get into trouble
for trespassing. When one of the members of a district becomes sick
and helpless his comrades do not wait for him to die; they just eat him
up and have done with it. So no one ever sees a dead dog in Stamboul:
professional pride and _esprit de corps_ step in, and the victim is
wafted to the happy hunting grounds in less time than it takes to tell
of it.

The porters are celebrated for their great strength and the big loads
they can carry. To see them do their work is a most interesting sight:
four of them will carry a great cask filled with fluid and suspended
from two poles placed on their shoulders--a fair load for a team of
horses. They carry these loads with the aid of ingenious appliances
and harness, and the amount of lumber, coal, dressed beef and live
animals they transport for short distances is simply incredible.

Soldiers are drilling everywhere and a raw lot they are. The treasury
is empty, and many of them have only one shoe, and some none at all,
only a coarse stocking bound round with rags. They may be experts at
killing women and children, but they would make a sorry showing against
trained soldiers. And then there are the "battleships:" fierce,
devilish-looking bulldogs that could demolish any tin-lined fort in
existence if they could only hit it, or even if the sailors could
manage to fire the guns--or in fact, if only the guns could be fired by
any one--which is exceedingly doubtful.

In smells, the vilest of the vile, including the acrid variety that
cuts the nostrils like a razor, Constantinople stands forever and alone
on a plinth of infamy, and no language that can be dragged into the
arena of expression can be utilized to describe them. They paralyze
the intellect and dull the sense of punishment and acute agony. No
gladiator could enter the lists with them in deadly combat and live to
tell the tale. They arise in part from the debris and remnants of
cheese whose position in the flight of time was contemporaneous with
that of Alexander the Great; from fish that must have darted beneath
the keels of the ships at the battle of Salamis; from tallow, used to
grease the chariot wheels at the battle of Marathon (now sold as
butter); and from the embalmed beef that was left over from the Crimean
War. These with many powerful additions supply the main force and
foundation of all this pervading "sweetness;" but the distinguishing
"high lights" come from minor causes, such a