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 prin- their brethren. The head of this society ciple, divided into haremlik and selam-is called the parnass, and when a death is lik, and whilst Mahmed and I remained reported he takes with him at the least in the large open room which formed the five of his associates, and if the death be men's quarter, my wife was admitted into a fashionable one sometimes as many as the harem, a small room on the right di- fifty, to wash the body of the deceased vided off by a curtain, where were seated internally and externally, and in accordon the floor, crosslegged on cushions, ance with the social position of the defunct Alià, the wife of Mahmed, and her two his corpse gets more or less buckets of friends, Smaïr and Fatmèh, three as unin- water poured over it. The parnass then teresting women as it had ever fallen to dresses the body in a white shroud, puts 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 latticed 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.

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 occasion. 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 As far as the ceremonies attending mar- entrance into this world of the followers riages and death are concerned they out-of Sabbatai Sevi; but as they do not throw wardly conform to those in usage amongst any special light on the subject of our the Turks, and whether they have any people, except as making them appear a private functions in connection with these trifle more peculiar, I will not enter into Occasions I was never able to ascertain. further details. 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

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.

frocks!

the seven girls
gowns for the
elder children, who grew apace. Through
her window she saw them pass, tall, beau-
tiful maidens with fair hair, like corn, as
yellow and as shining, and eyes blue, and
cheeks like wild roses. Among the dark-
haired, dark-eyed, and sallow-skinned na-
tives, 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 Salonika for 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 hisand 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 name ago they swore to renounce Christianity less, a Cinderella muse, thrust aside by and become Moslems. 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.

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.

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 be ing 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 upon a time, when Jenny Wren was 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. Her day-dream went no further. Oh, if she

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 diningroom 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.

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 After Josephine had done the frocks, was quite different from that in the serother work came in. The servant maids vants' hall at Bewdley. That class was at the parsonage wanted this and that; one of the spoiled tools of luxury, young and then some of the farmers' wives sent men and girls transplanted from cottages for her to come to work at their houses. where they had lacked everything but She found that thus only could she obtain the barely necessary, to a house where continuous work. At the farms she was they lacked nothing, but rioted and surwell treated, given plenty of food, some- feited on abundance. In their homes what coarse, but wholesome, served in a they had been subjected to the rough rough way, and partaken with the laboring moral control of village opinion; in the men from the land. There was also plenty hall, they were a law unto themselves. of conversation going on, but it was wholly They had been brought up in freedom and confined to local gossip- the misdoings frankness; and they found themselves in of this young woman, the shameful con- a region where they must practise disduct of the parson in preaching at So- simulation as part of their qualification. and-so, and the favoritism of the school- They resembled wild flowers brought into master among the children. The maladies a forcing-house, treated with strong maof the family, of the cattle, of the ducks nures and much bottom heat. But where and hens, were discussed with intolerable Josephine now went, it was among wild prolixity, and with a breadth of language flowers in their natural element; they unsuitable to the narrowness of the sub-were fresh, strong, rough-stemmed; not ject. The costume of the Continental brilliant or choice, but natural. In the peasant is a century behind the fashion of servants' hall, an atmosphere of absurd afthe present. The Black Forester wears fectation had prevailed; Mr. Polkinghorn the knee-breeches and long coat and waist- talked of his ancestors; and the maids coat that were the dress of gentlemen in languished, minced their words, and imithe time of our great-grandfathers; and tated the easy motions of the ladies they the Tyrolean peasantess wears the short saw. In the farmhouse, the fresh air bodice of our great-grandmothers. We blew, all was natural and hearty, but the have no costume in England - slopshops fresh air was somewhat charged with the

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

"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?

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.

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."

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