costumed gentlemen, the wonderful dogs, cats, mice, and other creatures that go to make up the company, create a scene that a spectator of simple tastes willingly revisits. Among the elements of his pleasure must be counted the ill-lighted barrack or tent in which the representation takes place, the gaily dressed children composing the better part of the audience—here, for once, ladies are allowed!—the loquacious venders of sweets and drinks, and the music of pipe and drum to the accompaniment of which the little coloured shadows play on their lighted paper. The shadow shows are by no means the only species of the dramatic art to tempt the audiences of Ramazan. There are full-grown theatres that take themselves, the drama—everything except the lives of their patrons—more seriously. They are perfect fire-traps wherein the play’s the thing, innocent as they in great part are of those devices of upholstery which are the chief pride of the modern stage. The pit is aligned with rush-bottomed stools and chairs, above which rise, in the European fashion, tiers of not too Sybaritic boxes. A particularity of them is that, like the cafés and the streets, they contain no ladies. While there are Turkish theatres which ladies attend in the daytime, it is contrary to custom for ladies to take part in public entertainments at night. Consequently the European ladies who sometimes penetrate Stamboul during the nights of Ramazan make themselves more conspicuous than is likely to be pleasant and the objects of comment which it is well that they do not understand. Women do appear on the stage, but they are never Turks. They are usually Armenians, occasionally Syrians or Greeks, whose murder of the language is condoned by the exigencies of the case. The performances last the better part of the night. They begin at three o’clock Turkish, or three hours after sunset at any season of the year, and close in time for the last meal of the night. There is a curtain-raiser, which is not seldom drawn from the manners of the people. The piece of resistance, however, is a comedy or melodrama adapted from the European stage. The first is more likely to be interesting to an outsider, for the Turks are capital comedians. But the more serious pieces are characteristic, too, in their mixture of East and West. Madam Contess, as she is flatly pronounced, will be attended by servants in fez and _shalvars_, and two gentlemen in top hats will salute each other with earth-sweeping salaams.