use of this liberty, or of a woman of rank that would suffer it.  When a husband happens to be inconstant (as those things will happen), he keeps his mistress in a house apart, and visits her as privately as he can, just as it is with you.  Amongst all the great men here, I only know the tefterdar (i.e., treasurer), that keeps a number of she slaves for his own use (that is, on his own side of the house; for a slave once given to serve a lady is entirely at her disposal), and he is spoken of as a libertine, or what we should call a rake, and his wife won’t see him, though she continues to live in his house.

“Thus, you see, dear sister, the manners of mankind do not differ so widely as our voyage writers would make us believe.  Perhaps it would be more entertaining to add a few surprising customs of my own invention; but nothing seems to me so agreeable as truth, and I believe nothing so acceptable to you.”

The most fortunate thing that happened to Lady Mary, and through her to England, during her stay in Adrianople, was being made acquainted with the practice of inoculation, then widely in vogue in Turkey.  Though she had no medical knowledge, she made enquiries as to its effect, and soon became convinced that it was very highly beneficial.  She was the more interested because an attack of small-pox had somewhat dimmed her beauty.  It was to Miss Sarah Chiswell that she unburdened herself of the discovery she had made.

“Those dreadful stories you have heard of the plague have very little foundation in truth.  I own I have much ado to reconcile myself to the sound of a word which has always given me such terrible ideas, though I am convinced there is little more in it than a fever.  As a proof of which we passed through two or three towns most violently infected.  In the very next house where we lay (in one of those places) two persons died of it.  Luckily for me, I was so well deceived that I knew nothing of the matter; and I was made believe, that our second cook who fell ill here had only a great cold.  However, we left our doctor to take care of him, and yesterday they both arrived here in good health; and I am now let into the secret that he has had the plague.  There are many that escape it; neither is the air ever infected.  I am persuaded it would be as easy to root it out here as out of Italy and France; but it does so little mischief, they are not very solicitous about it, and are content to suffer this distemper instead of our variety, which they are utterly unacquainted with.

“A propos of distempers, I am going to tell you a thing that I am sure will make you wish yourself here.  The small-pox, so fatal, and so general amongst us, is here entirely harmless by the invention of ingrafting, which is the term they give it.  There is a set of old women who make it their business to perform the operation every autumn, in the month of September, when the great heat is abated.  People send to one another to