I might speak of other public institutions flourishing in our midst: of the primary school by the water where you hear the children studying aloud while they rock back and forth over the Koran; of the Sünbüllü dervishes farther down the quay, to whom laden wood boats throw out a few sticks as they tow up the five-mile current; of the howling dervishes, and the clever ruse by which they obtained their building; of our three mosques—to say nothing of the _imam’s_ mother of the smallest of them, an active yet beneficent public institution in herself, who, when the American college dug foundations for a wall round a slope long beloved by the Turkish ladies, threw her ample person most literally into the breach and could only be persuaded to retire therefrom by the Ministry of Public Works. Nor should I pass over our village green, which was once a cemetery, but which is now a common meeting-place for those of us who are happy enough to live about it. Some of us spend most of our time there, in the company of our wives, our children, our horses, our donkeys, and our hens. Most notable among the habitués—at least to an alien eye—is a lady of African descent, espoused to a meek Caucasian water-carrier and the mother of an infinite chocolate-and-cream progeny. Her ardent disposition is reported to have led her through many vicissitudes, matrimonial and otherwise. On one occasion it led her to scratch out the eyes of another _habituée_ of the green, over some matter of mulberries. It is a proof of the reasonableness of justice among us that when condemned to a brief term of imprisonment she first succeeded in postponing the execution of the sentence, I believe through some expectation of presenting the happy water-carrier with a new chocolate-cream, and then in causing her term to be subdivided, alternately languishing in dungeons and enjoying the society of her family until she had paid the full penalty of the law.