Note 41 — XII.

This peculiarity of Eastern manners is universally prevalent wherever Oriental nations have come in contact with Europeans. It is of course as entirely unlike the genuine hospitality of the rude Bedouin or Tartar as it is possible to imagine, and seems to belong to an early and very imperfect notion of true refinement. Traces of it will be found in all countries, even in Europe, and in its original form of making a present in the expectation of receiving something more valuable in return, which lies at the bottom of all this pseudo-generosity. The astuteness of the Scotch Highlanders, themselves a race remarkably free from such meannesses, has hitched the system into a pithy proverb, the sense of which is to "send a hen's egg in order to get a goose's in exchange."