In the mosque the atmosphere is very much that of the mosque yard. There may be more reverence, perhaps, but people evidently feel very much at home. Men meet there out of prayer time, and women too, for what looks like, though it may not always be, a _sacra conversazione_ of the painters. Students con over their Koran, rocking to and fro on a cushion in front of a little inlaid table. Solitary devotees prostrate themselves in a corner, untroubled by children playing among the pillars or a turbaned professor lecturing, cross-legged, to a cross-legged class in theology. The galleries of some mosques are safety-deposit vaults for their parishioners, and when the parish burns down the parishioners deposit themselves there too. After the greater conflagration of the Balkan War thousands of homeless refugees from Thrace and Macedonia camped out for months in the mosques of Stamboul. Even the pigeons that haunt so many mosque yards know that the doors are always open, and are scarcely to be persuaded from taking up their permanent abode on tiled cornices or among the marble stalactites of capitals. [Illustration: “The Little Mosque” From an etching by Ernest D. Roth] One thing that makes a mosque look more hospitable than a church is its arrangement. There are no seats or aisles to cut up the floor. Matting is spread there, over which are laid in winter the carpets of the country; and before you step on to this clean covering you put off your shoes from off your feet—unless you shuffle about in the big slippers that are kept in some mosques for foreign visitors. The general impression is that of a private interior magnified and dignified. The central object of this open space is the _mihrab_, a niche pointing toward Mecca. It is usually set in an apse which is raised a step above the level of the nave. In it is a prayer-rug for the _imam_, and on each side, in a brass or silver standard, an immense candle, which is lighted only on the seven holy nights of the year and during Ramazan. At the right of the _mihrab_, as you face it, stands the _mimber_, a sort of pulpit, at the top of a stairway and covered by a pointed canopy, which is used only for the noon prayer of Friday or on other special occasions. To the left, and nearer the door, is a smaller pulpit called the _kürsi_. This is a big cushioned armchair or throne, reached by a short ladder, where the _imam_ sits to speak on ordinary occasions. There will also be one or more galleries for singers, and in larger mosques, usually at the _mihrab_ end of the left-hand gallery, an imperial tribune enclosed by grille work and containing its own sacred niche. The chandeliers are a noticeable feature of every mosque, hanging very low and containing not candles but glass cups of oil with a floating wick. I am afraid, however, that this soft light will be presently turned into electricity. From the chandeliers often hang ostrich eggs—emblems of eternity—and other homely ornaments.