and of the time the house would take in building, and had left a margin; but soon found that the margin should have been as wide as that in an édition de luxe book or of a modern funeral card. A builder can always discover reasons for spinning out the time, and especially the expense. Cable found, before the house was done, that he had spent all the money put by for it, and was obliged to borrow for its completion and for the furnishing; and this did not improve his humor. He had not allowed the house to be built by contract, because he knew very well that what is built by contract is badly built; and that if he were to pay an overlooker to see to his interests, the masons and the carpenters, and the plumbers and glaziers, and slaters and painters, would give the man an ac knowledgment to overlook their bad work. So he had his house built by day-work, and then it was to the interest of the men to do their work in the most substantial and thorough manner, because that is also the most slow and costly manner.

When Cable was on his way back from each journey, he thought within himself: "Now I shall see a great advance in the work; I have been away three weeks." But on his arrival he required good-nature and faith to see that a proper amount of work had been done; and good-nature and faith fail when disappointed repeatedly. However, the house was finished at length and furnished- furnished quietly and scantily, because the money ran short. Richard was not alarmed. He knew he would earn the necessary sum, but he was sore at having to borrow. The consciousness of being in debt was new to him, and fretted his already sore spirit. It took

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