“The merchant, gravely courteous, reveals his treasures, little dreaming that they are inestimable to the eyes that contemplate them. His wares make poets of his customers, who are sure that the Eastern poets must have passed their lives in an endless round of shopping.
“Here are silk stuffs from Damascus and Aleppo; cambric from the district of Nablus, near the well of Jacob; gold and silver threads from Mount Lebanon; keffie, the Bedouin handkerchiefs, from Mecca, and fabrics of delicate device from Damascus blend their charm with the Anatolian carpets of gorgeous tissue. The fruits of Hamas hang beyond—dried fruits and blades from Celo Syria—pistacchios from Aleppo, and over them strange Persian rugs.
“The eye feasts upon splendor. The wares are often clumsy, inconvenient, and unshapely. The coarsest linen is embroidered with the finest gold. It is a banquet of the crude elements of beauty, unrefined by taste. It is the pure figment unworked into the picture.
“But the contemplation of these articles, of name and association so alluring, and the calm curiosity of the soft eyes, that watch you in the dimness of the bazaar, gradually soothe your mind like sleep, and you sit by the merchant in pleasant reverie. You buy as long and as much as you can. Have rhymes, and colors, and fancies prices?
“The courteous merchant asks fabulous sums for his wares, and you courteously offer a tenth or a twentieth of his demand. He looks grieved, and smokes. You smoke, and look resigned.
“‘Have the Howadji reflected that this delicate linen (it is coarse crash) comes from Bagdad, upon camels, over the desert?’
“‘They have, indeed, meditated that fact.’
“‘Are these opulent strangers aware that the sum they mention would plunge an unhappy merchant into irretrievable ruin?’
“‘The thought severs the heart-strings of the opulent strangers. But are their resources rivers, whose sands are gold?’
“—And the soft-eyed Arab boy is dispatched for fresh coffee.