three o’clock, and she never came out till four.” The chronicle of petty gossip and malicious tattle flies in and out among those innumerable little yellow and red houses with incredible rapidity, circulates about the court, crosses over to Skutari, proceeds along both banks of the Bosphorus as far as the Black Sea, and not infrequently, finding its way to the large provincial cities, returns from thence with each particular added to and embellished to provoke fresh mirth and gossip in the thousand harems of the great metropolis. * * * * * If you could only meet in Constantinople one of those walking society chronicles with which all European cities are provided, who know everything about everybody and are always quite willing to impart their knowledge, it would be beyond measure amusing and instructive to get him to station himself by your side at the entrance to the Sweet Waters of Europe on some great fête-day and whisper a word or two about every noteworthy person who passed by. There could certainly be no better method of obtaining an insight into Constantinople manners and customs. But, after all, what difference does it make whether we have his help or not? As long as the incidents are perfectly well known, we can imagine the people for ourselves: for my part, it is just as though I stood there looking and listening. The people stream by, and our Turkish gossip points and whispers: “Do you see that lady passing now? She has quarrelled with her husband and gone to Skutari to live: that, you know, is where they all go when they are discontented or have a falling out with their husbands. She is staying with a friend, and will wait until her effendi, who at bottom is really very fond of her, shall go and tell her that the slave who caused the trouble has been gotten rid of, and conduct her home again pacified.--This effendi is in the Foreign Office: he has just done what numbers of others do to avoid being pestered to death with relations-in-law and relations of relations-in-law--that is, married an Arabian slave: his sister is giving her her first lessons in Turkish.--That handsome woman over there is a divorcée. When Effendi So-and-so has succeeded in repudiating one of his four wives, she is to take her place, having been promised it some time ago.--That one just behind her has been divorced twice from the same man, and now she wants to marry him again, he wishing it as well. So she is about, in obedience to the law governing such cases, to marry some one else, whose wife she must be for twenty-four hours, after which the capricious fair one is free to marry her first husband for the third time.--The brunette yonder with the expressive eyes was an Abyssinian slave who was sent by a great lady of Cairo as a present to a great lady of Stambul; on dying the latter left her the post of mistress of the establishment.--That effendi is fifty years old, and has had ten