I am not reckless enough to try to pronounce it when I am awake, but I

make a stagger at it in my dreams, and get up with the lockjaw in the

morning. I am fading. I do not take my meals now, with any sort of

regularity. Her dear name haunts me still in my dreams. It is awful on

teeth. It never comes out of my mouth but it fetches an old snag along

with it. And then the lockjaw closes down and nips off a couple of the

last syllables--but they taste good.

Coming through the Dardanelles, we saw camel trains on shore with the

glasses, but we were never close to one till we got to Smyrna. These

camels are very much larger than the scrawny specimens one sees in the

menagerie. They stride along these streets, in single file, a dozen in a

train, with heavy loads on their backs, and a fancy-looking negro in

Turkish costume, or an Arab, preceding them on a little donkey and

completely overshadowed and rendered insignificant by the huge beasts.

To see a camel train laden with the spices of Arabia and the rare fabrics

of Persia come marching through the narrow alleys of the bazaar, among

porters with their burdens, money-changers, lamp-merchants, Al-naschars

in the glassware business, portly cross-legged Turks smoking the famous

narghili; and the crowds drifting to and fro in the fanciful costumes of

the East, is a genuine revelation of the Orient. The picture lacks

nothing. It casts you back at once into your forgotten boyhood, and

again you dream over the wonders of the Arabian Nights; again your

companions are princes, your lord is the Caliph Haroun Al Raschid, and

your servants are terrific giants and genii that come with smoke and

lightning and thunder, and go as a storm goes when they depart!

467

The Innocents Abroad