had a fell from his horse that morning. The dogs, though we
escaped the plague ourselves, were right; the plague had got into one of
the houses close to us in the same street; but how many died of it I did
not learn.

It was about this time that two Jews--extortioners, poor men, whom
consequently nobody cared about--were walking together in a narrow
street at Galata, when they both dropped down stricken with the plague:
there they lay upon the ground; no one would touch them; and, as the
street was extremely narrow, no one could pass that way; it was in
effect blocked up by the two unhappy men. They did not die quickly. "The
devil was sure of them," the charitable people said, "so he was in no
hurry." There they lay a long time--many days; and people called to
them, and put their heads round the corner of the street to look at
them. Some, tenderer-hearted than the rest, got a long pole from a
dyer's shop hard by, and pushed a tub of water to them, and threw them
some bread, for no one dared approach them. One Jew was quiet: he ate a
little bread and drank some water, and lay still. The other was violent:
the pain of his livid swellings drove him wild, and he shouted and raved
and twisted about upon the ground. The people looked at him from the
corner, and shuddered as they quickly drew back their heads. He died;
and the other Jew still lay there, quiet as he was before, close to the
quiet corpse of his poor friend. For some time they did not know whether
he was dead or not; but at last they found he drank no more water and
ate no more bread; so they knew that he had died also. There lay the two
bodies in the way, till some one paid a hamal--a Turkish porter--who,
being a stanch predestinarian, caring neither for plague, nor Jew, nor
Gentile, dead or alive, carried off the two bodies on his back; and then
the street was passable again.

The Turks have a touching custom when the plague rages very greatly, and
a thousand corpses are carried out daily from Stamboul through the
Adrianople gate to the great groves of cypress which rise over the
burial-grounds beyond the walls. At times of terror and grief, such as
these, the Sheikh Ul Islam causes all the little children to be
assembled on a beautiful green bill called the Oc Maidan--the Place of
Arrows--and there they bow down upon the ground, and raise their
innocent voices in supplication to the Father of Mercy, and implore his
compassion on the afflicted city!

But th