This diversity of traditions and interests has, of course, influenced the development of Pera. Not the least remarkable feature of this remarkable town is its lack of almost every modern convenience. I must admit, of course, that a generation before New York thought of a subway Pera had one—a mile long. And it is now installing those electric facilities which Abd ül Hamid always objected to, on the ground that a dynamo must have something to do with dynamite. But it will be long before Pera, which with its neighbours sprawls over as much ground as New York, will really take in the conception of rapid transit, or even the more primitive one of home comfort. I hardly need, therefore, go into the account of the more complicated paraphernalia of modern life. There are no public pleasure or sporting grounds other than two dusty little municipal gardens, laid out in old cemeteries, which you pay to enter. Pictures, libraries, collections ancient or modern, there are none. I had almost said there is neither music nor drama. There are, to be sure, a few modest places of assembly where excellent companies from Athens may be heard, where a visitor from the Comédie Française occasionally gives half a dozen performances, and where the failures of European music-halls oftenest air their doubtful charms. On these boards I have beheld a peripatetic Aïda welcome Rhadames and a conquering host of five Greek supers; but Brünnhilde and the Rhine maidens have yet to know the Bosphorus. Not so, however, a translated “Tante de Charles.” When the “Merry Widow” first tried to make her début, she met with an unexpected rebuff. Every inhabitant of Pera who respects himself has a big Croat or Montenegrin, who are the same rose under different names, to decorate his front door with a display of hanging sleeves and gold embroidery. It having been whispered among these magnificent creatures that the “Lustige Witwe” was a slander on the principality—as it was then—of Nicholas I, they assembled in force in the gallery of the theatre and proceeded to bombard the stage with chairs and other detachable objects until the company withdrew the piece.