Book Description

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1852 edition. Excerpt: ...see. I had an excellent supper and a very comfortable apartment here, Mr. Athanasius (Kuptoe 'A0aDINNER AT ELERIGOBA. 123 vamog) being a rich man, and what his servants called "a great merchant" (fiiyag ifiiropog). Glad felt I again to see, moreover, a woman's "face divine" after so long an interval--old and ugly as my hostess was. Nov. 3.--Four hours' ride over soft greensward and through scenery like that of an English park, brought' us in time for an early dinner to the house of our hospitable friend, the Proest5s of Elerigoba. It was a market-day, and the village was full of the inhabitants of the surrounding districts. There dined in our company two Turkish agas, gentlemen of property in the interior of Macedonia, who had come here on business. It was like a party of country gentlemen in England taking an early dinner on a market or sessions-day with the mayor of their county town. My companions were both young and handsome, and dressed in the embroidered jacket and white kilt of Greece and Albania, with splendid pistols and yataghans at their girdles. Like Mahommedans in general, so different from the lively, supple Greeks, they did not talk much, but were very courteous and polished in their manners. They treated our host quite as an equal; and yet I fancied he regarded them with something of the old Helot mixture of fear and aversion. They ate precisely as we did, but drank no wine. Our host's very pretty daughter did not 124 THE PYRRHIC DANCE eat with us, but served us with coffee and sweetmeats after dinner. It requires great practice to enjoy a dinner when reclining on the floor or on a couch, after the manner of the ancients and Orientals. A pic-nic on the grass has, however, all the inconvenience, without...