their frugal meal with the interest of a
brother a thousand times? Have they not, like
poor relations and friends, snapped at my legs
on a dozen occasions ? Have I not taken up my
stick at last and drubbed them till I was weary,
just to show them that I really loved them ?

I think that, striking an average, the more
retired and short streets of the great Turkish
city would furnish in the dog-days, let
us say about from seven to nine dogs to
the great unpaid dog army of Constantinople.
By a short Turkish street, I mean
one about the length of our filthy Fetter-lane,
and by retired, I mean a street somewhat
removed from the chief mosques and bazaars,
about as lively as St. John's-wood, and about
as peopled as the big new houses at
Kensington.

Now, you must not—you must not run away
with the notion that the pariah dogs, perhaps
of good lineage, are mean, ugly, or debased
in face or bearing, not they! They may not
be as bold and chivalrous as the shaggy
Newfoundland, as lithe and crescenty as that
shivering exile the Italian greyhound, as droll and
muffy as the Isle of Skye, as sturdy and
sagacious as the Spanish pointer, as vivacious and
hearty as the smooth terrier, or as dogged a dog
as the bull-dog, that most, costermongery and
bloodthirsty of "our four-footed favourites," as
Mr. Mother Hubbard, the popular lecturer,
would call it. They are not very thoroughbred,
though they do keep to themselves,
and are as strict as Mr. Borrow's gipsies about
losing caste and position by lowering marriages
or even civic alliances. They are not
ridiculously small-eared, or large-thighed, or large-
jawed; their hands and feet are not aristocratically
too small for any honest use, but they
are just such downright, brave, sharp-teethed,
strong-backed dogs as the Great Shaper first
made and Adam first named, in the fruitful
mother of all languages—Hebrew—the "dodger,"
i.e. "wise animal," from whence, as Mr. Trenchant
tells me, came the Venetian word "Doge,"
quasi "master spirit," i.e. "wise being," from
whence is deduced, or dragged, our own
degraded slang word, "dodger," or "knowing
one," still retained in the far East
Whitechapel.

I observed that, while the dogs in the quieter
and more lonely streets on the top of the
Seven Hills towards the ruined walls were
sullen, ascetic, fierce, shy, and cynical, the
dogs of the busier streets near the
Bosphorus and down by the Seraglio or the
bazaars, were slinking, mean, timid, and cowardly.
Philosophy soon discovers the reason. In the quiet
streets, these dogs prowl and scavenger, and do the
strolling, unpaid sanitary commissioner, and are
the terror of Turkish urchins, and the dread of
gossiping servants at garden doors; but, nearer
the busy haunts of men, these same dogs
become so kicked and drubbed and driven and
"chivied" (for you cannot beat that London
thief-epithet for persecution), that they get
quite broken-hearted, and, laying down abjectly
all pretensions to savage freedom, become
acknowledged and branded pariahs, rogues, and
vagabonds, servants of the public, doing
willingly the "meanest chares," yet as terribly
worried in return as any unpopular prime minister.
So that, while when alone in the higher
streets, it is possible that you may be followed
by a growing train of dogs, who in time will
gather courage and fall on you, leaving, for all
I know, nothing but your shirt-buttons, which
they will spit out like cherry-stones, according
to the precedent of the unhappy sausage-maker ;
so in the other streets, it is nothing all day but
one incessant charging out of protesting shop-
men from doorways, stick in hand, a shower of
blows and a scuttling away ending with a groaning
howl (dismal to hear), that lasts sometimes
a good five minutes.

I do not know what Professor Moler makes
of these dogs, whether they are of Roumelian or
Anatolian origin; whether they are dogs of the
Lower Empire, or truant dogs that, absconding
from Turkish houses (embezzling, say a leg of
mutton, or eloping with my lady's brooch), have
taken to a free, strolling, houseless life, which,
in that climate and in that nook-and-corner city,
is not so unbearable as an Englishman, looking
sourly through a crystallised November window,
would imagine.

But, first to describe our friend "Canis
erraticus," as Moler would call him. He is a fine-
made animal, nearly as large as a retriever,
but occasionally sinking to the smaller fox-hound
size; he is generally of a ruddy brown or rufous
colour, now deepening almost to black, now
lightening to the pale brown of a rather underdone
ginger biscuit. His tail is nothing
particular, but his head is well made and sagacious;
his eyes are bright, wary, and untamed; his teeth
generally large, white, and singularly strong and
sharp. As for the old legend of the necessity of
going armed with a perpetual stick, it is now at
least sheer nonsense. Except at night, when
the unlighted streets are dangerous, the dogs will
never touch you; stooping for a stone, except in
rare cases, would frighten away a dozen; and so
well is this known in Stamboul, that it is a common
saying among the turbaned true believers, that
no Turkish dog will stay in a mosque, because
they always mistake the stooping and bowing men,
for vindictive enemies, bending for stones to pelt
them with. The Greeks have the same legend,
which is more noteworthy there, where the
shepherds' dogs rush, like open-mouthed and
hungry lions, upon every traveller that passes
them, be he wise or simple.

I think it was in the second week or so of my
acquaintance with Constantinople, that I saw
the wild dog in his fiercest and most historic
aspect. Almost the first thing that a newly
arrived English traveller visits in
Constantinople, is Florence Nightingale's Hospital, over
in Scutari. It is still called "Florence Nightingale's
Hospital," and always will be called so,
in memory of that brave lady; though it
is now truly returned to its old uses, and
is again a barrack for dirty Turkish soldiers.