And, after all, Turkish women are free--a discovery which the foreigner makes as soon as he lands. It is an exaggeration for Lady Mary Wortley Montague to say that they have more liberty than European women, but any one who has been to Constantinople cannot help but laugh when he hears people talk of their “bondage.” When a lady wishes to go out she tells the eunuch to order her carriage, and goes without asking any one’s permission, and stays as long as she wants to, provided, of course, she returns before nightfall. Formerly she was always accompanied by a eunuch or female slave or friend. The bolder spirits, when they wanted no one else, would at least take a child with them as a sort of passport to public respect. One of them appearing entirely alone in some retired spot would quite probably have found herself stopped by a city guard or a straight-laced old Turk, and subjected to a severe cross-examination: “Where are you going? Where have you been? Why is there no one with you? Is it thus that you respect your effendi? Go home at once.” But now-a-days all this has changed, and hundreds of Turkish women may be seen at all hours of the day quite alone in the Mussulman streets and suburbs, and in the Frankish cities as well. They pay each other visits from one end of Stambul to the other, spend half a day in the bath-houses, make excursions by water to the Sweet Waters of Europe on Thursday, and on Sunday to the Sweet Waters of Asia. On Friday they visit the cemeteries of Skutari, on the other days of the week the Isles of the Princes, Terapia, Buyukdereh, or Kalender, to eat luncheon in parties of eight or ten with their slaves. They say their prayers at the tombs of the pâdishahs and sultanas, visit the dervishes’ monasteries, and go to see the public exhibitions of wedding-outfits. And not a man would presume to join or follow one of them, or even so much as to accost her. For a Turk to be seen in some retired street in Constantinople, not arm-in-arm or walking beside, but merely pausing an instant to exchange half a dozen words with one of the “veiled,” would be considered most unseemly, even were it written on their foreheads that they were man and wife; or, to speak more correctly, it would be looked upon as an audacious piece of impudence, as though two individuals should select the centre of one of our crowded streets in which to make mutual declarations of love. In this sense, then, Turkish women really have more freedom than ours, and no one knows how highly they value it or how eagerly they grasp at the noise and crowd and open air and light of the streets and public resorts. In their own houses they see but one single man, while their windows and gardens are like those in convents; so it is perfectly natural to find them running about the city with all the enjoyment of liberated prisoners. It is great fun to follow one of them--at a safe distance--and see how she has mastered the art of chopping the joys of