you would find at your grocers' he has never heard of. Everything is
topsy-turvy. Just fancy how strange to hang up the sugar in a row of cones
on strings like sausages! Do you see them on the ceiling of the shop in
our picture? That is the way white sugar comes wrapped from France and is
sold in Arabia. A sugar _barrel_ would soon be full of ants in this
country; but when it hangs up on a string the ants have a hard time
getting it away. Maybe there is a suggestion here for your homes if you
are troubled with ants.

In those big Arab baskets the grocer keeps his carrots and other
vegetables; carrots are white in Arabia and there are curious vegetables
of which you have never heard.

Do you see the bottles and tin boxes on his shelves? Those are for spices;
pepper, cinnamon, nutmegs, curry-powder and such things of which Arab
housewives are very fond.

The big bowl on the left probably has olives in it or other kind of
pickled vegetables. On the right you can see the big pair of old fashioned
scales on which he weighs his wares. I hope he is an honest man, although
I do not think he looks very honest, do you? The scale hangs true I have
no doubt; but it is in the weights that deception lurks. In Arabia we can
every day see illustrations of the words of Solomon in the book of
Proverbs about "divers weights" and "false balances." The most of the
shopkeepers do not have proper weights of iron or brass, but use ordinary
cobblestones and pebbles. Only a few days ago I bought some walnuts and
the grocer weighed them so many stones' weight! Do you know what a "stone"
weight is. Maybe you had better look it up in your dictionary. That
covered kettle near the scale-pans on top of the little box contains
_semn_, which is the Arabic name for sheep's fat. You would hardly believe