234 
A CRUSADE IN THE EAST. 
is placed over the breast; where the civility is intended to be 
very marked, as in the native form, the visitor makes a dive 
at the hem of the host’s garment as if he would catch it up 
and kiss it; hut the host, perceiving the intended honor, dives 
down at the same moment to prevent it, and, as if by acci¬ 
dent catches the hand of his guest and helps him up with it 
part of the way; when each touches his breast, mouth, and 
forehead with his own hand ; sometimes repeating the dive, 
but this is only when a man is electioneering for some office, 
or calls to borrow a few hundred piasters, in which case he 
dives down a great many times. 
Supposing you to be seated now, a servant enters, bearing 
a tray, upon which are several cups of coffee about the size 
of egg-cups, and these are handed round and presented with 
a graceful bow to each visitor. The coffee is as thick as choc 
olate, and at first it may lodge in your throat, but after a 
while one learns to like it. Chiboucks are then brought. The 
stems are about six feet in length, and the bowl being placed 
on the ground in a little brass pan at the proper distance, the 
mouthpiece is whirled around dextrously by the domestic, 
who calculates the distance so nicely that he brings it within 
the sixteenth of an inch of its destination. The smoking 
begins, and if you have good Djebel or Latakia tobacco, it is, 
as my friend the English captain says, quite stunning. Con¬ 
versation goes on between the whiffs, and is as lively as such 
conversation can be where one naturally thinks in English, 
communicates his ideas to his dragoman in Italian or French, 
has them translated into Turkish, Arabic, or Greek, and 
learns the result in about ten minutes from the time of start¬ 
ing. I often, after a good deal of difficulty, got out a joke 
and made my interpreter understand the full bearings of it; 
when he would set to work, jabbering in some horrible un¬ 
known tongue, taking so long to tell it that the whole thing 
would quite escape my memory, and it was only in about a 
quarter of an hour after, that an explosion of laughter would 
startle me out of my cloud of smoke ; for a joke is never so stale 
or so trifling as not to cause a laugh in the East. As I made 
it a point, however, never to talk French or Italian to Yusef 
