It is misty with steam and warm, entirely bare, and of smooth marble walls and floor. We pass into another of the same kind, hotter and more misty, and a group of parboiled spectres regard us languidly as we advance.

Then we emerge in a long oblong hall, reeking with moist heat, in which we gasp and stare at the figures,some steeped to the neck in a cauldron of steaming water, their shaven heads floating, like livid pipkins, upon the surface-some lying at full naked length upon the floor, in a torpor of sensual satisfaction-some sitting meekly upright upon little stools, and streaming with soap-suds, while nude official individuals with a linen fig-leaf, rush rapidly about with a black horse-hair mitten upon the right hand, making occasional sallies upon the spectres, and apparently flaying them with the rough hand of hair.

These spectres are all shaven, and profoundly solemn. They undergo parboiling, boiling, soaping, and flaying, with the melancholy seriousness of western gentlemen dancing at a ball, heroically resigned to happiness.

But we may not pause. Persuasive hands are urging us toward the cauldron. We are suddenly denuded, and hover affrighted on the very verge of the steaming abyss. But we will not be pipkins. We will not join that host of shaven Saracens, who look at us from the cauldron as lifelessly, for les extrèmes se touchent, as the victims in the ice glared upon Dante and his guide. We remember Hylas with an exquisite shudder. We gasp "La, la,” (no, no,) with an emphasis that makes us the focus of all the languid glances in the misty limbo.

Then the persuasive hands urge us toward a door,

opening into a small marble chamber. A fountain gushes hot water at the side, a linen is suspended over the door, and we are removed from the view of the pipkins. The thick hot air is absorbed at every pore, and the senses are soothed as with opium fumes. We pant resistless, sitting upon the floor, streaming with perspiration. Beyond struggling, we see a hairy-handed spectre enter under the linen of the door-way. He rubs his finger upon our naked bodies, as a barber rubs the chin he is about shaving. The hairy-handed says, "Täib, täib," (good, good,) and lays the Howadji flat upon his back.

Sitting by his side, he dips the hair-glove into the running water, and rubs with a smooth steady firmness the inside of the infidel arm. Not a spot escapes. You muse of almonds in the process of blanching, and are thus admitted to mysterious sympathies. You are no longer panting and oppressed. You respire heat and mist at every pore, and perceive yourself of the consistency of honey. The hairy-handed whispers coaxingly, as you sink more deeply in the sense of liquefaction," Howadji, Bucksheesh." You look at him with the languid solemnity of the pipkins in the cauldron, but are sure that you would only gurgle and bubble, should you attempt to speak.

The hairy-handed turns you like a log, and like the statue of great Ramses at Memphis lying with its face in the mud, so lies the happy Howadji with his nose upon the wet marble floor, torpid with satisfaction, while his back is peeled in the same artistic manner.

The ceremony of the glove is finished, and you lie a

moment as if the vague warm mist had penetrated your mind. A stream of clear hot water is poured over you, and pleasure trickles through your very soul.

Then lo! the hairy-handed, smiling upon you as you lie, and whispering, "Bucksheesh, Howadji," steps with his naked feet upon your spine, and stands on your body between your shoulders. But he has scarcely touched the back, than he slides off down the ribs, his large moist feet clinging to your back. So sliding and slipping, and kneading your body, he advances toward the feet, accumulating in your misty mind new ideas of luxury, and revealing to your apprehension the significance of the Arabic word "Kief," which implies a surfeit of sensual delight. He steps off and leaves you lying, and there you would willingly lie forever, but that he returns with a pan of soap and a mass of fibres of the palm-tree-the oriental sponge.

The next moment you are smeared in suds, from the neck to the heels, and it is rubbed in with a vigor that makes you no longer Ramses in the mud of Memphis, but a Grecian wrestler, anointed and oiled with suppleHe rolls you over, and your corporeal unctuation is completed.

ness.

Then Hairy-hand sits you upright upon the floor, like the mild-eyed lotus-eaters, who sit, sudded, upon stools in the vicinity of the pipkins, and suddenly the soap is planted in your hair, and you are strangling in the suds that stream over your face. You cannot speak or gasp, for the Hairy-hand mercilessly rubs along your face up and down, as if you were merely Marsyas, and as you

sit half-terrified, and with a ghostly reverie of anger at your heart, for positive emotions are long since melted, you perceive a burning stream of water flowing over you, and washing soap and rage away. Hairy-hand deluges you with the hot water which he bails out of the fountain with the pan that held the soap. Then folds his hands meekly to signify that you are done, and whispers gently, “Bucksheesh, Howadji.”

You rise and enter the Sudarium beyond. No unbelieving Verde Giovane is there to scoff; but another spectre approaches with razor and scissors. You tremble lest you be too much done to resist the shaving process, lest you re-enter the world utterly bald as a Saracen. But a glance at the pipkins nerves your heart. Feebly this time, and truly with liquid accents, you murmur, “La, la,” and the spectre with razors vanishes into the mist with a scornful smile. You pass into the next chamber, and clean linens are thrown around you as when you entered, and you stumble along upon the clumsy pattens out into the large hall.

You reel into the alcove and stretch yourself at length upon the mattrass covered with gold-fringed linen. A boy lays other linen over you, skilfully flapping a heavenly coolness as he lets it fall. Your eyes close in dreamy languor. Something smooth touches your lips, it is the amber mouth of a nargileh tube, upon whose vase, filled with tobacco from Shiraz, a bit of aloes is burning. It is the same boy, who kneels and hands it to your lips, and offers in the other hand, a cup of orange sherbet.

You sip and inhale, and a few moments, restful as a

year to the sleeping Princess, pass. Then you are gently raised. All your drapery is changed, and fresh, fair linen is spread over you again, with the same exquisite cool-! ness in falling.

Your eyes wander in reverie around the hall. In one alcove, lie a pair of Sybarites like yourself, also dreamily regarding you, and your glances meet and mingle, like light vapors in the air. Another is praying, bending, and kissing, and muttering, others are robing and disrobing, entering or going out. The officials move as quietly as shadows, and perfect silence reigns under the dome, broken only and deepened by the plash of the fountains. Clouds of azure smoke wreathe away, and the faint bubbling of the water in the nargileh hums soothingly through the space. By reason of the windows in the dome, the bath is lighter than the bazaar, and you watch through grated windows opening upon the bazaar, the passers in that dim region, the camels, the horses gayly caparisoned, the Bedoueens, and Sakkas, and bright-robed merchants, who all go by like phantoms. One of the camels turns his lazy neck, and looking through the bars at you, your heart yearns toward MacWhirter, and you remember the desert as an antediluvian existence.

But the boy kneels again, and with firm fingers squeezes your arm slowly from the shoulder to the fingertips. Then he proceeds along your legs. Firmly but gently at first, then more strongly kneading, and passes off at your fingers, cracking every joint, nor unmindful of the toes. He retires and leaves you to another in

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