WHEN I had passed the final examination in the law college I began to attend the Courts to see and learn the actual working of the forms of the procedures. I now grew to dislike having to go to the Courts and Government offices in the _Ulema_ costume, which I still wore. In fact, even in my class at the college there were only a few persons belonging to _madrassehs_, and they alone were attired in the semi-religious dress, and the contrast between our appearance and the rest in the class, who were attired in ordinary civilian dress, seemed to us to make us look old-fashioned. So, like most of my countrymen, I was seized with the ambition of appearing up-to-date, and of dressing in the more modern manner; that is to say, European costume in all but the fez. Before I could do this, however, and become, so to speak, an ordinary layman, I had to leave the life of the _madrasseh_ altogether, for the people in those ancient institutions regard the discarding of the academical turban and long cloak, and the adoption of European clothes, as a renunciation of the profession. Anyone who ventures to do this forfeits his right to a lodging in the _madrasseh_. I did not know where to go after leaving my _madrasseh_, as Turkish families cannot take any stranger into their houses as a boarder, while to go into a Greek or Armenian family would not do for a young Mussulman, for many reasons. So I hired two rooms in an inn, which was as filthy as these inns always are. I went to the European quarter of Constantinople and bought a suit of clothes from one of the numerous clothiers, who are mostly Austrian Jews, and who bring the clothes ready-made from Austria. Their goods are ridiculously cheap, but the tailoring and the material are extremely bad. It is a proverb in Constantinople that when you buy a suit of clothes from these Austrian shops and put it on, it will be worn out before you can cross over the Golden Horn Bridge back to Stamboul. Curiously enough, some of these Austrians try to pass their goods off as of English manufacture, as the English-made goods have a better reputation than the Austrian even in Turkey.