But As I Only Stayed Eight Days In This Place, And Knew Not A
Syllable Of The Language, Perhaps It Is As Well To Pretermit Any
Disquisitions About The Spirit Of The People.
I can only say that
they looked to be very good-natured, handsome, and lazy; that the
women's yellow
Slippers are very ugly; that the kabobs at the shop
hard by the Rope Bazaar are very hot and good; and that at the
Armenian cookshops they serve you delicious fish, and a stout
raisin wine of no small merit. There came in, as we sat and dined
there at sunset, a good old Turk, who called for a penny fish, and
sat down under a tree very humbly, and ate it with his own bread.
We made that jolly old Mussulman happy with a quart of the raisin
wine; and his eyes twinkled with every fresh glass, and he wiped
his old beard delighted, and talked and chirped a good deal, and, I
dare say, told us the whole state of the empire. He was the only
Mussulman with whom I attained any degree of intimacy during my
stay in Constantinople; and you will see that, for obvious reasons,
I cannot divulge the particulars of our conversation.
"You have nothing to say, and you own it," says somebody: "then
why write?" That question perhaps (between ourselves) I have put
likewise; and yet, my dear sir, there are SOME things worth
remembering even in this brief letter: that woman in the brougham
is an idea of significance:
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