pays particular court to his “rose-leaf.” And then the effendi, being a person of high position, has promised that she may watch the first large ball given at the English embassy during the following winter from the crack of some retired doorway. In short, the _hanum_ is a European lady of the Mussulman faith, who says to her friends with intense satisfaction, “I live like a _Cocona_”--a Christian. And her friends and relatives, though they may be unable to do the same, would like to; and among themselves they talk of the fashions and theatres, telling each other stories of the “superstitions,” the “pedantries,” and the “bigotry” of Old Turkey, winding up every discourse with the remark, “And it is high time that we should change all this and begin to lead lives more like rational human beings.” But that other harem! Here there is nothing that is not severely Turkish, from the costume of the mistress to the smallest article of furniture--not a book except the Koran, the only newspaper the _Stambul_. Should the _hanum_ fall ill, instead of a doctor, one of those innumerable Turkish doctresses, with a miraculous specific for every kind of disease, is summoned. If her parents have become tainted with the European craze, they are only permitted to see their daughter once a week. Every door and window in the house is furnished with bars and bolts: absolutely nothing European but the air is allowed to enter the household, unless the mistress has unfortunately been taught a little French in her girlhood, in which case the mother-in-law is perfectly capable of thrusting a coarse romance of the worst type into her hands, so as to be able to say, “There! you see now what fine sort of people these are you are so crazy to imitate! what pretty things they do and say! what a beautiful example they set!”