Once during the afternoon I attempt to write, but I might as well attempt to fly, for the mehana is crowded with people who plainly have not the slightest conception of the proprieties.  Finally a fez is wantonly flung, by an extra-enterprising youth, at my ink-bottle, knocking it over, and but for its being a handy contrivance, out of which the ink will not spill, it would have made a mess of my notes.  Seeing the uselessness of trying to write, I meander forth, and into the leading mosque, and without removing my shoes, tread its sacred floor for several minutes, and stand listening to several devout Mussulmans reciting the Koran aloud, for, be it known, the great fast of Ramadan has begun, and fasting and prayer is now the faithful Mussulman’s daily lot for thirty days, his religion forbidding him either eating or drinking from early morn till close — of day.  After looking about the interior, I ascend the steep spiral stairway up to the minaret balcony whence the muezzin calls the faithful to prayer five times a day.  As I pop my head out through the little opening leading to the balcony, I am slightly taken aback by finding that small footway already occupied by the muezzin, and it is a fair question as to whether the muezzin’s astonishment at seeing my white helmet appear through the opening is greater, or mine at finding him already in possession.  However, I brazen it out by joining him, and he, like a sensible man, goes about his business just the same as if nobody were about.  The people down in the streets look curiously up and call one another’s attention to the unaccustomed sight of a white-helmeted ’cycler and a muezzin upon the minaret together; but the fact that I am not interfered with in any way goes far to prove that the Mussulman fanaticism, that we have all heard and read about so often, has wellnigh flickered out in European Turkey; moreover, I think the Eski Babans would allow me to do anything, in order to place me under obligations to “bin! bin!” whenever they ask me.  At nine o’clock I begin to grow a trifle uneasy about the fate of my passport and revolver, and, proceeding to the police-barracks, formally demand their return.  Nothing has apparently been done concerning either one or the other since they were taken from me, for the mulazim, who is lounging on a divan smoking cigarettes, produces them from the same receptacle he consigned them to this afternoon, and lays them before him, clearly as mystified and perplexed as ever about what he ought to do.  I explain to him that I wish to depart in the morning, and gendarmes are despatched to summon several leading Eski Babans for consultation, in the hope that some of them, or all of them put together, might perchance arrive at a satisfactory conclusion concerning me.  The great trouble appears to be that, while I got the passport vised at Sofia and Philippopolis, I overlooked Adrianople, and the Eski Baba officials, being in the vilayet of the latter city, are naturally puzzled