“Yes, to be sure he did,” Ibrahim Pasha smilingly replied. “But I did not gratify him. I merely told him that you were an American.” “Well then,” I rejoined, “if he should ever ask you the same question again, pray tell him, with my compliments, that my name is perhaps better known than his own in the country of his birth.” The sun shines through the window and lights up the faces of the grave, swarthy-featured Turks. Officers in full dress, decked out in all their stars and sashes, are pouring into the Palace, for it is Friday. The Sultan has had a good night. Everything is _couleur de rose_, and the Palace officials are getting ready for the Selamlik. Izzet Pasha divests himself of his black frock-coat with the help of a dark manservant, and dons a gorgeous gold brocaded and wadded uniform covered with Turkish and German decorations, doubling the size of his little, attenuated Syrian figure. There was something almost childlike about it all in its contrast to the grim realities of life. The diplomatic loggia was filling. Some of the foreign Ambassadors, eager _de faire acte de présence_, were rarely absent on such occasions and would bring some officers of their respective nationalities to see the show. These had generally just arrived at Constantinople, with a keen scent for favours which would be showered upon them after the ceremony in the shape of commanderships of the Medjediè or Osmaniè Order, for an inferior class of which a poor Turkish officer might wait a lifetime in vain. The great Officers of State, the Grand Master of Artillery, the fat Minister of War, the Minister of Marine, a little humpback, a notorious personage, and the rest of the pashas—military and civil—are all gathered together in the inner courtyard of the Palace in anticipation of the Sultan starting for the Selamlik ceremony. A military band is heard in the distance. It is playing the “Hamidiè March,” composed in honour of His Majesty, a somewhat thin and commonplace production. And here I may mention a fact which is not generally known, that military bands as such are quite a modern feature in Europe, and owe their origin to the Janissaries. “Janitscharenmusik” is still to this day the term used in Germany for an infernal din of tin kettles, pipes, and brass. To the Turk, then, is due all the noise which has become such a public nuisance in our time on the continent of Europe; a heavy responsibility before the tribunal of decency and decorum! We crane our necks, looking towards the left, when from the rising ground we see the military pageant coming along: first of all the Ortogrul Cavalry, followed by the Sultan’s Albanian Guard, trained to the mechanical Prussian goose-step, singularly out of character with the whole bearing and appearance of these untamed sons of the Albanian hills. Then the Sultan himself appears and drives past in an open carriage, with Ghazi Osman Pasha, the hero of Plevna, sitting opposite him.