So popular is this form of entertainment that it is thrown in as a sop to sweeten most of the variety performances with which Ramazan abounds. The street of Stamboul where the theatres cluster is a perfect Bowery of cinematographs, music-halls, shooting-galleries, acrobatic exhibitions, and side-shows of a country circus. But it is a Bowery with the reputation of Broadway, and a picturesqueness that neither can boast. Part of the picturesqueness it had when I first knew it has gone—in the shape of the quaint arcades that lined one stretch of it. But the succession of bright little coffee-houses remains, and the white mosque, ethereal at night among its dark trees, that Süleïman the Magnificent built in memory of his dead son. Crowds and carriages abound in Shah-zadeh-Bashi until two o’clock in the morning, itinerant peddlers of good things to eat and drink call their wares, tom-toms beat, and pipes cry their wild invitation to various smoky interiors. [Illustration: Wrestlers] One interior to which they invite is the open space, enclosed by green tent-cloth and not too brilliantly lighted, where may be seen the great Turkish sport of wrestling. Spectators of distinction are accommodated with chairs under an awning; the others squat on their heels around the ring. The wrestlers, sometimes several pairs at a time, appear barefooted, in leather breeches reaching just below the knee. Their first act, if you please, is to anoint themselves from head to foot with oil. That done, each couple stand side by side, join right hands, and bend with the right foot forward, while an old man recites over them some incomprehensible rubric, giving their names and recommending them to the suffrage of the public. They then prance forward to the tent of honour, alternately clapping their hands and their leather legs. There they kneel on one knee and salaam three times. Finally, after more prancing and slapping, during the course of which they hastily shake hands once as they run past each other, they are ready to begin. They do so by facing each other at arm’s length, putting their hands on each other’s shoulders and bending forward till their heads touch. They make no attempt at clinching. That is apparently the one hold forbidden. The game is to throw their opponent by pushing his head down till they can get him around the body or by catching at his legs. Slippery as the wrestlers are with oil, it is no easy matter. Time after time one will seem to have his man, only to let him wriggle away. Then they go at each other again with a defiant “Ho-ho!” The trick is generally done in the end by getting hold of the breeches. When, at last, one of the two is thrown, the oily opponents tenderly embrace and then make a round of the ring collecting tips. Celebrated wrestlers, however, collect their money first. The scene is picturesque enough under the moon of Ramazan, with the nude figures glistening in the lamplight, the dimmer ring of faces encircling them,