morning, with their great cans balanced from poles carried across their shoulders. In order to keep the milk from churning during their long walk, they put with it leafy branches of well-washed barkaj, a sort of box, which separates the milk as islands break the force of ocean currents and swells. These sons of the Balkans are stout, muscular fellows dressed in the long tight trousers, gay jackets, and bright striped home-spun aprons of the home land, and their mournful cry of "Soudt-ji! Soudt-ji!" is the signal for all the Turkish housewives to come scuttling to the door, pannikins in hand for the reception of the rich, sweet buffalo milk that they love.

The Bulgarians, with the Albanians, are also the salep-venders of the city, rising at midnight to prepare the dish of which the Turks and working people are especially fond. Salep is made from

the tubers of a particular kind of orchid which is cultivated in Scutari, gathered, dried, and reduced to a fine powder. It is then stirred in hot water, when it thickens like arrowroot and is served in tiny cups with cream, sugar, rose-water, and a sprinkling of tarchin (cinnamon). It is principally used to break the fast in the morning, and the astute salep-ji who stations himself at the bridge when the boats land that bring the early business men is sure to do a rushing business.

In May it is the salad or lettuce venders who ride upon the top wave of financial prosperity. Then it is that the whole population of Constantinople, bond and free, Jew, Gentile, and Turk, betake themselves alike impartially to the demolition of the tender vegetable, and the whole city turns a vivid green. Palm Sunday in Rome, St. Patrick's Day in Dublin, Christmas in London, each with their emerald accompaniments, fade into nothingness when compared with Constantinople when lettuce days begin. Great stands of overflowing greenery, presided over by a benignant turbaned Turk, spring up at every corner, by every fountain, in every cemetery, and in front of every mosque, and as each pedestrian comes by and hands out his paras, the tutelary genius culls a gigantic bunch from his abundant store, dips it in water, flips off the superfluous drops, powders it with salt, and sends his customer rejoicing to join the army of rabbit-like nibblers already on the promenade,

The vegetable and fruit peddlersGreeks or Turks-come into town in the early morning, toting their wares in great hampers on their backs. Before seeking the receipts of custom they pause in some convenient cemetery, dump out their stock on an overturned stone, and proceed to arrange it with an eye to greater artistic effect. The onion-vender curls the yard-long stems of his wares about their red and white satiny bulbs. The artichoke-gentleman, in baggy trousers, white shirt, and cotton-bound fez, shakes out the leaves of his dark green balls preparatory to announcing them, in poetic parlance, as "home-raised, milk-drinking, tender lambs;" the egg-plant man settles afresh his bronze burnished treasures, while every basket becomes a thing of beauty with wreaths of yellow mustard or scarlet poppies drooping about its rim.

But oh, the cherries!-the first ripe,

tempting cherries! Aaron's rod never blossomed so vividly as these long branches wound round about with the scarlet fruit, surmounted with a tuft of snowy bloom or serrated leaves, and set upright in dazzling array in the bottom of an upturned osier basket to tempt the metalliks out of the pockets of pasha and beggar alike.

The strawberry trade is monopolized by the gypsy women who live along the inner circle of the Stamboul walls and gather the fragrant fruit from the historic fields where Arabs, Persians, Tartars, Crusaders, Russians, Bulgarians, Goths, and Ottomans encamped in turn when laying siege to the old Byzantine city. Low of stature and dark of feature, dressed in baggy trousers of pink or purple calico, with scarlet or green jackets and bright head-kerchiefs tied over their black braids, with a staringeyed baby peering wonderingly over one shoulder, they stroll the streets, calling lustily "Eleck-ji! Eleck-ji! Eleck-ji!» The berries-big, red, and sweet-are carefully arranged, stem downward, in deep splint baskets, and if, as usually happens, the berries at the bottom of the basket are neither so large nor so ripe as the plump

GIPSY STRAWBERRY-VENDER, WITH CHILD-ELECK-JI!"

CORNSTARCH-DESSERT-VENDER - MOHALIBÉ-JI! " fellows looking over the top, what would you? Is it not so the wide world round? The gypsy women, too, sell lavender and herbs, gridirons, pots, and kettles, while they are glad, at a moment's notice, to spread a dirty handkerchief or corner of their apron on the ground, and, by means of bits of glass or marbles, to unravel the mysteries of the future. The gypsy men, in the intervals of less reputable business, are the patron saints of tinware, and when one sees a pair of slender legs struggling along under a glittering, jingling mass of pails, pans, kettles, and dippers, and hears from its depths the merry refrain of "Mashalar-rum-var! Tavalar-rum-var," he may rest assured that for the time being surveillance of the neighboring hen-roosts may be relaxed,

The Turkish café-ji, or coffee-seller, is an omnipresent feature of Oriental life, and one has but to cry out Café-ji!" without even taking the trouble to turn his head, and in a trice a tiny cup of Turkish coffee, black and full of sediment, is smoking hot before him. At noon business is particularly brisk, for

TURKISH TART-SELLER

every clerk and every wayfarer desires to supplement his luncheon of bread and cheese, or bread and lettuce or garlic, with the beloved beverage.

If at any time you desire to supplement your coffee with a morsel of delicious fish or a tender, juicy kébab, strung on a spit and broiled over a charcoal brazier in the open air, give but the word, and the wandering kebab-ji will be only too glad to turn an honest penny and cook your dinner in the sight of all men.

Would you be wildly extravagant and add to your kebab and your coffee a Turkish sweet? Here is the mohalibé-ji, who has watched the progress of your appetite from the other side of the street, and now hastens across quite sure of a welcome. There is nothing prettier or more tempting than the mohalibé trays covered with a clean white or striped cloth, on which, beside the white shaky jelly, rises tier on tier of gaily colored and gilded saucers, a graceful Oriental flask of rose-water, and a profusion of slender arrow-shaped spoons. Even the mohalibé-ji himself is a gorgeous being to look at,-a clean white cloth bound

about his scarlet fez, and another draped over his blue and white striped jacket, while a wondrous plaid apron matches his tray and at the same time protects his scarlet trousers. It is no wonder that the children are among his best patrons, dividing their allegiance equally between saucers of mohalibé and caimakli dondourma (penny cream ices). Another prime favorite with the children is the wind-wheel peddler, whose gaily fluttering wares never fail to catch the breeze of custom.

Wherever there is a great gathering like a wrestling-match or a dance, peddlers spring up with all the celerity that marked the crop of dragon's teeth. The icecream man, with his cage of spoons and glasses; the candypeddler, with his saccharine menagerie held proudly aloft; the old sherbet-seller, his white apron tucked up over his flute-like trousers, and his buckets of lemon or grape sherbet suspended from a pole across his shoulders; the Albanian pop-corn man; the Turkish tart-seller; and the helva-ji, with his mortar-colored sweet,all are on hand and all are well patronized.

No one who knows Constantinople will be surprised to learn that the Algerian fez-peddler is a prosperous man, for his plethoric striped bags contain the universal headgear.

The shoeblacks are perhaps the most persistent of all the street criers. If one has a stationary position he contents himself with beating a perpetual tattoo on his ornate brass stand, calling lustily meanwhile, "Lustrad-ji! Lustrad-ji!" But if he is a rover he follows a prospective customer for streets, imploring the public to look at those shoes so sadly in need of his attention. Nor is the list of peddlers yet complete. There is the stout Armenian fish-vender, with his flat tray of exquisite mullet, shiny mackerel, or scaleless ousgumru on his head; the Persian tea-seller, with gorgeous samovar and urn; the Greek oil-man, shouting "Callo la thi!"; the vinegar man, dragging an unwilling donkey behind him, almost hidden from view under the kegs of acid; the "raggety" broom-man, with his shorthandled wares; and the poor little char

coal-man, who, placed like the meat in a sandwich between two heavy bags of charcoal, has scarce breath enough left to proclaim to the world as he staggers along, "Kumur var!" ("Here is charcoal!") The Turkish chimney-sweep, gigantic, sooty, and bearing his brooms aloft as an advertisement of his trade, is a picturesque as well as indispensable figure in a country where charcoal is the universal fuel.

But more useful even than the chimney-sweep or charcoal-man, more picturesque than the scissors-grinder or the stately Persians in black caps and with silky rugs hung gracefully over their shoulders, are the water-carriers, who are of three sorts. The first who appear in the morning are the regular authorized Armenian sakas, whose business it is to keep the great stone jars of their customers filled with the sweet water brought from the cold springs of Cham-le-ga, or from Geuk-Soui (Heavenly Water), or Hunkiar Beyendi (the King-liked). These sakas carry the water slung across their shoulders in a leather box or courba narrowing toward one end, from which a flap of leather, when raised, lets out two or three gallons of the precious

TURKISH CHIMNEY-SWEEP

ARMENIAN WATER-SELLER (SU-JI)

water. The men who sell water in the streets and on the boats at a penny a glass are called sujis, and as neither they nor the sakas can afford ice, they keep their courbas covered with fresh green leaves to keep them cool.

Still another water-carrier, much in evidence in the summer, is a pious Mohammedan who seeks to make sure of his ultimate salvation by bestowing water gratis upon his co-religionists.

The Jew, as elsewhere, holds in Constantinople a prominent place in street trade. Bearded, furtive-eyed, and dirty, sometimes in a sort of Abrahamic nightgown wadded voluminously, and again in a roundabout that barely meets his disreputable knickerbockers, he fawns upon and follows prospective customers, giving them neither respite nor nepenthe until his tawdry trinkets are disposed of. Such an one insisted upon allying himself with my fortunes at my first visit alone to the British postoffice in Galata. "Spotting" me as a foreigner, he followed close at my heels, proclaiming in my unwilling ears, "I know all Inglis beeples here. I friends mit de Biple-House. Efry one knows me.

I fight in the Crimean war. I sell you sometings cheap?" And when, to escape his unwelcome attentions, I took refuge in the street car, and thought my day of deliverance at hand, he appeared at the window with a second edition of himself, equally thumb-marked and more disreputable, and, rapping vigorously on the glass, proclaimed in stentorian tones, "This my son Moses. He know Inglis too. We go everywhere mit you while you stays."

No roll-call of the Constantinople street peddlers would be complete without mention of the semit-ji or pretzel-man, whose crackly

trysting spot for these humble merchantswhose stands. piled high with the spicy twists, seem part and parcel of the

sanctuary. Lastly but not least, in this kaleidoscopic procession of business men, comes the Turkish barber, whose repertory includes also the offices of chiropodist, dentist, and leech. Setting up his umbrella in the shade of some friendly tree he is soon ready to attend to the needs of his patrons. Surrounded by an interested crowd of street gamins, he pulls teeth vi et armis, applies the wily leech with an enthusiasm beautiful to see, or rubs, lathers, and scrapes his customer, who sits humbly on a stool holding a brass bowl by both hands under his chin. If the latter is a Turk and wishes his head shaved,

brown hoops -spattered thick with semit seed-are always in demand. The approach to Valideh Mosque is a favorite