and various games
of long narrow cards are played. They say that Bridge came from
Constantinople. Indeed, I believe a club of Pera claims the honor
of having communicated that passion to the Western World. But I
must confess that I have yet to see an open hand in a coffee-house
of the people.

[Illustration: COFFEE MAKING IN TURKEY]

One of the pleasantest forms of amusement to be obtained in
coffee-houses is unfortunately getting to be one of the rarest. It
is that afforded by itinerant story-tellers, who still carry on in
the East the tradition of the troubadours. The stories they tell
are more or less on the order of the Arabian Nights, though perhaps
even less suitable for mixed companies--which for the rest are
never found in coffee-shops. These men are sometimes wonderfully
clever at character monologue or dialogue. They collect their pay
at a crucial moment of the action, refusing to continue until the
audience has testified to the sincerity of its interest by some
token more substantial.

Music is much more common. There are those, to be sure, who find no
music in the sounds poured forth oftenest by a gramophone, often by
a pair of gypsies with a flaring pipe and two small gourd drums,
and sometimes by an orchestra so-called of the fine lute--a company
of musicians on a railed dais who sing long songs while they play
on stringed instruments of strange curves. For myself I know too
little of music to tell what relation the recurrent cadences of
those songs and their broken rhythms may bear to the antique modes.
But I can listen, as long as musicians will perform, to those
infinite repetitions, that insistent sounding of the minor key. It
pleases me to fancy there a music come from far away--from unknown
river gorges, from camp-fires glimmering on great plains. Does not
such darkness breathe through it, such melancholy, such haunting of
elusive airs? There are flashes too of light, of song, the playing
of shepherd's pipes, the swoop of horsemen and sudden outcries of
savagery. But the note to which it all comes back is the monotone
of a primitive life, like the day-long beat of camel bells. And
more than all, it is the mood of Asia, so rarely penetrated, which
is neither lightness or despair.

[Illustration: STREET COFFEE VENDER