The disappointment at not seeing what
I look like at prayers is more than offset by the additional novelty
imparted to my person by the, to them, strange and sensational omission.
They seem greatly disappointed to learn that I am going away in the
morning; they have plenty of toke-me-morge, pillau, mast, and sheerah,
they say--plenty of everything; and they want me to stay with them
always. Revolving the matter over in my mind, I am forcibly struck with
the calm, reposeful state of Nukhab society; and what a brilliant field
of enterprise for an ambitious person the place would be. Turned
Mussulman, joined in wedlock to three or four sore-eyed village damsels;
worshipped as a sort of strange, superior being, hakim and eye-water
dispenser; consulted as a walking store-house of occult philosophy on all
occasions; endeavoring to educate the people up to habits of all-round
cleanliness; chiding the mothers for allowing the flies to swarm and
devour the poor little babies' eyes--all this, for toke-me-morge, pillau,
mast, and sheerah, twice or thrice a day! Involuntarily my eye roams over
the gladsome countenances of the eligible portion of my female auditors,
as though driven by this whimsical flight of fancy to the necessity of at
once making a choice.
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