apsuds, and
the young Turk yelled bloody murder, just like an American kid, and then
sat down on its knees, so the spanking wouldn't hurt, and called its
mother names in a language I couldn't understand, but I knew what the
child said, by instinct. Dad started to interfere, because he is a
member of the humane society, but the unique that was showing us around
saved dad's life by pushing him along, before the woman got a chance to
brain him with the washboard.

The women mostly had on these baggy Turkish trousers, like the Zouaves
wear, and a jacket, and a cloth around their heads, and they acted as
though if the next meal came along all right they would be in luck. We
saw a few women pretty white, and they were Circassian slaves, with big
eyes and hoops in their ears, and a little different clothes on, but
there were none that dad would buy at an auction, or at a bargain sale,
if they were marked down to 99 cents.

We passed one woman running an American sewing machine, and dad said
he'd bet she was an American, and he went up to her and said: "Hello,
sis!" She stopped the machine, looked up at dad with a sort of Bowery
expression, and said: "Gwan, Chauncey Depew, you old peach, or I'll have
you pinched," and the unique took dad by the arm and pulled him along
real spry, but he hung back and looked over his shoulder at the woman,
but she went on sewing, and dad said to me: "Well, wouldn't that frost
you?" And we went on making the inspection.

I don't think I ever saw so many children, outside of an orphan asylum,
all about the same size and all looking exactly alike. They all had the
same beady black eyes that look as though they were afraid of getting
caught in a trap, like muskrats, and their noses had the same inquiring
appearance, as though the owner was speculating as to how much money
the visitors had in their pockets, and whether it was fastened in. Race
suicide is impossible in Turkey, but a race of bandits is growing up
that will let no foreigners with a pocketbook escape.

It took us an hour to go through the harem, and it was more like going
through the quarters of the working women of a home laundry in the
tenement district of a large city, than a comic opera, as we had been
led to expect by what we had read of harems. When we went into the harem
I think dad was going to insist on having the women dance for him, while
he sat on a throne and threw kisses at the most beautiful women in all
the world, but