Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: WHAT WAS GEMILA DOING ALL THIS TIME? / We have beentf wandering through strange, wild lands. Come with me now to a great city. But I doubt if you feel more at home in it than you did on Agoonack's ice-island, or Manenko's long journey; for it is not at all like any city you have ever seen ; not like Boston or New York, not like St. Louis or Chicago. Let us stand still for a minute, if we can find a quiet spot in this narrow, crowded street, and see what it is like. It is Sunday afternoon; but we hear no church-bells, and all the business seems to be going on just the same as on a week-day. " Don't these people have any Sunday ? " asks Dadie. Oh, yes! but their Sunday is Friday. On Friday they will go to their churches, and have their services; but to-day is their market-day, and, in almost all the towns we may visit in this country, we shall find a Sunday market. We are close beside a shop now, but, oh ! what a funny shop ! hardly bigger than a cupboard; and the whole side towards the street is open. Will you buy some of these sugared almonds, or a few delicious golden dates, of that turbaned man who sits so quietly in the corner, and doesn't seem to care whether we buy or not ? If we want either dates or almonds, we must take a piastre out of our pockets to pay for them; for a bright silver dime, or a five- cent piece would be something so new and strange to our shop-keeper, that he would shake his head, and hand it back to you. But we mustn't spend too much time buying dates. There is something better to do in this wonderful city, where even the houses are curious enough to make us stop, and gaze at them. See the pretty balconies built out around the windows, and sheltered by screens or shutters of beautifully carved wood. I fancy we can catch a glimpse of some...