The possible purchaser
listens to the whole speech with deep and serious attention; but
when it is over HIS turn arrives. He elaborately endeavours to
show why he ought not to buy the things at a price twenty times
larger than their value. Bystanders attracted to the debate take a
part in it as independent members; the vendor is heard in reply,
and coming down with his price, furnishes the materials for a new
debate. Sometimes, however, the dealer, if he is a very pious
Mussulman, and sufficiently rich to hold back his ware, will take a
more dignified part, maintaining a kind of judicial gravity, and
receiving the applicants who come to his stall as if they were
rather suitors than customers. He will quietly hear to the end
some long speech that concludes with an offer, and will answer it
all with the one monosyllable "Yok," which means distinctly "No."
I caught one glimpse of the old heathen world. My habits for
studying military subjects had been hardening my heart against
poetry; for ever staring at the flames of battle, I had blinded
myself to the lesser and finer lights that are shed from the
imaginations of men. In my reading at this time I delighted to
follow from out of Arabian sands the feet of the armed believers,
and to stand in the broad, manifest storm-track of Tartar
devastation; and thus, though surrounded at Constantinople by
scenes of much interest to the "classical scholar," I had cast
aside their associations like an old Greek grammar, and turned my
face to the "shining Orient," forgetful of old Greece and all the
pure wealth she left to this matter-of-fact-ridden world.
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