her that the insurmountable difficulties of getting her jewels out of the country while the Bolsheviks were still there made her proposition impracticable, the poor old lady, making a superhuman effort not to break down at this, possibly the hundredth, refusal of her “business” proposition, asked me if I knew any one who would care to take French lessons. Happily my wife wanted to take up French and I was able to help her. Russians are not the only ones who scramble for business. Hundreds of transactions are proposed by and handled through people of a hundred different nationalities, and the characteristics of each individual nation govern the negotiations in each transaction. With so many diversified propositions and with the different style of negotiations they each require, it really is a fortunate thing that the religions of the different races of the Near East crowd the calendar with many diversified holidays. Otherwise few business men would be able to stand the strain. As it is, the quantity of holidays which are kept by the business community of Constantinople affords a welcome relief. First of all there are the weekly Sabbaths. Turkish business houses keep their Sabbath on Fridays which is the Sunday of the Muslims. While they generally do not close altogether, business is always very slack for them on Fridays. In my office where we are all Turks and Muslims, and we are eight in all, we take our Friday turns in rotation so that on these days there are only two of us at the office. The Jews and the Christians, of course, maintain their Sabbath respectively on Saturdays and Sundays so that business is also slack on these days. Other holidays occur quite often on account of the great diversity of religions and nationalities. All these compensate for the strain of normal business days which, while not being as intensive as in some of the great western business centers is nevertheless very exhausting on account of the variety of business treated and of the complexity of the transactions. One has to satisfy the requirements of buyers and sellers who do not speak the same business language, whose conceptions, ideas and mentality are totally different and whose methods are diametrically opposed. One has, therefore, to think and engineer all kinds of combinations to overcome all the difficulties, and I know by experience that it is not always an easy task. At the close of the business day, when I climb the hill leading to our house, I am generally tired and mentally exhausted and the prospect of a quiet evening at home is certainly a relief. VIII A STAMBOUL NIGHT