Then there were four students from Alexandria, who boarded at Beyrout, and were going home to spend the vacation--good-natured but much-neglected lads of fourteen or fifteen years, who seemed particularly partial to the society of the sailors, and were always talking, playing, or quarrelling with them.

The remainder of the company consisted of a rich Arab family, with several male and female negro slaves, and a few very poor people.

And in such society I was to pass a weary time.

Many will say that this was a good opportunity for obtaining an insight into the customs and behaviour of these people; but I would gladly have declined the opportunity, for it requires an almost angelic patience to bear such a complication of evils with equanimity.

Among the Arabs and the lower class of Greeks, moreover, every thing possessed by one member of the community is looked upon as public property.