ut that she has books to open in these places.
She was very interesting to me as an example of the simple peasant
mind under the influence of modern culture. Perhaps it is rather a
shame to have put down all her old wife's talk in this way, for she is
lovable as one's own mother.

VII

AT A FAIR

One misty morning in late October I arrived at Batum, pack on back,
staff in hand, to all appearances a pilgrim or a tramp, and I drank
tea at a farthing a glass in the fair.

"Pour it out full and running over," said a chance companion to the
owner of the stall. "That's how we workmen like it; not half-full as
for gentlefolk." The shopman, a silent and very dirty Turk, filled my
glass and the saucer as well. And sipping tea and munching _bubliki_,
we looked out upon all the sights of the _bazar_.

There lay around, in all the squalor that Turks love, the marvellous
superabundance of a southern harvest--spread on sacks in the
mud--grapes purple and silver-green, pomegranates in rusty thousands,
large dew-fed yellow apples, luscious dirt-bespattered pears, such
fruits that in London even the rich might look at and sigh for, but
pass by reflecting that with the taxes so high they could not afford
them, but here sold by ragamuffins to ragamuffins for greasy coppers;
and not only these fruits, but quinces and peaches, the large yellow
Caucasian _khurma_, the little blood-red _kizil_, and many unnamed
rarities. They all surged up out of the waste of over-trodden mire,
as if the pageantry of some fairy world had been arrested as it was
disappearing into the earth.

Then, beside these gorgeous fruits, in multitudinous attendance, a
confused array of scarlet runners, tomatoes, cabbages, out-tumbled
sacks of glazy purple aubergines, mysterious-looking gigantic
pumpkins, buckets full of pyramidal maize-cobs, yellow,
white-sheathed.

The motley crowd of vendors, clamouring, gesticulating, are chiefly
distinguished by their hats--the Arabs in white turbans, the Turks
in dingy fezes jauntily cocked over dark, unshaven faces, some fezes
swathed in bright silk scarves; the Caucasians in golden fleece hats,
bright yellow sheepskin busbies; the few Russians in battered peak
caps, like porters' discarded head-gear; Persians in skull-caps;
Armenians in shabby felts, astrakhans, or mud-coloured _bashliks_.
The trousers of the Christians all very tight, the trousers of
the Mahometans baggy, rainbow-coloured--it is a jealous point