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Updated: June 22, 2025
"'And then do you take this poniard, said the young herdsman; 'you will not find one better carved between Albano and Civita-Castellana. "'I accept it, answered the traveller, 'but then the obligation will be on my side, for this poniard is worth more than two sequins. 'For a dealer perhaps; but for me, who engraved it myself, it is hardly worth a piastre.
We passed through Selinos, where the riflers of the antique necropolis brought me quantities of glass found in the graves, and a few bronze and gold ornaments; and when I had loaded myself and my attendants with all the glass we could safely carry, the people begged me still to buy, if only for a piastre each piece, what they had accumulated for want of a buyer.
"The Frank declareth that her eyes were bright as those of the gazelle, that her eyebrows were as one, her waist as that of the cypress, her face as the full moon, and that she was fat as the houris that await the true believers." "Mashallah! all for a piastre. Ask him, Mustapha, if there are more wives to be sold in that country?"
The cry from the moment you set foot in Egypt until the steamer sails is "Backsheesh! Backsheesh!" Give! give! give! Crowds surround you at every place, and from child to withered eld it is an incessant chorus. If one is weak enough to give a piastre he is done for; the crowd increases, and the roars of the beggars with it.
"How much do you say he sold his wife for?" said the pacha to Mustapha, when this part of the story was repeated to him. "A piastre, and a drink of the fire water," replied the vizier. "Ask him if she was handsome?" said the pacha.
Amurath should have ransomed her, or he might have given her to one of his officers, or any young fellow that had particularly distinguished himself." And so, twirling his mustachios, and flinging down his piastre, the young Janissary strutted out of the coffee-house. "When we were young," said the old Turk with the white beard to his companion, shaking his head, "when we were young "
If a seat is taken in one of the coffee-house chairs, a watchful waiter instantly makes his appearance with a tray containing small chunks of a pasty sweetmeat, known in England as " Turkish Delight," one of which you are expected to take and pay half a piastre for, this being a polite way of obtaining payment for the privilege of using the chair.
I have seen a piastre and a half paid to a man for carrying a load the distance of five hundred yards from the shore to a house.
So he returned me my piastre, and demanded four. He shouted and blustered, just as the captain had done; but I remained deaf, and rode forward towards the custom-house. Then he came down to three piastres, then to two, and finally said he would be content with one, which I threw to him.
The march had become a dirge; no longer it suggested happiness to be, but failure. An Englishman threw him a piastre, and he turned into a cafe. Calling for a glass of wine, he flung himself down on the wooden bench and tried to think. But really logical thinking was impossible. For in spite of the sorrow at his heart, the same bright dreams of wealth and happiness came back to mock him.
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