It is the rustiest old barn in heathendom.

I believe all the interest that attaches to it comes from the fact that it was built for a Christian church and then turned into a mosque, without much alteration, by the Mohammedan conquerors of the land.

They made me take off my boots and walk into the place in my stocking-feet.

I caught cold, and got myself so stuck up with a complication of gums, slime and general corruption, that I wore out more than two thousand pair of boot-jacks getting my boots off that night, and even then some Christian hide peeled off with them.

I abate not a single boot-jack.
St.Sophia is a colossal church, thirteen or fourteen hundred years old, and unsightly enough to be very, very much older.