ticular attention to distinguished The officers of a village pay
guests by assigning to them atten-dante who sit respectfully in "great one's' presence, light pipe, hand him his food, tuck him into his bedclothes, and follow him wherever he goes, solicitous for his welfare and comfort. Solitude under auch circumstances is it possible, In the furthermost Jage of the: Kumul principality, place called Nom, six elderly per-tons with patriarchal beards were instructed to guide me about and attend to my wants, and from these I rarely escaped during a week's sojourn. When -I got up in the mornings I found them lined up to hand me my clothes and at night they never left me until they were certain that I was asleep. I once mentioned in the hearing of the shi of that the dogs were a pest, 50 small boy was added to my retinue s official _stonethrower. Btrolling about the village one day, with my attentive following, I came upon a story-teller surrounded by an open-mouthed audience. We stopped for a time, and when I thought that my attendants were absorbed in the tale and had forgotten me, I climbed a wall and fled into the briar-grown "janggal," where I lay down and read for an hour revelling in my liberty. When T sat up at last and looked about me, there were my six patriarchs and the small boy sitting at atten-an erratic and wayward quosk The Wandering Magician.
Nom, though s Turki settlement of some antiquity; ritory and nourishes traditions of a pre-Turki civilization. It said that there was once a great Uigur city there, with a rich monastery, and that gold and jewels are buried all orer the land. As
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.