A larger, the true centre of our municipal life, is the _charshî_, or market-place. Very notable, to the mind of one admirer, is ours among market-places. My admiration is always divided between that crooked street of it, darkened by jutting upper stories that sometimes actually jump across it, wherein are situate the principal shops, the minor cafés, a fountain or two, and the public bath, and that adjoining portion of it which lies open to the sea. The latter certainly offers the most facilities for the enjoyment of life. Indeed, one end of it is chiefly given up to a Company for the Promotion of Happiness—if one may so translate its Turkish name—whose English steamers carry us to town, seven miles away, or to the upper Bosphorus, as quickly, as regularly, and as comfortably as any company I know. It also does much to promote the happiness of those who do not travel, through the sociable employees of its wharf and by affording a picturesque _va et vient_ at almost any hour of the day. I fear, however, that it does less to promote the happiness of the boatmen who await custom at the adjacent wooden quay. They wait in those trim little skiffs, so much neater than anything of the sort we see for hire at home, which have almost superseded caïques because they hold more passengers with greater comfort. And to one who observes how much of the time they do wait, and how modestly they are remunerated for their occasional excursions, it is a miracle how they contrive to live. There is no fixed tariff. If you know the ropes you pay two and a half piastres, some twelve cents, to be rowed across the Bosphorus or to the next village. For ten they will take you almost anywhere. But they eke out their incomes by fishing. We are famous for our lobsters at Roumeli Hissar. The boatmen, and others with them, often prefer to wait in certain agreeable resorts along that same wooden platform. The first of these is the café of the Armenian, whose corner rakes the Company for the Promotion of Happiness. He profits thereby not a little, for when we wish to take a steamer we do not always trouble ourselves to look up the time-table beforehand. The Armenian is also a barber, and in his low-ceiled room of many windows you may hear, to the accompaniment of banging backgammon boards, the choicest of conversation. The only thing I have against him is that I have to pay twice as much for my coffee as a customer who wears a girdle and a fez. [Illustration: The village boatmen and their skiffs]