The Orientals differ in many respects from the Europeans and Americans in their customs and manners, their dress, and the furniture of their houses. The dress of the men consists of a red cap, wide baggy cloth trousers, silken girdle, and a jacket. The houses in Syria are invariably built of stone, and in the south of Palestine entirely so. The floors of the rooms are paved with marble or granite. At the entrance of every room is a space of several feet square, paved with figured marble, and never carpeted, generally used as a receptacle for shoes and slippers, which the Orientals remove from their feet on entering a room. The rest of the floor is raised about half a foot higher. The Orientals sleep on the ground, i. e., on mattresses laid on carpets, or mats spread on the floor.
In an Arab family one of the members became ambitious of transforming himself into a European. This young gentleman had received an excellent education, being familiar not only with the Arab literature, but master of the ancient and modern Greek.
His first step toward the desired end was to study English and French. When he had gained a fair knowledge of these languages, he applied for the position of interpreter to the American consulate, to which he succeeded in being appointed.
His so-far satisfied ambition would no longer allow him to wear the Oriental dress, and he soon showed himself to an admiring world of natives in European costume. One day he was asked how he liked his new costume.
"Not at all," he replied. "I feel as if tied hand and foot in a tight-fitting prison."
A few weeks later he one day startled some of his European friends by asking them, with a thoughtful seriousness, whether they often tumbled out of bed.
"Tumble out of bed!" they exclaimed. "Why, of course not. How could one?"
"I would much rather find out how a person could not," was his reply.
He was asked what put such an idea into his head.
The rest is best told in his own words.