chunks of a pasty sweetmeat, known in England as " Turkish Delight,” one of which you are expected to take and pay half a piastre for, this being a polite way of obtaining payment for the privilege of using the chair.  The coffee is served steaming hot in tiny cups holding about two table-spoonfuls, the price varying from ten paras upward, according to the grade of the establishment.  A favorite way of passing the evening is to sit in front of one of these establishments, watching the passing throngs, and smoke a nargileh, this latter requiring a good half-hour to do it properly.  I undertook to investigate the amount of enjoyment contained in a nargileh one evening, and before smoking it half through concluded that the taste has to be cultivated.

One of the most inconvenient things about Constantinople is the great scarcity of small change.  Everybody seems to be short of fractional money save the money-changers-people who are here a genuine necessity, since one often has to patronize them before making the most trifling purchase.  Ofttimes the store-keeper will refuse point-blank to sell an article when change is required, solely on account of his inability or unwillingness to supply it.  After drinking a cup of coffee, I have had the kahuajee refuse to take any payment rather than change a cherik.  Inquiring the reason for this scarcity, I am informed that whenever there is any new output of this money the noble army of money-changers, by a liberal and judicious application of backsheesh, manage to get a corner on the lot and compel the general public, for whose benefit it is ostensibly issued, to obtain what they require through them.  However this may be, they manage to control its circulation to a great extent; for while their glass cases display an overflowing plenitude, even the fruit-vender, whose transactions are mainly of ten and twenty paras, is not infrequently compelled to lose a customer because of his inability to make change.  There are not less than twenty money-changers’ offices within a hundred yards of the Galata end of the principal bridge spanning the Golden Horn, and certainly not a less number on the Stamboul side.

The money-changer usually occupies a portion of the frontage of a cigarette and tobacco stand; and on all the business streets one happens at frequent intervals upon these little glass cases full of bowls and heaps of miscellaneous coins, varying in value.  Behind sits a business-looking person — usually a Jew — jingling a handful of medjedis, and expectantly eyeing every approaching stranger.  The usual percentage charged is, for changing a lira, eighty paras; thirty paras for a medjedie, and ten for a cherik, the percentage on this latter coin being about five per cent.  Some idea of the inconvenience to the public of this state of affairs can be better imagined by the American by reflecting that if this state of affairs existed in Boston he would frequently have to walk around the block and give a money-changer