entitled "Artists and Arabs," gives the
following picture of life and manners in Algiers:--

[Illustration: Female smoking in Algiers.]

"There is one difficulty here, however, for the artist--that
of finding satisfactory models. You can get one at last, and
here is her portrait. Her costume, when she throws off her
haik (and with it a tradition of the Mohammedan faith, that
forbids her to show her face to an unbeliever), is a rich,
loose, crimson jacket embroidered with gold, a thin white
bodice, loose silk trousers reaching to the knee and
fastened round the waist by a magnificent sash of various
colors, red morocco slippers, a profusion of rings on her
little fingers, and bracelets and anklets of gold filagree
work. Through her waving black hair are twined strings of
coins and the folds of a silk handkerchief, the hair falling
at the back in plaits below the waist. She is not beautiful,
she is scarcely interesting in expression, and she is
decidedly unsteady. She seems to have no more power of
keeping herself in one position or of remaining in one part
of the room, or even of being quiet, than a humming-top. The
whole thing is an unutterable bore to her, for she does not
even reap the reward--her father, or husband, or other male
attendant always taking the money. She is petite,
constitutionally phlegmatic, and as fat as her parents can
manage to make her; she has small hands and feet, large
rolling eyes--the latter made to appear artificially large
by the application of henna or antimony black; her attitudes
are not ungraceful, but there is a want of character about
her, and an utter abandonment to the situation, peculiar to
all her race. In short, her movements are more suggestive of
a little caged animal that had better be petted and
caressed, or kept at a safe distance, according to her
humor. She does one thing--she smokes incessantly, and makes
cigarettes with a skill and rapidity which are wonderful.
Her age is thirteen, and she has been married six months;
her ideas appear to be limited to three or four, and her
pleasures, poor creature, are equally circumscribed. She had
scarcely ever left her father's house, and had never spoken
to a man until her marriage. There seems to be in the
Moorish nature a wonderful sense of har