One of the favourite sports of the Christian Levantine population in Turkey is to shoot all kinds of singing birds, which are served up in restaurants in the Turkish national dish, pilaf. Any day in the autumn one can see crowds of doughty Christian Nimrods, armed with guns, going out in quest of the lark and the throstle, but never a Mohammedan Turk. This sight is a disgusting one to all lovers of nature, and when I was last in Constantinople the wife of the German Ambassador availed herself of the opportunity of an audience with the Sultan to intercede for the little songsters, asking His Majesty to issue an Iradè that they should not be exterminated. If procrastination and dilatory methods of business are sometimes calculated to bring a highly strung European or American to despair in Turkey, patience and forbearance and long-suffering, on the other hand, rise with the Turks to the dignity of virtues. Rarely are these virtues more striking than in connexion with the calumny to which the Turk is continually subjected. Mehmet Izzet said to me, in the midst of a storm of invective let loose by the English Press upon the Turks: “Mon cher, nous sommes un peuple taciturne, nous ne pouvons pas nous défendre.” One day I was present at the Palace when an elderly man was engaged in earnest conversation with Izzet Pasha, the Second Secretary of the Sultan, supposed to be the most influential, as well as the most unscrupulous, man in Turkey. As the conversation was in Turkish I could not follow it, but the tone of supplication of the visitor was so marked that it made me think it must be a question of imploring mercy for some serious delinquency. So I ventured to say: “My dear Pasha, I hope you will be merciful to that poor fellow.” “Mon cher,” he replied, “the fact of the matter is that he is Governor of Jerusalem, and he wants me to get him a better appointment. We are old school-fellows, and I would like to oblige him, but it is quite beyond my power to do so in this instance.” Ample contact with the Turks in all manner of positions in life has convinced me that many of the wicked stories circulated about them have no better foundation in fact than the supposition involved in the above incident, of which I was an eye-witness. * * * * * Those who are acquainted with the character of Turkish women cannot speak too highly of their kindness of heart and their devotion to their children. During the Armenian massacres there were many instances of Armenians who sought refuge in the harem, and were saved by the interposition of Turkish women. This is all the more noteworthy since in other countries, notably those of Latin race, in times of great political excitement the women—as was the case with the Paris Commune in 1871—are often far more ferocious than the men. But here, among the Mohammedan women, mercy was to be met with—