of cooking when he is barely awake and when moreover he is in a hurry to
reach the scene of his daily labours. The vendor of these dainties is truly
"a study in oils," and his hands, which serve the purpose of knife and fork
for the separation of his customers' demands, drip--but not with myrrh.
Though a vendor of oleaginous dainties, he is himself far from well-
nourished. You can see his collar-bone and count his ribs and almost mark
the beatings of his poor profit-counting heart. A dirty dhoti girds his
loins, and upon his head is a turban of the same questionable hue which
serves both as a head-dress and as a support for his tray of cakes. If a
Musulman, he wears only a skullcap, a shirt or jacket and a pair of soiled
baggy trousers. Once he has called, the jaleibi-vendor has a habit of
presenting himself every day at the very hour when the children of the
house begin to clamour for food, and calmly defies the angry order of the
householder not to appear unless bidden.

Next comes the vendor of "chah, chah garam, chaaah garaaam" or hot tea, who
is unusually an Irani. For having introduced tea into Western Asia the
inhabitants of the land of "the gul and the bulbul" claim the secret of
making a perfect infusion of the celestial leaves. He is no longer the
embodiment of Tom Moore's Heroic Guebre, this tea-vending Irani, and his
apron forbids the suggestion that he has any association with Gao, the
subverter of a monarchy and the slayer of the tyrant Zuhhac. He has sadly
degenerated from the type of his Guebre ancestor. If he owns a shop he
combines the sale of other commodities with the tea business. He has an
ice-cream, a sherbet and a "cold-drink" department; and he touts for
customers, singing the praises of hot and cold beverages in a language
redolent of Persian. It does not pay him to use fresh tea-leaves from
Kangra or China; so he purchases his stock from small traders, who in their
turn obtain it as a bargain from butlers or stewards. The latter dry them
after one infusion by their masters and, mixing some unused leaves, make up