Rensselaer Republican, Volume 18, Number 31, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 8 April 1886 — In Constantinople. [ARTICLE]

In Constantinople.

Some one has said that to Constantinople is to see the entire East ? and, judging from the ditiferent cost lumes and peoples one "meets on the streets and in the bazaars, the saying is certainly not far amiss. From its geographical situation, as well as firbin its history, Constantinople naturally takes the front rank among the cosmopolitan cities of the world, and the crowds thronging its busy thoroughfares embrace every condition of .man between the kid-gloved, without a wrinkle in his clothes, and the representative of halfsavage Central Asian States, encased in , sheep-skin garments of rudest pattern. The great fast of Ramadan is under full headway, and all true Mussulmans neither cat nor drink a particle of anything throughout the day, until the booming of cannon at eight in the evening announces that the fast is ended, when the scene quickly changes into a general rush for eatables and drink. Between eight and nine o’clock in the evening, during Ramadan, certain streets and bazaars present their liveliest appearance, and from the highestclassed restaurant patronized by bey and pasha, to the venders of eatables on the streets, all do a rushing business; even the sujees (water venders), who, with leather water-bottles and a couple of tumblers, wait on thirsty pedestrians with pure drinking-water at five paras a glass, dodge about among the crowds, announcing themselves with lusty lung, fully alive to the opportunities of the moment. A few of the coffee houses provide music of an inferior quality, Constantinople not being a very musical place. A forenoon hour spent in a neighborhood of private residences will repay a stranger for his trouble, since he will during that time see a bewildering assortment of street-venders, from a peregrinating meat-market, with a complete stock dangling from a wooden frame-work attached to a horse’s back, to a grimy individual worrying along beneath a small mountain of charcoal, and each with cries more or less musical. The sidewalks of Constantinople'are ridiculously narrow, their only practical use being to keep vehicles from running: into the merchandise of the shop-keepers, and to give pedestrians . plenty of exercise in jostling each other, and hopping on and off, the curbstone to avoid inconveniencing the ladies, who of course are not to be jostled either off the sidewalk or into a sidewalk stock of miscellaneous merchandise. The Constantinople sidewalk is anybody’s territory; the merchant encumbers it with his wares, and the coffee-houses with chairs for customers to sit on, the rights of pedestrians being altogether ignored; the natural consequence is that these latter fill the streets, and the Constantinople Jehu not only has to keep his wits about him to avoid running over men and dogsbut has to use has lungs continually,’ shouting at them to clear the way. If a seat is taken in one of the coffee-hone** chairs, a watchful waiter instantly makes his appearance with a taining small chunks of a pasty sweetmeat, that the English call 1 “Turkish Delight,” one of which you are expected to take and pay half a piastre for, this being a-polite way of obtaining -paymeiiLfor the privilege_of -using the chair. The coffee is served steaming hot in tiny cups holding about two tablespoonsful, , the price varying from ten paras upxvards, according to the grade of the establishment. A favorite xvay of passing the evening is to sit-in front of one of these establishments, watching the passing throngs, and smoke a narghileh, this latter requiring a good half-hour to do it properly. I undertook to investigate the amount of enjoyment contained in a narghileh one evening, and before smoking it half through concluded that the taste has to be cultivated.—Outing. “