informed me that Turkish etiquette required that she should now invite her guests into another room and offer other refreshments, then, after sitting there a while, to still another, and so on through the whole suite of apartments, refreshments (generally coffee, sweetmeats or sherbet) with cigarettes being offered in each.  As they would probably remain till four or five in the afternoon, I excused myself, and reached the hotel in time to join a party going to the bazaar, thankful that I did not reside in Constantinople, and wondering how long Madame B——­ would survive if she had to endure such visits frequently.

We started for our first visit to the bazaar, crossing the Golden Horn to Stamboul by the old bridge, which has sunk so in places that you feel as if a ground-swell had been somehow consolidated and was doing service as a bridge; up through the narrow streets of Stamboul, now standing aside to let a string of donkeys pass loaded with large stones fastened by ropes to their pack-saddles, or stepping into a doorway to let a dozen small horses go by with their loads of boards, three or four planks being strapped on each side, one end sticking out in front higher than their heads, and the other dragging on the ground, scraping along and raising such a dust you are not at all sure some neighboring lumber-yard has not taken it into its head to walk off bodily.  Fruit-venders scream their wares, Turkish officers on magnificent Arab horses prance by, and the crowd of strange and picturesque costumes bewilders you; and through all the noise and confusion glide the silent, veiled women.  One almost doubts one’s own identity.  I was suddenly recalled to my senses, however, by a gentle thump on the elbow, and turning beheld the head of a diminutive donkey.  I supposed it to be a donkey:  the head, tail and feet, which were all I could see of it, led me to believe it was one of those much-abused animals.  The rest of its body was lost to sight in the voluminous robes of a corpulent Turk; and, as if he were not load enough for one donkey, behind him sat a small boy holding his “baba’s” robe very tight lest he should slide off over the donkey’s tail.  I looked around for Bergh or some member of a humane society, but no one except ourselves seemed to see anything unusual.  I thought if I were a Hindu and believed in the transmigration of souls, I would pray that, whatever shape my spirit took when it left its present form, it might not enter that of a much-abused and long-suffering donkey.

The bazaar!  How shall I describe what so many travelers have made familiar?  Some one has called it “a monstrous hive of little shops—­thousands under one roof;” and so it is.  Each street is devoted to a peculiar kind of merchandise.  It would take more than one letter to tell all the beautiful things we saw—­cashmere shawls, Brousa silks, delicate gauzes, elegantly-embroidered jackets, dresses, tablecloths, cushions, etc.,