206 BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. [Jan. 



the request, when the man continued, " I have taken a ticket 

 in the Vienna lottery. If I win through your prayers, you 

 shall have one-half." 



It was apparently a perfectly natural thing, this copartner- 

 ship of earth and heaven, and the peasant could see no 

 impropriety in invoking the prayers of those he considered 

 more potent than he. He put up the money, the missionary 

 furnished the prayers, and they went divvys on the result. 

 What harm ? 



But to turn from the moral side to the customs of every- 

 day life. The barber, for example, pushes the razor from 

 him ; ours draws it to him. The carpenter draws the saw 

 towards him, for all the teeth are set in ; ours do the 

 reverse, for the teeth are set out. The mason sits while he 

 lays and trims his stone, ours stand. The scribe writes 

 from right to left, usually upon his hand or knee ; ours from 

 left to right, upon the table or desk. Even in the matter of 

 building a house, the same law prevails. We begin at the 

 bottom and finish at the top ; the Turks begin at the top, 

 and frequently the upper rooms are entirely finished and 

 habitable, while all below is a mere framework like a 

 lantern. 



The Oriental uses a pipe so long that he cannot hold a 

 coal to the bowl, and at the same time draw a whifi* of tobacco 

 smoke from the other end. We use one so short that the 

 scent of burned hair too often mingles with that of the fra- 

 grant weed. We polish our boots with elaborate care ; but 

 these people, whose religion, perhaps, will not allow them 

 to use brushes made from the bristles of the unclean beast, 

 wipe up their shoes with their hands, and then put on the 

 last finishing touches with their handkerchiefs, or the slack of 

 that wonderful thing denominated Turkish trousers. Bar- 

 naby, in his " Journey through Asia Minor," quotes a mis- 

 sionary as saying: "The Turks about here are just the 

 bottom-side-upwardest, and the top-side-downwardest, the 

 back-side-forwardest, and the forward-side-backwardest 

 people I have ever seen. Why, they call a compass which 

 points to the north, queblen, or south, just for the sake of 

 contradiction ; and they have to change their watches every 

 twenty-four hours, because they count their time from after 



