Читать книгу Around the Black Sea. Asia Minor, Armenia, Caucasus, Circassia, Daghestan, the Crimea, Roumania онлайн

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I once asked a Mohammedan teacher in a Syrian mosque why this is done. He explained that people understand that which they learn through their ears better than that which they learn through their eyes. In the second place, he said, when a person studies aloud the mind is kept upon the subject intently and is not so apt to wander; thirdly, a person who is studying aloud is not so apt to go to sleep as when he reads to himself—and the danger of falling asleep is the reason for the rocking motion of the body which all students practise when they are at their books.

On the forward deck, where the anchor winch is, was camped a group of Persians. Some of them were merchants of Constantinople and other cities on their way to their native country to buy rugs and other goods; others were faithful Mohammedans returning from pilgrimages to Mecca. They were dignified, thoughtful persons with dreamy eyes and intensely black beards, and two or three old men had made themselves supremely ridiculous by the use of henna, which gives hair a bright scarlet hue. It reminded me of What’s-His-Name in “Alice in Wonderland,” who suggested that it would be awfully funny if everybody would dye his whiskers green.