Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: June 11, 2025
Turkish soldiers in dark-green uniform, Greek priests in black robes and stove-pipe hats, Bedouins in flowing cloaks of brown and white, pale-faced Jews with velvet gabardines and curly ear-locks, Moslem women in many-coloured silken garments and half-transparent veils, British tourists with cork helmets and white umbrellas, camels, donkeys, goats, and sheep, jostle together in picturesque confusion.
He has a small parrot at the window, to amuse him when within doors, and a pug dog to accompany him in his daily peregrinations. While I am writing he is crossing the court to go out. He is attired in his best coat, of sky-blue, and is doubtless bound for the Tuileries. His hair is dressed in the old style, with powdered ear-locks and a pig-tail.
As he approached us he slackened pace and finally halted, touching his cap. He was a man of middle age, clad in a greasy bonnet with false-looking ear-locks depending from its sides. Round his neck was a grimy red scarf, tucked into his waistcoat; his coat and trousers had a remote affinity with those of a reduced hostler.
We travelled to Isota on the Austrian frontier. As we sat at the railway-station there, wondering how we were going to smuggle ourselves across the frontier, in came a benevolent-looking Jew with a long venerable beard, two very long ear-locks, and a girdle round his waist, washed his hands ostentatiously at the station tap, prayed aloud the Asher Yotzer with great fervour, and on finishing his prayer looked everyone expectantly in the eyes, and all responded 'Amen. Then he drew up his coat-sleeve with great deliberation, extended his hand, gave me an effusive 'Shalom Aleichem' and asked me how it went with me.
My uncle stood listening with inward impatience, resting sometimes on one leg, sometimes on the other, as the little Marquis descanted, with his usual fire and vivacity, on the achievements of his ancestors, whose portraits hung along the wall; from the martial deeds of the stern warriors in steel, to the gallantries and intrigues of the blue-eyed gentlemen, with fair smiling faces, powdered ear-locks, laced ruffles, and pink and blue silk coats and breeches; not forgetting the conquests of the lovely shepherdesses, with hoop petticoats and waists no thicker than an hour glass, who appeared ruling over their sheep and their swains with dainty crooks decorated with fluttering ribbands.
'And how else should I live? Do you think I get fat on this inn? But people stay here from all towns around; I get to know a great circle of marriageable parties. I can show you a much larger stock than the ordinary Shadchan. 'Nu! Let your ear-locks grow the dowry grows with them. Mine host had quite recovered his greasy familiarity.
On one of them sat tall Yankel, his long, curling ear-locks flowing from beneath his Jewish cap, as he bounced about on the horse, like a verst-mark planted by the roadside. At the time when these things took place, there were as yet on the frontiers neither custom-house officials nor guards those bugbears of enterprising people so that any one could bring across anything he fancied.
When I came home at night my wife sat and wept. I asked her why she wept. She answered: 'Why have you led me to such a land, where even prayer costs money at least, for women? The whole day I went from one Shool to another, but they would not let me in. At last I went to the Shool of the "Sons of the Soul," where pray the pious Jews, with beards and ear-locks, and even there I was not allowed in.
Word Of The Day
Others Looking