sit, till the globular bottles with the tubes coiled
round them, are brought, the tobacco burning red
above on its little cup of charcoal. See, only a
dozen puffs, and the pure water from the fountain
yonder is polluted in the bottles to a lemonade
colour by the smoke it softens, and its bubble and
gurgle is soothing to listen to! Miles of that tubing,
red, green, blue, and crimson, are made annually
in Constantinople. See how nattily the men bind
the tubes with fine wire, to make them at once
flexible and endurable. A Roman alderman
once wished he had a throat three yards long.
The Turkish epicure of smoke has realised the
wish by making his pinch of tobacco go further
than any one else's. Now, having bought ten
yards of narghilé tube, with a fringed end, do
you want an amber mouthpiece for your
chibouk? Old Turks think they make the smoke
bitter and harsh, and therefore prefer the plain
cherry-wood pur et simple, sucking the smoke
through it, and not putting the pipe between
their lips at all; but tastes differ.

Here is the shop. Cases on the counter; within
them, rows of mouthpieces, looking like sucked
barley sugar, golden and transparent. The amber
is of all shades of yellow, from opaque lemon to
burnt saffron. Some of those more shiny ones are
only glass, the dearer ones have little fillets of
diamonds round their necks, and are worth a
purse full of piastres. Then there are dull green
ones for cheap pipes, and meerschaum cigaret
holders for the cursed Frank, who had better take
care he is not made a fool of, for greasy Turkish
bank-notes are all alike, except for the numeral,
which it requires practice to read; and then there
are old and new notes, and bad gold Medjids,
and Heaven knows what cheatings, in this
scorpions' nest of foreign rogues and schemers. Do
you want rosaries? Here are talismans made
of chips of red cornelian, and aloes wood for
incense. But here a ruder shop, not matted, nor
cushioned, arrests us. Plain beaten earth floor,
rude counter. It looks more like a deserted
blacksmith's shop than anything else. It belongs
to a maker of vermicelli. The owner, ghostly
white in face, is brushing a huge tin tray round
and round. The brush must be of wire, or be
grooved or toothed, for I see the caked material
under which the fire is, is drawn and cut into
tubed threads, and he draws it out as it dries, like
so much carded flax, dexterously indeed. I see that
he knows when it is done by its threads snapping
and springing up, crisp and loose, from the
tin shield. Good-natured people that the Turks
are! He smiles and nods to me, quite pleased
at the interest the wandering, spying out Giaour
takes in his performance.

Now, moving on, I get into a strata of edibles,
for here, at a window, lolls an immense hide full
of white cheese, looking like stale cream cheese,
become dry and powdery. It comes from Odessa,
I am told, or is made of buffalo's milk, and is
brought by camels from the interior of Anatolia,
for butter and milk are all but unknown in
Turkey. At the next stall are dried devil-fish,
looking horrible with their hundred leathery
arms but here, where sword-fish were once a
favourite dish, and the people are very poor,
what can one expect?

Who shall say the Turks are bigoted and
intolerant, when here, next door to a baker's, is a
shop with coarse Greek prints, representing
Botzaris, the Greek hero, putting to death heaps
of Turks, and here are tons of illustrations, in
which the Turk is always getting the worst of
it. There was a time when to even delineate a
human being was death in Turkey, but now——

It was hard times for the bakers twenty years
ago, when you could hardly be a week in
Constantinople without seeing one of the tribe
groaning with a nail through his ear, fastening
him to his own shop door. That was the
time when women were drowned in sacks in
broad daylight, and when the sight of a rebel
pasha's head, brought in in triumph, has taken
away the appetite of many an Englishman
breakfasting with a Turkish minister. But there he
(the baker) is now, floury, ghostly, and serious
as ever, groping in that black cave of an oven
at the back of his shop, or twisting rings of
bread with all the unction of a feeder of
mankind and a well-paid philanthropist.

The fez shops are very numerous in the Sick
Man's city, for turbans decrease, though slowly.
They are of a deep crimson, and have at the
top a little red stalk, to which the heavy blue
tassel is tied, and which always, to prevent
entanglement, is kept in stock with a sort of
ornament of paper cut into a lace pattern round
it. The blocks, too, for fezes to be kept on, are
sold in distinct shops. You see them round as
cheeses ranged in front of a Turk, who watches
them as if expecting them to grow.
Sometimes you could hardly help thinking they
were pork-pies, were it not for the barelegged
boy in the background, who, pushing the block
with the flexible sole of his foot, keeps it even
upon the lathe.

Stationers and booksellers hardly show at all
in Stamboul but in the bazaar, and there in a very
limited way, and in a way, too, that makes the
Englishman wish they were away altogether. The
tailor, too, does not figure largely, though you
see Turks busy in their shops sewing at quilted
gowns and coverlids stuffed with down; and you
seldom pass down a street without seeing a
man with a bow, such as the Saracen of Snowhill
could scarcely have drawn, bowing cotton,
with the twang and flutter peculiar to that
occupation, the slave behind half buried in flock,
or emerging from a swansdown sea of loose
white feathers.

The jewellers (frequently Jews) are chiefly
in the bazaars, both for safety and convenience.
There they sit, sorting great heaps of seed
pearl, like so much rice, squinting through
lumps of emerald, or weighing filigree earrings,
with veiled ladies looking on, and black duennas
in yellow boots in waiting; but still there
are also a few outsiders who sell coarse European
watches with unseemly French cases, and
large bossy silver cases for rose-water, or some
such frivolous use, shaped like huge melons,
and crusted with patterning, much watched