CHAPTER XII—ON THE BOSPHORUS.—AMONG THE ISLES OF GREECE.
Far-Away Moses, the Famous Guide—His Numerous Brothers—His Shop in the Great Bazaar—An Evening at the “Foreign Club”—Dreaming of Polyglots and the Tower of Babel—More “Backsheesh”—Passing the Custom House—How they Protect Home Manufactures—Standing Up for One’s Own Country—“Honesty ish te Besht Bolicy”—Borrowing Money at Twenty per cent.—The Start from Constantinople—A hint to Travelers—Sleeping in Public on the Stage—Interviewing the Purser—A Satisfactory Arrangement—Baron Bruck and his Career—Unwelcome Intruders—Classic Ground—One Trifling Peculiarity.
I HAD “done” the sights of Constantinople—bazaars, mosques, dogs, dervishes and other things—and was ready to depart.
I had even “done” and been “done” by Far-Away Moses, the famous guide whom Mark Twain has sent down to posterity, and had bought several articles in his shop.
Moses is guide and merchant, and when he is not attending to business in the one branch he is attending to it in the other.
He is a dignified Oriental with a Jewish cast of features, and he bows in a way that Mr. Turveydrop would envy. He has a shop—one shop—in the Great Bazaar, but a stranger might suppose that he owned half of Constantinople.
The guides and runners are on the lookout for Americans and are always ready to take them to the shop of Far-Away Moses. The joke of the matter is that they take them somewhere else, where they can get a larger commission on purchases, and invariably tell you that it is the shop of the venerable F. A. M., Esq. If you are familiar with the features of Moses, they tell you he is just out but you can trade quite as well with his brother who is on hand to accommodate you. But if you have not met the original you are introduced to some English-speaking Turk, Jew, or Christian who affectionately inquires after Mark Twain and hopes he is well and happy.
I think about seven dozen “brothers of Far-Away Moses” were pointed out to me, and they resembled him, each other, and themselves, about as much as a cup of coffee resembles a row of mixed drinks in an American bar room.
