orientalcairocit00sladuoft

The Old^World Oriental Life of Cairo 4^
spilling a drop. He is quite a picturesque object when he
is walking about with his water-skin, a swollen amorphous
mass with its legs tied, hanging round him like a hurdygurdy
; but he is at his best when standing waist-deep in
the river letting his skins expand and sink in the shallow
water. The sign of his presence is the clinking togethei
of brazen saucers ; they give a note as clear as a bell,
especially when they are made of fine thick brass. There
are always one or two of the sort that look like beggars
hanging about the Bab-cs-Zuweyla ; their richer brothers
haunt the Ataba-el-Khadra in company with the lemonade-
sellers.
It is the lemonade-seller who is most reminiscent of the
days of the good Harun-ar-Raschid. He is inconceivably
resplendent. His lemonade urn is sometimes six feet high,
with its huge glass globes surmounted by domes of beaten
brass, which make it look like a doll's mosque. His brass
cups look like the golden goblets of a king, though his
European customers generally prefer tumblers. He has
slung round his waist a wonderful brass tray about six inches
deep, with a frame like the fiddles of a ship for its top, to
hold bottles and glasses. And he dresses like the sais of a
Khedivial princess, with a blue silk tassel like the tail of a
horse trailing from the jaunty little fez stuck on the side of
his head, a gold embroidered waistcoat, open, to show his
fine linen, wide breeches stiff with braiding, and stockings
as well as shoes. He is the pride of the street, or at all
events looks proud enough to be—to his other finery he some-
times adds a scarlet apron.
The sherbet sellers are much humbler people ; they have
rather peculiar pitchers and goblets. Most sherbets look
like muddy water ; their essential feature is sugar, and they
contain some fruit juice. The sherbet shops always look as
if they were being got ready for an illumination, for their
fronts are hung all round with little brass buckets shaped
like the pitchers of the Pignatelli Pope. Their rivals are
the cheap restaurants, which have two enormous brass jugs
of the shape of Arab coffee-pots sitting up like a pair of