Constantinople is a fair-weather city, and needs the sun and the blue sky and the life of the waters about it, which give to the city its real individuality. It misses in winter the pleasure-yachts of the summer months, the white uniforms of the thousands of boatmen, and the brighter dressing of the awnings and flags of the ships and steamers. But the waters about Constantinople are its best part, and are fuller and busier and brighter than either those around the Battery or those below the Thames Embankment, and by standing on its wide wooden bridge, over which more people pass in a day than over any other (save London Bridge) in the world, one can see a procession of all the nations of the East. Constantinople is a much more primitive city than one would expect the largest of all Eastern cities to be. It impresses you as a city without any municipal control whatsoever, and you come upon a building with the stamp of the municipal palace upon it with as much surprise as you would feel in finding an underwriter's office at the north pole. In many ways it is the most primitive city that I have ever been in. In all that pertains to the Sultan, to the religion of the people, of which he is the head, and to the army, the recognition due them is rigidly and impressively observed. But in what regards the local life of the people there seems to be absolutely no interest and no responsibility. There is no such absolute power in Europe, not excepting that of the Czar or of the young Emperor, as is that exercised by the Sultan; and the mosques of the faithful are guarded and decorated and held more highly in reverence than are many churches of a more civilized people; and the army impresses you as one you would much prefer to lead than one from which you would elect to run away. But the comfort of the inhabitants of Constantinople is little considered. There is nothing that one can see of what we call public spirit, unless building a mosque and calling it after yourself, in a city already supplied with the most magnificent of such temples, can be called public-spirited. Of course one does not go to Constantinople to see electric lights and asphalt pavements, nor to gather statistics on the poor-rate, but it is interesting to find people so nearly in touch with the world in many things, and so far away from it in others. As long as I do not have to live in Constantinople, I find its lack of municipal spirit quite as interesting a feature of the city as its mosques. [Illustration: ONE OF THE SULTAN'S PALACES ON THE BOSPORUS]