Then came two days of steady rain. Constantinople became one huge mud-puddle and turned gray all over. That was the final stroke. We plunged head foremost into outrageously bad humors, abused the whole place, grew rude and stupid, and assumed no end of conceited European airs. Who on the day of our arrival would ever have imagined such a condition of things? And to think of the lengths to which it carried us!--actually to the point of holding high festival on the day when we came out of the Austrian Lloyds with a couple of tickets for Varna and the Danube in our pockets! But there was one feature that dampened our rejoicings, and that was the approaching parting from our kind friends in Pera, with whom we passed all our last evenings in the most cordial and friendly fashion. How depressing this everlasting saying good-bye becomes--this continual breaking of pleasant ties, and leaving a fragment of one’s heart wherever one may go! Is there nowhere to be found on the surface of the earth a magic wand by whose aid I shall one day be enabled, at a given moment, to assemble around some well-spread board all my friends scattered at present over the surface of the globe--you, Santoro, from Constantinople; you, Selam, from the coast of Africa; and Ten Brink from the dunes of Holland; and Segovia from the Guadalquivir; and Saavedra from the banks of the Thames--that I may tell you how ever-present you all are in my thoughts and in my heart? Alas! the wand is not yet found, and in the mean time the years go by and one’s dreams fade away. THE TURKS.