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Let the overgrown boy of twelve, reverently drawing his letters in the baby class, testify to the noble dreams and high ideals that may be hidden beneath the greasy caftan of the immigrant. Speaking for the Jews, at least, I know I am safe in inviting such an investigation. Who were my companions on my first day at school?

This person, aged apparently about fifty years, seemed to be an Armenian, though, according to other accounts, he was a Spaniard or Greek. He wore a species of caftan, a silk bonnet, and the extremities of his breeches were concealed in a pair of wide boots.

Kukubenko, taking his heavy sword in both hands, thrust it through his mouth. The sword, breaking out two teeth, cut the tongue in twain, pierced the windpipe, and penetrated deep into the earth, nailing him to the ground. His noble blood, red as viburnum berries beside the river, welled forth in a stream staining his yellow, gold-embroidered caftan.

The crowd of curious natives who persistently followed him everywhere may have had something to do with it, for a fur-clad Esquimaux in Piccadilly would not have created a greater sensation than my companion in high boots, black velvet breeches, and red caftan in the busy streets of the great Indian city.

Here!" he exclaimed, springing up, and rummaging among his shelves. Presently he brought out a shabby old green cloth caftán, trimmed with a little tarnished silver lace, and held it up triumphantly to Chrysophrasia's sight. "Twenty-five-six pounds!" he cried, exultingly. "Cheap. Him coat of very big saint-man die going to Mecca last year. Cheap, lady twenty-five-six pounds!"

"I can't: I have such a disposition that whatever I take off, I drink up." And indeed, the young fellow had not had a cap for a long time, nor a belt to his caftan, nor an embroidered neckerchief: all had gone the proper road.

In response a bent figure, clad in an alpaca caftan, appeared from an interior bedroom. He wore a velvet skullcap, and a thin gray beard straggled from his chin; his nose was surmounted by a pair of steel spectacles. "Sholom alaicham!" Morris cried, according the Rabbi that greeting, as ancient as the Hebrew tongue itself "Peace be with you."

The master of the house, the red-haired Jew with freckles, pulled out a mattress covered with some kind of rug, and spread it on a bench for Bulba. Yankel lay upon the floor on a similar mattress. The red-haired Jew drank a small cup of brandy, took off his caftan, and betook himself looking, in his shoes and stockings, very like a lean chicken with his wife, to something resembling a cupboard.

That night the Khoja goes out, and thinks he sees in the moonlight a man motionless upon a tree in the garden. "Give me my bow and arrows," said he to his wife, and having received them, he shot the caftan, piercing it through and through, and then returned into the house.

Sakr-el-Bahr alone, a solitary figure, resplendent in caftan and turban that were of cloth of silver, leaned upon the bulwarks of the larboard quarter of the poop-deck, and looked moodily back upon the receding city of Algiers which by now was no more than an agglomeration of white cubes piled up the hillside in the morning sunshine.