I mentioned the Oriental dog in speaking of Damascus; he forces himself upon public attention in Constantinople also. The dogs of this city act as scavengers and are relied upon to keep the streets neat—a vain reliance, for while they devour everything that they can digest, they are not sufficient for the task imposed upon them. These dogs are wolfish in appearance and generally yellow in color. Lacking the fidelity which the dog is accustomed to show to his master, these animals roam about the street and haunt the places where food is most likely to be found. The people of Constantinople assert that the dogs maintain a police force of their own, and, dividing the city into districts, enforce their own regulations. If a strange dog comes into the district, he is at once driven out by the canine sentinel on that beat.
The Golden Horn is spanned by two pontoon bridges (if the word spanned can be used in connection with such a bridge) and the one connecting the business portions of Stamboul and Galata is a veritable mint, the income from the tolls amounting at times to two thousand dollars per day. It is owned by the government, and bridge companies have offered to replace it with a good bridge for the income of two or three years, but it is so profitable that it is allowed to remain in its present dilapidated condition.
One can stand on this bridge and see all phases of life and all types of human beings. All nationalities meet in Constantinople and all colors are represented here. Two streams pass each other on this bridge from dawn to dark, and there is no better place to study the tragedies and the comedies of life as they are depicted in the faces of the people.
The haste that is to be seen on the bridge is in sharp contrast with the air of leisure which pervades the coffee houses and the side streets where fezzed or turbaned Turks meet to smoke their hubble-bubble pipes (the smoke being drawn through water) and discuss such topics as are not forbidden by the extremely watchful government under which they live.
Before leaving Constantinople we crossed over to the Asiatic side to visit the American school for girls, which has enjoyed a prosperous existence for more than twenty years. It is another evidence of the far-reaching sympathy of the Christian people of the United States and adds to the feeling of pride with which an American citizen contemplates the spreading influence of his country.
When we recrossed the Bosphorus we bade farewell to Asia, within whose borders we had spent about seven months. They have been wonderfully instructive months, and we have enjoyed the experiences through which we have passed, but we can not say that we have fallen in love with Asiatic food. We have been afraid of the raw vegetables; we have distrusted the water, unless it was boiled, and we have sometimes been skeptical about the meat. The butter has not always looked inviting, and our fondness for cream has not been increased by the sight of the goats driven from door to door and milked in the presence of the purchaser. The bread was not a rival for the Vienna brand, and the cooking has not been up to western standards. But the hen—long life to her! She has been our constant friend. When all else failed we could fall back upon the boiled egg with a sense of security and a feeling of satisfaction. If I am not henceforth a poultry fancier in the technical sense of the term, I shall return with an increased respect for the common, everyday barnyard fowl. There are many differences between the east and the west—difference in race characteristics, differences in costume, differences in ideals of life, of government and religion, but we all meet at the breakfast table—the egg, like "a touch of nature, makes the whole world kin."
AT THE WORLD'S BREAKFAST TABLE.