no brains.  Nobody wants to adopt an idiot.  They are, of course, mongrels of the most hopeless type.  They are yellowish, with thick, short, woolly coats, and much fatter than you expect to find them.  They walk like a funeral procession.  Never have I seen one frisk or even wag his tail.  Everybody turns out for them.  They sleep—­from twelve to twenty of them—­on a single pile of garbage, and never notice either men or each other unless a dog which lives in the next street trespasses.  Then they eat him up, for they are jackals as well as dogs, and they are no more epicures than ostriches.  They never show interest in anything.  They are blase.  I saw some mother dogs asleep, with tiny puppies swarming over them like little fat rats, but the mothers paid no attention to them.  Children seem to bore them quite as successfully as if they were women of fashion.

We went sailing up the Golden Horn to the Skutari cemetery, one of the loveliest spots of this thrice-fascinating Constantinople.  As we were descending that steep hill upon which it is situated we met a darling little baby Turk in a fez riding on a pony which his father was leading.  This child of a different race, and six thousand miles away, looked so much like our Billy that I wanted to eat him up—­dirt and all.  I contented myself with giving him backsheesh, while my companion photographed him.  Such an afternoon as that was on that lovely golden river, with the sun just setting, and our picturesque boatmen sending the boat through thousands upon thousands of sea-gulls just to make them fly, until the air grew dark with their wings, and the sunlight on their white breasts looked like a great glistening snow-storm!

One night we went to a masked ball given for the benefit of a new hospital which is situated upon the Golden Horn.  It was given by Mr. Levy, one of the Turkish Commissioners at the World’s Fair, and the decorations were something marvellous.  The walls were hung with embroideries which drove us the next day to the bazaars and nearly bankrupted us.  Every street of Constantinople looks like a masked ball, so this one merely continued the illusion.  We could distinguish the Mohammedan women from the others because they all went home before midnight without unmasking.

This ball is interesting because it is called “The Engagement Ball.”  We were told that only at a subscription ball given for a charity in which their parents are interested and feel under moral obligation to support by their presence are the young people of Constantinople allowed to meet each other.  The fathers and mothers occupy the boxes, and thus, under their very eyes, and masked, can love affairs be brought to a conclusion.  During the week which followed no fewer than ten important engagements were duly heralded in the columns of the newspapers.