Chapter IV: Front Matter (4)

“Thar now! She ain’t got no common business on ’er mind ter-day! This ain’t no mortgage, gentlemen, ner no jumpin’ account case. This is _fight_. She’s done cross the line an’ got on the criminal side o’ th’ docket, Jedge. Let’s go an’ stan’ eroun’ an’ see what’s up!”

But if the idlers sought excitement, they failed to get it. Aunt Tildy, after half an hour spent in consultation with her lawyer, issued from his office and, with one withering glance at the group, climbed into her buggy. When she turned it about, it slid as before, only this time the sound that came back seemed a defiance. Tim surveyed the little drama with intense interest.

“See ’er cut the horse, Jedge--three times ’twixt crossings! Mad? Dad blast my skin, she’s jes natchully er hornet now! Hit’s squire’s work.”

The pictures arrived a week or two later. They set the town wild with laughter. Merchants, clerks, and customers came out on the sidewalks up and down the single business street and exchanged criticisms after an ancient fashion of town people. There was Aunt Tildy, sure enough, in the act of holding a box of snuff; and there was the old, familiar, coming, but long delayed, sneeze! The supply of pictures was exhausted in thirty minutes. At ten o’clock they brought fifty cents each; at eleven, a dollar; and at noon Tim Broggins sold his copy to the town bank for one dollar and a half. The cashier was Aunt Tildy’s agent.

The laughter, which began down-town, spread over the dinner-hour up-town and rippled over the county for a week. No more striking advertisement had ever been put forth in that region. No other snuff could touch the trade. “The Coming Sneeze” brand had won and held the market.

Then one day Lawyer Thomas took the train for Macon and filed suit for $10,000, as damages direct and punitive, against the snuff company for infringement of copyright. For, on the day Aunt Tildy had come to town so angry, she had bought the negative of Belton and applied through him for a copyright on her own face as portrayed in that photograph. “The Coming Sneeze” was her own personal property.

After this fact became known, the idlers took their hats off and cheered Aunt Tildy whenever she passed. Her sole recognition of their friendliness was an abortive smile that flickered for an instant against the background of the coming sneeze.

Tim became oracular.

“Tell you what, boys!--Jedge--that’s er new p’int in law, on me! Don’t er man or er woman own his own face? Fer an instance, has er man got ter put his face on er record like er guano contrac’ or mule mortgidge befo’ he can pertec’ hisself? Dad blast my skin, _nobody_ ain’t safe! I’m er goin’ right up-town an’ git my pictur’ struck off an’ patented now! Some o’ these smarties like Jack Cromby’ll be comin’ erlong here bime-by an’ er gittin’ me onter er Christmas cyard, an’ you on er valentine!” Tim laughed silently. “Po’ Jack!” he said. “Always did lack jedg_ment_ an’ allus will, I reck’n!”

Jack Cromby’s experience with the managers of his snuff company is not a matter of public record. He may have suffered criticism or he may have convinced them that their product was getting, throughout the rural districts for which it was manufactured, an advertisement worth all it might cost. If the airing of Aunt Tildy’s complaint was not confined to a city office and its spectacular values lost in the multiplicity of graver legal causes, the snuff company would not suffer much, if any. A local hearing would give him a chance to fill a column of the town’s weekly paper with a carefully prepared report of the trial, which report would be quoted in full in all the rural weeklies of the State. The advertisement department of his company would see to that.

The transference of Aunt Tildy’s case to her home county was easily effected. Lawyer Thomas was after a verdict in her favor, and perhaps was not unmindful of the advertising feature as concerned himself, and greatly preferred the home atmosphere.

The reappearance of Jack on the scene, therefore, betrayed no evidence of chagrin. On the contrary, his step was a little more elastic, his head held a bit higher, his movements were quicker, and his salutes and greetings full of cheer. Resiliency was written all over him; the sunrise was on his face.

“Now ding blast his imperdunce!” said Broggins one day when Jack, passing on the opposite side of the street, had waved a hand to them joyously and shouted a greeting: “Hello, Tim! Hello, Judge! Major, how are you? See you boys later!”--“ding blast his imperdunce! What’s he got up his sleeve now? Jack! Oh, Jack!” he called lazily.

“What’s the matter, Tim?”

“Got you going some--ain’t they?”

“Not--on--your--life, Tim! Watch _me_!”

Aunt Tildy’s case, by consent, came up in her own town before a special master appointed by the court.

Long before the hour set for the hearing arrived, people began to appear on the scene. Every wagon-yard, every vacant lot was crowded with vehicles; every horse-rack and hitching-post was in use. There had been great days in town before; Robinson’s old one-ring circus had occasionally depopulated the rural district in its favor, and at another time the political contest between Democrats and Populists and Tom Watson’s impassioned speeches had made it the storm-center of excitement. But no such crowd ever had assembled within the incorporated limits as that which gathered to see Aunt Tildy through in her brave assault on the enemy. The special master had elected to hear the issue in a private office, but indignant public opinion drove him into the court-house and to the bench, where he was soon surrounded by an eager crowd so dense that breathing became difficult despite the fact that all the court-room windows were open.

Drawn by F. R. Gruger Half-tone plate engraved by R. C. Collins

“‘WELL, NOW, I BET SQUIRE STOP’ AN’ TOLE AUNT TILDY ALL ERBOUT HIT!’”]

Not half the visitors secured entrance. The majority gathered around the building in the public square, men, women, and children, and took, second-hand, from those who struggled exhausted out of the doors, such reports of the proceedings as were not borne to their ears direct on the vibrant air. Buggies, wagons, carryalls, and the grass afforded seats, and the good-natured crowd settled down to enjoy the day.

Within the building the master and the lawyers soon arranged preliminaries and the case was opened, Aunt Tildy sitting serenely scornful beside her lawyer and facing the curious spectators with perfect indifference. It was a long trial, stubbornly contested at every point. The defense protested against “imperfect service” and “surprise.” Both sides amended and contested each other’s amendments. Both sides “demurred” and fought each other’s demurrers. Both sides offered documentary evidence, and both sides moved to “strike out.” And there were arguments at every crisis. So the day wore along, and the people outside proceeded to dine from their baskets. They were having the best of it by far.

Finally a buzz of excitement came from within. Persons visible through the windows were observed to straighten up and face one way. The crowd on the outside were now having the worst of it.

About this time Tim Broggins, who had heretofore been in evidence chiefly around the grocery down the street, where he had all day elaborately explained between “treats” the features of Aunt Tildy’s remarkable case, as well as the Federal law governing copyrights, appeared on the scene bearing a long scaling-ladder. Tim’s approach to the building with his burden was one of the features of the case not soon forgotten. The unsteadiness of his gait, the weight and length of the ladder, and his attempts to face every one who asked him questions--there were dozens of them--produced a set of gymnastics on his part that cleared the whole north side of the square. People fled from him as from a plague, the women with babies leaving first.

Reaching the court-house, Tim made heroic efforts to place the ladder upright against the wall--a performance that convulsed his audience, then at a safe distance. The final result was, Tim went over on his back with the ladder on top of him, escaping miraculously without broken bones. Friendly hands stood up both Tim and the ladder, and presently he climbed unsteadily to the second-story window, where, after a brief survey of the court-room scene and swaying dangerously, he began to laugh.

“Jedge,” he called eagerly to Oglesby below, “come up! Come up!” The judge was about as happy as Tim, but more discreet. He shook his head and shifted his quid.

“Tell us erbout it, Tim!”

“Ol’ lady on th’ stan’, Jedge, hammerin’ away with her umberella!--Go it, Aunt Tildy!” he shouted. The master’s gavel was heard, and those within the room near the window turned and shook their heads at Tim.

“What’s she sayin’, Tim?”

“She’s jes p’intedly er-skinnin’ of Jack Cromby! ‘Oudacionest’ is the shortes’ word I’ve ketched. Go it, Aunt Tildy, I’m er bettin’ on yer! Whoopee-ee--!”

“Silence in court!” The master’s angry voice could be heard by the outsiders; and again the people at the window, gesticulating, turned on Tim, whose expostulations descended.

“Thass all right, gentle_men_,--all right! I ain’t in the court ner on th’ earth ner in th’ heavens, ner in the waters unner th’--earth!” Tim made a dangerous lurch as he concluded, but swayed back into the perpendicular, while the crowd below held their breath. Then he straightened up and craned his neck over his neighbors’ heads, his sides shaking while he hammered on the ladder with his fist. The people below him were burning with curiosity and the judge grew impatient.

“How goes it, Tim?”

“Fine, Jedge! Come up!--Come up! Room at the top! Allus room at the top!”

“More room down here! What’s she sayin’ now?”

“Oh, gee! Oh, gee!--” Tim laid his head against the wall and joined loudly in the subdued laugh which rippled through the window. “This here is er circus right, Jedge! She says anybody says she ever took er pinch o’ snuff er wet er snuff-stick in her born days is er lower down houn’ th’n Jack Cromby, an’ Jack is th’ lowes’ she met in thirty years’ tradin’ with Niggers an’ po’ white trash! Jedge,--oh, Jedge!--” Tim held on with both hands for safety and let his laughter come. He finally ended it with a wild “Whoop-ee-ee!” which was followed by furious strokes of the master’s gavel and the usual pantomime in the window. These did not trouble Tim. “Jedge, you had oughter see Jack’s face _now_! _Gem_iny _crim_iny! He better keep outer the way of the ‘befo’ takin’’ man or git er patent on it quick! Hello, Jack!” He had thrust his head in the window. Somebody shook him and pushed it out. “All right, _all-l-l_ right, gentlemen. Wouldn’t ’sturb nobody fer nothin’!”

Then the vibrant voice of Lawyer Thomas rang out clear and loud, and the attentive people in the square below needed no interpreter. His arraignment of the foreign firm which had slandered and humiliated one of the noble women of the county, his scathing denunciation of Jack Cromby, were things to talk about for years. Despite the gavel, applause followed his every rounded period, and to this applause Tim contributed each time a wild whoop that fairly split the air. When Lawyer Thomas closed with a flight of eloquence that caused the older people to mention Toombs and Linton Stevens, the applause from within was answered by cheers from without. At this climax Tim Broggins’s feet slipped, the outer cheers subsided suddenly into something like a gasp of horror, and Oglesby beat a hasty retreat. Fortunately, however, Tim lodged among the upper rounds of the ladder from which he disengaged himself only after five minutes of hard work. During his struggles to get back on the upper side of his ladder he was good-naturedly assisted by advice from the sympathetic crowd who knew a “Roman holiday” sacrifice by sight if not in terms.

But all good things as well as bad must have an end. There came a few moments of silence with evidence of close attention above.

“What’s up now, Tim?” The judge drew nearer the ladder to avoid shouting.

“Hush! The boss is talkin’!” The silence was short; presently the people in the court-room began to move excitedly and to clap hands, and once more Tim, who had regained his lost ground, uttered his “Whoopee-ee!”

“One thousan’, Jedge, one thousan’! That’s what she gits! Oh, gee!--oh, gee!” he cried, cupping one hand toward Oglesby, who had ventured back into the danger zone below.

Then a queer sound issued from within, a single sound, a shrill, high-pitched, prolonged note, so totally divorced from the masculine hubbub there that it attracted the attention of everybody. And this time the people within the court-room cheered wildly, joyously, and hilariously, shaking one another by the shoulders and slapping backs. But almost instantly there began to mingle with the cheers certain vocal explosions up and down the whole chromatic scale which, swelling in volume, finally swallowed up all other sounds, and frantic hands were seen through the windows clutching at elusive coat-tail pockets. Tim was holding to the window-sill desperately and swaying violently as he gasped for breath to answer the excited questions hurled up to him. He found it at last.

“Aunt Tildy has snee--snee--_sneezed_! And scattered er box over ev’ybody! The comin’ sneeze has done come! An’--an’--by gosh!--hit’s--got me--too,--Currasha-h-h-o! Kitty!” The ladder went out from under him, and he hung, sneezing, to the window-sill, while below the women shrieked.

However, no tragedy marred the day. Judge Oglesby galloped out from under the falling ladder, and responsive to the frantic appeals of women, and greatly to the relief of all, the men at the window reeled Tim in by his hair and coat-collar and trousers’ seat, despite his struggles.

“Hurrah for Tim Broggins!” yelled the delighted Oglesby from a safe distance, waving his hat. A ringing shout went up.

“Currasha-h-h-o!” faintly replied the invisible Tim.

SKIRTING THE BALKAN PENINSULA

FROM TRIEST TO CONSTANTINOPLE

FIFTH PAPER: IN CONSTANTINOPLE

BY ROBERT HICHENS

Author of “The Spell of Egypt,” “The Holy Land,” “The Garden of Allah,” etc.

WITH PICTURES BY JULES GUÉRIN (SEE FRONTISPIECE) AND PHOTOGRAPHS

Constantinople is beautiful and hateful. It fascinates and it repels. And it bewilders--how it bewilders! No other city that I have seen has so confused and distressed me. For days I could not release myself from the obsession of its angry tumult. Much of it seems to be in a perpetual rage, pushing, struggling, fighting, full of ugly determination to do--what? One does not know, one cannot even surmise what it desires, what is its aim, if, indeed, it has any aim. These masses of dark-eyed, suspicious, glittering people thronging its streets, rushing down its alleys, darting out of its houses, calling from its windows, muttering in its dark and noisome corners, gathering in compact, astonishing crowds in its great squares before its mosques, blackening even its waters, amid fierce noises of sirens from its innumerable steamers and yells from its violent boatmen, what is it that they want? Whither are they going in this brutal haste, these Greeks, Corsicans, Corfiotes, Montenegrins, Armenians, Jews, Albanians, Syrians, Egyptians, Arabs, Turks? They have no time or desire to be courteous, to heed any one but themselves. They push you from the pavement. They elbow you in the road. Upon the two bridges they crush past you, careless if they tread upon you or force you into the mud. If you are in a caique, traveling over the waters of the Golden Horn, they run into you. Caique bangs into caique. The boatmen howl at one another, and somehow pull their craft free. If you are in a carriage, the horses slither round the sharp corners, and you come abruptly face to face with another carriage, dashing on as yours is dashing, carelessly, scornfully, reckless apparently of traffic and of human lives. There seems to be no plan in the tumult, no conception of anything wanted quietly, toward which any one is moving with a definite, simple purpose. The noise is beyond all description. London, even New York, seems to me almost peaceful in comparison with Constantinople. There is no sound of dogs. They are all dead. But even their sickly howling, of which one has heard much, must surely have been overpowered by the uproar one hears to-day, except perhaps in the dead of night.

Soldiers seem to be everywhere. To live in Constantinople is like living in some vast camp. When I was there, Turkey was preparing feverishly for war. The streets were blocked with trains of artillery. The steamers in the harbor were vomiting forth regiments of infantry. Patrols of horsemen paraded the city. On my first night in Pera, when, weary with my efforts to obtain some general conception of what the spectacular monster really was, what it wanted, what it meant, what it was about to do, I had at length fallen asleep toward dawn, I was wakened by a prolonged, clattering roar beneath my windows. I got up, opened the shutters, and looked out. And below me, in the semi-darkness, I saw interminable lines of soldiers passing: officers on horseback, men tramping with knapsacks on their backs and rifles over their shoulders; then artillery, gun-carriages, with soldiers sitting loosely on them holding one another’s hands; guns, horses, more horses, with officers riding them; then trains of loaded mules. On and on they went, and always more were coming behind. I watched them till I was tired, descending to the darkness of Galata, to the blackness of old Stamboul.

Gradually, as the days passed by, I began to understand something of the city, to realize never what it wanted or what it really meant, but something of what it was. It seemed to me then like a person with two natures uneasily housed in one perturbed body. These two natures were startlingly different. One was to me hateful--Pera, with Galata touching it. The other was not to be understood by me, but it held me with an indifferent grasp, and from it there flowed a strange and almost rustic melancholy that I cared for--Stamboul. And between these two natures a gulf was fixed--the gulf of the Golden Horn.

THE WATER-FRONT OF STAMBOUL, WITH PERA IN THE DISTANCE]

Pera is a mongrel city, set on a height and streaming blatantly to Galata; a city of discolored houses not unlike the houses of Naples; of embassies and churches; of glaring shops and cafés glittering with plate-glass, through which crafty, impudent eyes are forever staring; of noisy, unattractive hotels and wizen gardens, where bands play at stated hours, and pretentious, painted women from second-rate European music-halls posture and squall under the electric lamps. There is no rest, no peace in Pera. There seems to be no discipline. Motor-cars make noises there even in the dead of night, and when standing still, such as I never before heard or imagined. They have a special breed of cars in Pera. Bicyclists are allowed to use motor sirens to clear the way before them. One Sunday when, owing to a merciful strike of the coachmen, there was comparative calm, I saw a boy on horseback going at full gallop over the pavement of the Grande Rue. He passed and repassed me five times, lashing his horse till it was all in a lather. Nobody stopped him. You may do anything, it seems, in Pera, if it is noisy, brutal, objectionable. Pera has all that is odious of the Levant: impudence, ostentation, slyness, indelicacy, uproar, a glittering commonness. It is like a blazing ring of imitation diamonds squeezing a fat and dirty finger. But it is wonderfully interesting simply because of the variety of human types one sees there. The strange thing is that this multitude of types from all over the East and from all the nations of Europe is reduced, as it were, by Pera to a common, a very common, denominator. The influence of place seems fatal there.

A STREET OF HAREM HOMES IN CONSTANTINOPLE]

Stamboul is a city of wood and of marble, of dusty, frail houses that look as if they had been run up in a night and might tumble to pieces at any moment, and of magnificent mosques, centuries old, solid, huge, superb, great monuments of the sultans. The fire-tower of Galata looks toward the fire-tower of Stamboul across a forest of masts; but no watchfulness, no swiftness of action, can prevent flames from continually sweeping through Stamboul, leaving waste places behind them, but dying at the feet of the mosques. As one looks at Stamboul from the heights of Pera, it rises on its hills across the water, beyond the sea of the Golden Horn, like a wonderful garden city, warm, almost ruddy, full of autumnal beauty, with its red-brown roofs and its trees. And out of its rich-toned rusticity the mosques heave themselves up like leviathans that have nothing in common with it; the Mosque of Santa Sophia, of the Sultan Achmet, with its six exquisite minarets, of Mohammed the Conqueror, of Suleiman the Magnificent, and how many others!

GALATA BRIDGE, WHICH CONNECTS GALATA AND PERA]

There is no harmony between the mosques of Stamboul and the houses of Stamboul. The former are enduring and grand; the latter, almost like houses of cards. And yet Stamboul is harmonious, is very beautiful. Romance seems brooding over it, trailing lights and shadows to clothe it with flame and with darkness. It holds you, it entices you. It sheds upon you a sense of mystery. What it has seen, Stamboul! What it has known! What a core of red violence that heart has and always has had! When the sunset dies away among the autumnal houses and between the minarets that rise above the city like prayers; when the many cypresses that echo the minarets in notes of dark green become black, and the thousands of houses seem to be subtly run together into a huge streak of umber above the lights at the waterside; when Seraglio Point stretches like a shadowy spear toward the Bosporus and the Black Sea, and the coasts of Asia fade away in the night, old Stamboul murmurs to you with a voice that seems to hold all secrets, to call you away from the world of Pera to the world of Aladdin’s lamp. Pera glitters in the night and cries out to heaven. Old Stamboul wraps itself in a black veil and withdraws where you may not follow.

FROM THE PAINTING MADE FOR THE CENTURY BY JULES GUÉRIN]

When I think of Constantinople as a whole, as seen, say, from the top of the Galata tower, set up by the Genoese, I think of it as the most wonderful, the most beautiful, and the most superbly situated city I ever have seen.

It is an Eastern city of the sea, pierced by water at its heart, giving itself to the winds from Marmora, from the Golden Horn, from the Bosporus, from the Black Sea. The snows of Asia look upon it across the blue waters of Marmora, where the Iles des Princes sleep in a flickering haze of gold. Stamboul climbs, like Rome, to the summits of seven hills, and gazes over the great harbor, crowded with a forest of masts, echoing with sounds of the sea, to Galata, and to Pera on the height. And the Golden Horn narrows to the sweet waters of Europe, but broadens toward Seraglio Point into the Bosporus, that glorious highway of water between Europe and Asia, lined with the palaces and the villas of sultans and pashas, of Eastern potentates and of the European Powers: Yildiz, and Dolma bagtché, Beylerbey, and Cheragan, the great palace of the Khedive of Egypt’s mother, with its quay upon the water, facing the villa of her son, which stands on the Asian shore, lifted high amid its woods, the palace of the “sweet waters of Asia,” the gigantic red-roofed palace where Ismail died in exile. Farther on toward Therapia, where stand the summer embassies of the Powers, Robert College, dignified, looking from afar almost like a great gray castle, rises on its height above its sloping gardens. Gaze from any summit upon Constantinople, and you are amazed by the wonder of it, by the wonder of its setting. There is a vastness, a glory of men, of ships, of seas, of mountains, in this grand view which sets it apart from all other views of the world. Two seas send it their message. Two continents give of their beauty to make it beautiful. Two religions have striven to sanctify it with glorious buildings. In the midst of its hidden squalor and crime rises what many consider the most beautiful church--now a mosque--in the world. Perhaps no harbor in Europe can compare with its harbor. For human and historical interest it can scarcely be equaled. In the shadow of its marvelous walls, guarded by innumerable towers and girdled by forests of cypresses, it lies like some great magician, glittering, mysterious, crafty, praying, singing, intriguing, assassinating, looking to East and West, watchful, and full of fanaticism.

I crossed the new bridge. The famous old timber bridge, which rocks under your feet, has been moved up the Golden Horn, and now spans the sea by the marine barracks. Evening was falling; a wind had brought clouds from the Black Sea. The waters were colorless, and were licked into fretful wavelets, on which the delicate-pointed caiques swayed like leaves on a tide. Opposite to me, at the edge of Stamboul, the huge Mosque of Yeni-Validé-Jamissi rose, with its crowd of cupolas large and small and its prodigious minarets. Although built by two women, it looked stern and male, seemed to be guarding the bridge, to be proclaiming to all the mongrels from Galata and Pera, who hurried from shore to shore, that Stamboul will make no compromise with the infidel, that in the great space before this mosque the true East in Europe begins.

Russia was in the wind, I thought. The breath of the steppes was wandering afar to seek--what? The breath of the desert? The great mosque confronted it, Islam erect, and now dark, forbidding under the darkening sky. Even the minarets had lost their delicate purity, had become fierce, prayers calling down destruction on unbelievers. And all the cries of Stamboul seemed to gather themselves together in my ears, keening over the sea above which I stood--voices of many nations; of Turks, Arabs, Circassians, Persians, of men from the wilds of Asia and the plains of India; voices of bashi-bazouks and of slaves; even, thin high voices of eunuchs. From the quays to right and left of the bridge crowds of people rose to my sight and hurried away; to them crowds of people descended, sinking out of my sight. Soldiers and hamals passed, upright and armed, bending beneath the weight of incredible loads. Calls of Albanian boatmen came up from the sea. From the city of closely packed fishermen’s vessels rose here and there little trails of smoke. On their decks dim figures crouched about wavering fires. A gnarled beggar pushed me, muttering, then whining uncouth words. Along the curving shore, toward the cypress-crowned height of Eyub, lights were strung out, marking the waterside. Behind me tall Pera began to glitter meretriciously. The Greek barbers, I knew, were standing impudently before the doors of their little saloons, watching the evening pageant as it surged slowly through the Grande Rue and toward the Taxim Garden. Diplomats were driving home from the Sublime Porte in victorias. The “cinemas” were gathering in their mobs. Tokatlian’s was thronged with Levantines whispering from mouth to mouth the current lies of the day. Below, near the ships, the business men of Galata were rushing out of their banks, past the large round-browed Montenegrins who stand on the steps, out of their offices and shops, like a mighty swarm of disturbed bees. The long shriek of a siren from a steamer near Seraglio Point tore the gloom. I went on, despite menacing Validé Sultan, I lost myself in the wonderful maze of Stamboul.

Stamboul near the waterside is full of contrasts so sharp, so strange that they bewilder and charm, and sometimes render uneasy even one who has wandered alone through many towns of the East. Sordid and filthy, there is yet something grandiose in it, something hostile and threatening in the watchful crowds that are forever passing by. Between the houses the sea-wind blows up, and you catch glimpses of water, of masts, of the funnels of steamers. Above the cries of the nations rise the long-drawn wails and the hootings of sirens. The traffic of the streets is made more confusing by your constant consciousness of the traffic of the sea, embraced by it, almost mingling with it. Water and wind, mud and dust, cries of coachmen and seamen, of motor-cars and steamers, and soldiers, soldiers, soldiers passing, always passing. Through a window-pane you catch a glitter of jewels and a glitter of Armenian eyes gazing stealthily out. You pass by some marble tombs sheltered by weary trees, under the giant shadow of a mosque, and a few steps farther on you look through an arched doorway and see on the marble floor of a dimly lighted hall half-naked men, with tufts of black hair drooping from partly shaved heads and striped towels girt round their loins, going softly to and fro, or bending about a fountain from which water gushes with a silvery noise. This is a Turkish bath. Throughout Stamboul there are bath-houses with little cupolas on their roofs, and throughout Stamboul there are tombs; but the uneasy and watchful crowds throng the quarters near the waterside and the great bazaars and the spaces before the principal mosques. They are not spread throughout the city. Many parts of Stamboul are as the waste places of the earth, abandoned by men.

By night they are silent and black; by day they look like the ways of a great wooden village from which the inhabitants have fled. In their open spaces, patches of waste ground, perhaps a few goats are trying to browse among rubbish and stones, a few little children are loitering, two or three silent men may be sitting under a vine by a shed, which is a Turkish café. There is no sound of steps or of voices. One has no feeling of being in a great city, of being in a city at all. Little there is of romance, little of that mysterious and exquisite melancholy which imaginative writers have described. Dullness and shabbiness brood over everything. Yet an enormous population lives in the apparently empty houses. Women are watching from the windows behind the grilles. Life is fermenting in the midst of the dust, the discomfort, the almost ghastly silence.

The great bazaar of Stamboul is a city within a city. As you stand before its entrance you think of a fortress full of immured treasures. And there are treasures of price under the heavy arches, in the long roofed-over lanes. The bazaars of Tunis seem minute, of Damascus ephemeral, of Cairo dressed up, of Jerusalem crushed together and stifling, when compared with the vast bazaars of Stamboul, which have a solidity, a massiveness, unshared by their rivals. I saw there many cheap goods such as I have seen on certain booths in the East End of London, but they were surrounded with a certain pomp and dignity, with a curious atmosphere of age. Some parts of the bazaars are narrow. Others are broad and huge, with great cupolas above them, and, far up, wooden galleries running round them. Now and then you come upon an old fountain of stained marble and dim faience about which men are squatting on their haunches to wash their faces and hands and their carefully bared arms. The lanes are paved and are often slippery. Just under the lofty roof there are windows of white glass, and about them, and on arches and walls, there are crude decorations in strong blues and purples, yellows and greens. The serious merchants from many lands do not beset you with importunities as you pass; but sometimes a lustrous pair of eyes invites you to pause, or a dark and long-fingered hand gently beckons you toward a jewel, a prayer-carpet, a weapon, or something strange in silver or gold or ivory.

One day a man from Bagdad invited me to buy a picture as I drew near to him. It was the portrait of a dervish’s cap worked in silk. The cap, orange-colored and silver, was perched upon a small table (in the picture) above which hung curtains in two shades of green. A heavy gilt frame surrounded this “old master” of the East. We bargained. The merchant’s languages were broken, but at length I understood him to say that the cap was a perfect likeness. I retorted that all the dervishes’ caps I had seen upon living heads were the color of earth. The merchant, I believe, pitied my ignorance. His eyes, hands, arms, and even his shoulders were eloquent of compassion. He lowered the price of the picture by about half a farthing in Turkish money, but I resisted the blandishment and escaped into the jewel bazaar, half regretting a lost opportunity.

PUBLIC LETTER-WRITERS IN A CONSTANTINOPLE STREET]

Many Turkish women come to the bazaars only to meet their lovers. They cover a secret desire by a pretense of making purchases. From the upper floor of the yellow-blue-and-red kiosk, in which Turkish sweets are sold, and you can eat the breasts of chickens cooked deliciously in cream and served with milk and starch, I have watched these subtle truants passing in their pretty disguises suggestive of a masked ball. They look delicate and graceful in their thin and shining robes, like dominoes, of black or sometimes of prune-color, with crape dropping over their faces and letting you see not enough; for many Turkish women are pretty.

One day I was in the upper room of a photographer’s shop when two Turkish women came in and removed their veils, standing with their backs to the English infidel. One was obviously much younger than the other, and seemed to have a beautiful figure. I was gazing at it, perhaps rather steadily, when, evidently aware of my glance, she turned slowly and deliberately round. For two or three minutes she faced me, looking to right and left of me, above me, even on the floor near my feet, with her large and beautiful blue-gray eyes. She was lovely. Young, perhaps eighteen, she was slightly painted, and her eyebrows and long curling lashes were blackened. Her features were perfect, her complexion was smooth and brilliant, and her expression was really adorable. It seemed to say to me quietly:

“Yes, you are right. It is foolish ever to conceal such a face as this with a veil when really there is not too much beauty in the world. Mais que voulez-vous? Les Turcs!” And the little hanum surely moved her thin shoulders contemptuously. But her elderly companion pulled at her robe, and slowly she moved away. As the two women left the room, the photographer, a Greek, looked after them, smiling. Then he turned to me, spread out his thin hands, and said, with a shrug, “Encore des désenchantées!”

I thought of the disenchanted one day as I sat among the letter-writers in the large and roughly paved court of the “Pigeon’s Mosque,” or Mosque of Bajazet II. For hours I had been wandering on foot through the upper quarters of old Stamboul, and I could not release my mind from the dull pressure of its influence. All those wooden houses, silent, apparently abandoned, shuttered--streets and streets of them, myriads of them! Now and then above the carved wood of a lattice I had seen a striped curtain, cheap, dusty, hanging, I guessed, above a cheap and dusty divan. The doors of the houses were large and solid, like prison doors. Before one, as I slowly passed by, I had seen an old Turk in a long quilted coat of green, with a huge key in his hand, about to enter. He glanced to right and left, then thrust the key into the door. I had felt inclined to stop and say to him:

“That house has been abandoned for years. Every one has migrated long ago from this quarter of Stamboul. If you stay here, you will be quite alone.” But the old Turk knew very well that all the houses were full of people, of imprisoned women. What a fate to be one of the prisoners!

That was my thought as I looked at the sacred pigeons, circling in happy freedom over the garden where Bajazet slumbers under his catafalque, fluttering round the cupolas of their mosque, and beneath the gray-pink-and-white arcade, with its dull-green and plum-colored columns, or crowding together upon the thin branches of their plane-tree. A pure wind blew through the court and about the marble fountain. The music made by the iridescent wings of the birds never ceased, and their perpetual cooing was like the sweet voice of content. The sunshine streamed over the pavement and penetrated under the arches, making the coral beads of a rosary glow and its gold beads glitter, giving to the amber liquid carried on a tray by a boy to a barber beneath his awning a vivacity almost of flame. Beside me a lover was dictating a letter to a scribe, who squatted before his table, on which were arranged a bright-blue inkstand and cup, a pile of white paper, and a stand with red pens and blue pencils. Farther on, men were being shaved, and were drinking coffee as they lounged upon bright-yellow sofas. Near me a very old Turk, with fanatical, half-shut eyes, was sitting on the ground and gazing at the pink feet of the pigeons as they tripped over the pavement, upon which a pilgrim to the mosque had just flung some grain. As he gazed, he mechanically fingered his rosary, swiftly shifting the beads on and on, beads after beads, always two at a time. Some incense smoldered in a three-legged brazier, giving out its peculiar and drowsy smell. On the other side of the court a fruit-seller slept by a pile of yellow melons. The grain thrown by the pilgrim was all eaten now, and for a moment the sunshine was dimmed by the cloud of rising and dispersing birds, gray and green, with soft gleams like jewels entangled in their plumage. Some flew far to the tall white-and-gray minaret of their mosque, others settled on the cupola above the fountain. A few, venturous truants, disappeared in the direction of the seraskierat wall, not far off. The greater number returned to their plane-tree on the right of the lover and the scribe. And as the lover suggested, and the scribe wrote from right to left, the pigeons puffed out their breasts and cooed, calling other pilgrims to remember that even the sacred have their carnal appetites, and to honor the poor widow’s memory before going up to the mosque to pray.

PAINTED FOR THE CENTURY BY JULES GUÉRIN]

One day I went up the hill toward Yildiz to see the Selamlik. That morning the sultan was going to pray in the mosque of wood which Abdul Hamid built close to the mysterious, walled-in quarter of palaces, harems, kiosks, gardens, barracks, and parks which he made his prison. From the Bosporus you can see it extending from the hilltop almost to the sea, a great property, outside the city, yet dominating it, with dense groves of trees in which wild animals were kept, with open spaces, with solitary buildings and lines of roofs, and the cupola of the mosque of the soldiers. All about it are the high walls which a coward raised up to protect him and his fear. The mosque is below the great entrance-gates on a steep hillside beyond the walls. A large modern house, white, with green shutters, in which Abdul Hamid used to grant audiences and, I believe, to give banquets, looks down on it. From the upper windows of this dwelling the Turks say the ex-sultan often stared at his city through powerful glasses.

The mosque is not large. It is yellow and white, with a minaret of plaster on the side next the sea, and a graveled courtyard surrounded by green iron railings and planted with a few trees. On the side next to Yildiz is a steep bank. A road runs up the hill to the left of the mosque as you face Yildiz, and another hidden road descends from the gates and gives access to the courtyard behind the mosque. The sultan has therefore a choice of two routes, and nobody seems to know beforehand which way he will come. There were very few tourists in Constantinople when I was there. People were afraid of war, and before I left the Orient express had ceased to run. But I found awaiting the padishah many Indian pilgrims, a large troop of pilgrims from Trebizond who were on their way to Mecca, several Persians wearing black toques, and a good many Turks. These were in the courtyard close to the mosque, where I was allowed to stand by the aristocratic young chief of police, who wore a woolly, gray, fez-shaped cap. Outside the railings stood a dense crowd of veiled women.

Soon after I arrived a squadron of the body-guard rode up from the city, carrying red-and-green pennons on long staffs, and halted before the gates of the palace. And almost at the same moment the palace musicians, in dark-blue, red, and gold, wearing short swords, and carrying shining brass instruments, marched into the inclosure. They stood still, then dropped their instruments on the ground, moved away, and sat down on the bank, lolling in easy attitudes. Time slipped by, and important people strolled in, officers, court officials, attendants. Eunuchs shambled loosely past in wonderfully fitting, long frock-coats, wearing turquoise rings on their large weak hands, and looking half-piteously impudent. Men hurried into the mosque carrying brown Gladstone bags. Nazim Pasha, weary and grave, the weight of war already on his shoulders, talked with the master of the ceremonies beside steps before which lay a bright-yellow carpet.

This is the sultan’s entrance to the mosque. It is not imposing. The two flights of steps curve on right and left to a trivial glass porch which reminded me of that bulbous addition to certain pretentious houses which is dignified by the name “winter garden.” Some smart, very strong Turkish sailors lined up opposite me. Not far from the porch stood a group of military doctors in somber uniforms. A second yellow carpet was unrolled to cover the flight of steps on the left of the porch, more eunuchs went by, more Gladstone bags were carried past me. Then came soldiers in yellowish brown, and palace officials in white and blue, with red collars. Two riding-horses were led by two grooms toward the back of the mosque. The musicians rose languidly from the bank, took up their instruments, turned round, and faced toward Yildiz. Through the crowd, like a wind, went that curious stir which always precedes an important event for which many people are waiting. Nazim Pasha spoke to the chief of police, slowly moving his white-gloved hands, and then from the hilltop came a rhythmical, booming noise of men’s voices, very deep, very male: the soldiers before the gates were acclaiming their sovereign. I saw a fluttering movement of pennons; the sultan had emerged from the palace and was descending by the hidden road to perform his devotions.

In perhaps five minutes an outrider appeared from behind the mosque, advancing slowly parallel with the bank, followed by a magnificent victoria, covered with gold and lined, I think, with satin, drawn by two enormous brown horses the harness of which was plated with gold. They were driven from the box by a gorgeous coachman, who was standing. The musicians, turning once more, struck up the “Sultan’s Hymn,” the soldiers presented arms; the brown horses wheeled slowly round, and I saw within a few paces of me, sitting alone in the victoria in a curious, spread-out attitude, a bulky and weary old man in a blue uniform, wearing white kid gloves and the fez. He was staring straight before him, and on his unusually large fair face there was no more expression than there is on a white envelop. Women twittered. Men saluted. The victoria stopped beside the bright-yellow carpet. After a moment’s pause, as if emerging from a sort of trance, the Calif of Islam got up and stepped slowly and heavily out, raising one hand to his fez. Then, as if with an abrupt effort to show alertness, he walked almost quickly up the steps to the glass porch, turned just before entering it, stood for an instant looking absolutely blank, again saluted, swung round awkwardly and disappeared. Almost immediately afterward one of his sons, a rather short and fair young man with a flushed face, attended by an officer, hurried past me and into the mosque by another entrance.

A few persons went away while his Majesty was praying; but all the pilgrims stayed, and I stayed with them. Several of the officials walked about on the gravel, talked, smoked, and drank orangeade, which a servant brought to them on a silver tray. Now and then from within the mosque came to us the loud murmur of praying voices. The soldiers of the body-guard descended the hill from the gates of Yildiz on foot, leading their horses, and assembled outside the courtyard. They were followed by a brilliant squadron of cavalry in dark-blue-and-red uniforms, with green-and-red saddle-cloths; their blood-red flag was borne before them, and their own music accompanied them. The soldiers in yellowish brown had piled arms and were standing at ease, smoking and talking. Twenty minutes perhaps went by, then a Gladstone bag was carried out of the mosque. We all gazed at it with reverence. What was in it? Or, if there was nothing, what had been recently taken out of it? I never shall know. As the bag vanished, a loud sound of singing came from within, and a troop of palace guards in vivid-red uniforms, with white-and-red toques trimmed with black astrakhan, marched into the court led by an officer. Some gendarmes followed them. Then the chief of police tripped forward with nervous agility, and made us all cross over and stand with our backs to the bank in a long line. An outrider, dressed in green and gold, and holding a big whip, rode in on a huge strawberry-roan horse. Behind him came a green-and-red brougham with satin cushions, drawn by a pair of strawberry roans. A smart coachman and footman sat on the box, and on each side rode two officers on white horses.

Now the singing ceased in the mosque. People began to come out. The sultan’s son, less flushed, passed by on foot, answering swiftly the salutes of the people. The brougham was drawn up before the bright-yellow carpet. Nazim Pasha once more stood there talking with several officials. The soldiers had picked up their arms, the sailors were standing at attention.

Then there was a very long wait.

“The sultan is taking coffee.”

Another five minutes passed.

“The sultan is sleeping.”

On this announcement being made to me, I thought seriously of departing in peace; but a Greek friend, who had spoken to an official, murmured in my ear:

“The sultan is awake and is changing his clothes.”

This sounded promising, and I decided to wait.

It seemed to me that his Majesty was a very long time at his toilet; but at last we were rewarded. Abruptly from the glass porch he appeared in European dress, with very baggy trousers much too long in the leg and a voluminous black frock-coat. He stood for a moment holding the frock-coat with both hands, as if wishing to wrap himself up in it. Then, still grasping it, he walked quickly down the steps, his legs seeming almost to ripple beneath the weight of his body, and stepped heavily into the brougham, which swung upon its springs. The horses moved, the carriage passed close to me, and again I gazed at this mighty sovereign, while the Eastern pilgrims salaamed to the ground. Mechanically he saluted. His large face was still unnaturally blank, and yet somehow it looked kind. And I felt that this old man was weary and sad, that his long years of imprisonment had robbed him of all vitality, of all power to enjoy; that he was unable to appreciate the pageant of life in which now, by the irony of fate, he was called to play the central part. All alone he sat in the bright-colored brougham, carrying a flaccid hand to his fez and gazing blankly before him. The carriage passed out of the courtyard, but it did not go up the hill to the palace.

“The sultan,” said a voice, “is going out into the country to rest and to divert himself.”

To rest, perhaps; but to divert himself!

After that day I often saw before me a large white envelop, and the most expressive people in the world were salaaming before it.

(To be continued)

THE LITTLE PEOPLE

BY AMELIA JOSEPHINE BURR

Because I left the hearthstone to watch the stars at night,
Because I loved the forest and wandered there alone,
The little fairy people who mock at human might
They set a spell upon me and chose me for their own.

The Little People called me--and oh, their word was sweet!
Fair as the towers of sunset I saw their kingdom rise--
But I knew my mother listened for the coming of my feet.
In tears the vision darkened and vanished from mine eyes.

The Little People called me to cast with them my lot
Or nevermore to see them, for mine own kindred’s sake.
The heart cried out within me, and yet I faltered not.
My people were my people--what choice was mine to make?

My people are my people, and dear they are to me,
Yet sometimes comes a longing--till I hardly dare to pray--
For that far land of wonder that I shall never see,
And for the Little People from whom I turned away.

LA BELLE DAME SANS MERCI

BY JOHN KEATS

WITH A PICTURE BY PAUL MEYLAN

Oh, what can ail thee, knight-at-arms,
Alone and palely loitering?
The sedge has withered from the lake,
And no birds sing.

Oh, what can ail thee, knight-at-arms
So haggard and so woebegone?
The squirrel’s granary is full,
And the harvest’s done.

I see a lily on thy brow
With anguish moist and fever-dew,
And on thy cheeks a fading rose
Fast withereth too.

I met a lady in the mead,
Full beautiful--a fairy’s child,
Her hair was long, her foot was light,
And her eyes were wild.

I made a garland for her head,
And bracelets too, and fragrant zone;
She looked at me as she did love,
And made sweet moan.

I set her on my pacing steed
And nothing else saw all day long,
For sidelong would she bend, and sing
A fairy song.

She found me roots of relish sweet,
And honey wild and manna-dew,
And sure in language strange she said,
“I love thee true.”

She took me to her elfin grot,
And there she wept and sighed full sore;
And there I shut her wild, wild eyes
With kisses four.

And there she lullèd me asleep,
And there I dreamed--ah! woe betide!
The latest dream I ever dreamed
On the cold hill’s side.

I saw pale kings and princes too,
Pale warriors, death-pale were they all:
They cried, “La belle dame sans merci
Hath thee in thrall!”

I saw their starved lips in the gloam
With horrid warning gapèd wide,
And I awoke and found me here
On the cold hill’s side.

And this is why I sojourn here
Alone and palely loitering,
Though the sedge is withered from the lake,
And no birds sing.

LA BELLE DAME SANS MERCI

“_I set her on my pacing steed
And nothing else saw all day long._”--~Keats.~
]

THE NEW MINISTER’S GREAT OPPORTUNITY[4]

BY C. H. WHITE

Author of “The Village Convict,” “Eli,” etc.

WITH A PORTRAIT OF THE AUTHOR AND A PICTURE BY HARRY TOWNSEND

(NOTEWORTHY STORIES OF THE LAST GENERATION)

“The minister’s got a job,” said Mr. Snell.

Mr. Snell had been driven in by a shower from the painting of a barn, and was now sitting, with one bedaubed overall leg crossed over the other, in Mr. Hamblin’s shop.

Half a dozen other men who had likewise found in the rain a call to leisure looked up at him inquiringly.

“How do you mean?” said Mr. Noyes, who sat beside him, girt with a nail-pocket. “‘The minister’s got a job?’ How do you mean?” And Mr. Noyes assumed a listener’s air, and stroked his thin, yellow beard.

Mr. Snell smiled with half-shut, knowing eyes, but made no answer.

“How do you mean?” repeated Mr. Noyes. “‘The minister’s got a job?’ Of course he has--got a stiddy job. We knew that before.”

“Very well,” said Mr. Snell, with a placid face; “seeing’s you know so much about it, enough said. Let it rest there.”