Moses admits that like the friend of Toodles “he had a brother” but he denies fraternal relations with all the “brothers” that hang about the bazaars and hotels.
Moses narrates an experience of his mercantile life such as we sometimes hear of in America. He shipped a lot of goods to Vienna at the time of the Exposition, and on these goods he figured a handsome profit on his mental slate. They were sent by steamer to Trieste, and thence by rail to Vienna. On arrival the boxes were found to contain old iron, straw, and pieces of wood, and Moses was in great grief, for the original lot had cost him about six hundred pounds sterling.
He tried to recover, but the two companies—steamboat and railway—played “Spenlow and Jorkins” on him most admirably. Each said that the robbery must have occurred while the boxes were in charge of the other concern, and after much trouble Moses received nothing by way of indemnity. Neither company would pay a centime until the locality of the robbery had been proved, and as this could not be shown, there was no payment. And to add to the loss he could not even recover the freight charges, which he had paid in full before removing the boxes from the railway station and discovering his loss. It rained cats and dogs for two days before I left, and, as Turkish sight-seeing requires fair weather, I was kept imprisoned most of that time in the hotel. Our Consul-General, Mr. Good-enow, kindly introduced me to the Foreign Club and enabled me to break the monotony of the evenings with a few hours in the luxurious house where the association has its home. To judge by the appearance of the club, its cuisine, and other things, the foreigners in Constantinople know how to live well, and are determined to practice what they know.
The club includes many nationalities—English, French, American, German, Russian, Italian, Greek, Spanish, Swiss, and others,—in its membership, and a visit to its rooms gives one an idea of the cosmopolitan character of the population of the Queen City of the Orient. Turks are not excluded, a Turkish gentleman being just as eligible to membership as any other. Diplomates, merchants, bankers, government officials, gentlemen of fortune with nothing to do, and the other miscellaneous characters that make up a club in a large city, were pointed out to me among the members that dined and lounged in the club-house.
French was the prevailing language, but you would hear enough of other tongues in the course of an evening to make you dream all night of the Tower of Babel, and the unhappy gentlemen that found it a losing speculation.
On the morning of our departure the weather cleared up, and we had the satisfaction of bidding farewell to Constantinople under a bright sky and in the glow of a warm sunshine. Our baggage was piled on the backs of some able-bodied porters, and we followed it and them down the hill of Pera, in the same solemn procession as we first mounted it.
The Custom House was lenient in consequence of a “backsheesh” of two francs, and the odds and ends that we had bought in the city were not disturbed.
Two of our party had laid in a liberal supply of Broussa silks and other specialties of Constantinople, and consequently they did not want the officials to be inquisitive. They thought they got off cheap at two francs, and I think they did.
And here is a good place to say something about the export duty on Turkish manufactures. The English, as we all know, are very earnest in advancing free trade; they have it, and want everybody else to enjoy its blessings. Whether their theories are right or wrong I do not propose to discuss, as I am not writing a book on political economy. England believes emphatically in free trade—free export and free import—and every Englishman would tell you that a tax on manufactured exports would be the very thing to cripple home industries.