The food is excellent, though there are, of course, some grumblers, and the whole institution is conducted on similar lines to a first-class London club. Perhaps the custom of personally introducing the stranger to every single member of the club strikes the foreigner as a little unnecessary, yet without doubt there is real good-fellowship existing, such as is entirely absent in some other clubs I know—the English Club in Brussels and the Florence Club in Florence, in particular. Men, and especially the diplomats, find it a very great boon, for to go to Sofia is to find a real good club and quite a host of good cosmopolitan friends ever ready to show the stranger all kinds of hospitality. Social life is far from dull. Sport and games of every kind are most popular. There is an excellent tennis club, hockey is played three or four times a week, and large riding parties, personally conducted by Baron Rubin de Cervin, the Italian military attaché, go out for long jaunts into the neighbouring mountains several times each week. Then at night there are constant dinners and receptions at the Legations, and everyone seems to lead a very pleasant life, without a moment’s dulness. [Illustration: HIS EXCELLENCY D. PETKOFF, Prime Minister of Bulgaria. ] Lady Buchanan, wife of Sir George Buchanan, the British Minister, is the principal hostess, and with her daughter is foremost in Sofia society. Until ill-health prevented her recently, she was an ardent player of hockey and tennis, and constantly in the saddle. Her entertainments are always brilliant, and in her pretty salon one meets everyone who is anyone in Sofia. Again, the Military Club is another centre of social life. The building is a handsome one, with an extremely fine ballroom, where dances, given every week through the season, are attended by the elite of Sofia. I went to one, and found it a particularly gay and brilliant function. Government institutions in Sofia amazed me. They would do credit to any European capital. The Agricultural Bank, the inner working of which I was permitted by Monsieur N. Ghenadieff, Minister of Commerce, to inspect, is a fine new building of huge dimensions, with a beautifully ornamented board-room, and its operations no doubt tend much towards securing the public prosperity of Bulgaria. M. Seraphimoff, the Governor, who conducted me round, told me that the bank had its origin in the time of the Turkish rule. As far back as 1863, the Governor of the _vilayet_ of the Danube created small banks in order to aid the peasants, the villagers repaying their loans in crops and the banks selling the produce.