his narrative for his companion to make a tour of
the circle to collect fees. The quality of the adventures he retails is
settled always by the price paid for them.

It is a strange sight, and unpleasant to the European, who believes that
his morality, like his faith, is the only genuine article, to see young
girls with antimony on their eyelids and henna on their nails, listening
to stories that only the late Sir Richard Burton dared to render literally
into the English tongue. While these children are young and impressionable
they are allowed to run wild, but from the day when they become
self-conscious they are strictly secluded.

Throughout Marrakesh one notes a spirit of industry. If a man has work, he
seems to be happy and well content. Most traders are very courteous and
gentle in their dealings, and many have a sense of humour that cannot fail
to please. While in the city I ordered one or two lamps from a workman who
had a little shop in the Madinah. He asked for three days, and on the
evening of the third day I went to fetch them, in company with Salam. The
workman, who had made them himself, drew the lamps one by one from a dark
corner, and Salam, who has a hawk's eye, noticed that the glass of one was
slightly cracked.

"Have a care, O Father of Lamps," he said; "the Englishman will not take a
cracked glass."

"What is this," cried the Lamps' Father in great anger, "who sells cracked
lamps? If there is a flaw in one of mine, ask me for two dollars."

Salam held the lamp with cracked glass up against the light. "Two
dollars," he said briefly. The tradesman's face fell. He put his tongue
out and smote it with his open hand.

"Ah," he said mournfully, when he had admonished the unruly member, "who
can set a curb upon the tongue?"[26]

FOOTNOTES:

[24] Mulai Rashed II.

[25] The royal umbrella.

[26] Cf. James iii. 8. But for a mere matter of dates, one would imagine
that Luther detected the taint of Islam in James when he rejected his
Epistle.

THE SLAVE MARKET AT MARRAKESH

[Illustration: A MOSQUE, MARRAKESH]

CHAPTER VII

THE SLAVE MARKET AT MARRAKESH

As to your slaves, see that ye feed them with such food as ye eat
yourselves, and clothe them with the stuff ye wear. And if they commit
a fault which ye are not willing to forgive, then sell them, for they
are the servants of Allah, and are not to be tormented.

--_Mohammed's last Address._

In the