four-hour stops, a land of ruined railway stations and bare hills, and only late on the second evening after Sofia do you creep into the imperial city.

It is Stamboul at night, agleam with lights, running with mud, flocking with dense crowds. You change some money to piastres at a small booth, and your pocket is at once picked—a common experience. The Pera tram is so crowded that you escape being asked for a fare, which is fortunate, seeing that you have no Turkish money. So across the wonderful bridge on which all the nations of the world are seen walking, up to the so-called pleasant heights of Pera and its hotels and palaces. Here for a dirty little room one pays more than in a first-class hotel in New York. You are fortunate if you find even that soon. A Greek-owned hotel. You scan the names of the occupants—they are of all nationalities of Europe. Russians and Armenians seem most to abound. There appears to be a Scotsman among them, a Mr. Fraser, but he is a Scot resident in Smyrna and smokes a narghile every evening after supper. The lounge of the hotel looks like a crèche for the children of refugees. But couples are seen here on the couches interested only in themselves, and a long-haired Russian is at the piano playing Scriabine devotedly and with deep concentration, as if the boisterousness of the children were unheard.

Constantinople has five times as many people as it can house, a city now of appalling unhappiness and misery, and of a concomitant luxury and waste. A scene at night: two children, a boy and a girl, lie huddled together on the pavement sleeping whilst the rain beats down upon them. The crowd keeps passing, keeps passing, and some step over them, many glance questioningly downward, but all pass on. No one stops. I stood at a corner and watched. Then I walked up to the children and wakened them and tried to make them speak. But they stared with their pale faces and said nothing. At a neighbouring pastry-cook's I bought two cakes and brought them to them, and stirred them up to take them, which they did eagerly, each grasping tightly a cake in the little hand. I stopped a Russian woman who was hesitating as she passed. "There are many," said she. "It is quite common. You see plenty babies lying in the rain. When you come? You come off a ship? . . . The only way to help them is give them piastres." I did that, and by that time a little crowd had gathered and every one began to fret and give a little money to them. So the crowd changed its mind, and the children began to have little sheaves of paper-money in their hands. And still they lay in the rain and no one could take them in.

The Russians have got Constantinople at last. It is an irony of Fate. There are a hundred thousand of them there, the best blood of Russia, and the most charming and delightful people in Europe in themselves, though now almost entirely destitute of means. A large Russian army without arms is not very far away, and a Russian generalissimo without power stays in his yacht at Galata. The great city has been outwardly transformed by the Russians who seem at first to have taken over all the business and to have dispossessed innumerable Turks and Greeks. Russian is the predominant language; all the best restaurants and many of the shops seem to be Russian, and Russian pedlars in scores cry their wares in the streets. Greek and Turkish business is modest and retiring, but everything Russian is advertised by large artistic signs. The gleaming lights of innumerable "Lotto Parlours" catch the eye, you pass with the rolling crowd into the cabaret, the music-hall, the theatre, the café, the restaurant, the book-shop—all Russian. You see the establishments of Russian doctors, lawyers, dentists, dancing-masters. In an improvised wooden hut you see a celebrated portrait-painter sitting, ready to paint you whilst you wait or execute commissions of any kind. The restaurants all have Russian names and sometimes refer back to business left behind in Russia—the restaurant "Birzha" from Rostof, "Kievsky Ugolok" from Kiev, "Veliky Moskovsky Kruzhok," the "Yar," and the like. These are very tastefully arranged and the cooking is excellent, being under the supervision of celebrated Russian chefs. Thus at the "Kievsky Ugolok" it is well known that the cook of Prince Vorontsof is in charge, and the restaurant does not merely live by reputation but an excellence of cuisine testifies in itself to some master-hand. The waitresses at most of these Russian establishments are often women of society, and some of them very beautiful in the simplicity of uniform. There is a fascinating added pleasure in being waited upon by such gracious women, but the heart aches for the fate of some of them. On each table is a ticket with the name and patronymic of the waitress, thus, Tatiana Mihailovna, or Sophia Vladimirovna. They are on a level with those they serve, and the women embrace them, the men kiss their hands. Naturally there are no such things as tips; service is charged for in the bill. Elegance mingles with melancholy. Russians meet and talk endlessly, and sigh for Russia, and the Russian music croons the night long from the musicians' gallery or orchestra.

The saddest shops are those which, no doubt, belong mostly to Armenians and Spanish Jews, where "valuables" are exposed, the miscellaneous collections of the things the Russians have sold or wish to sell. Here are rings, lockets, bracelets, fur-coats and wraps, gold vases, trinket-cases, odd spoons of Caucasian silver, cigarette-holders,—like so many locks of hair cut from diverse humanity. Here lie intimate possessions, prized, not likely to be sold, seemingly quietly reproachful under the public gaze, baptismal crosses, jewelled girdles, gloves, Paris blouses, English costumes. The refugees must sell all that they have, and some have sold all. I met the wife of a colonel of Life Guards. She was dressed in a cotton skirt, a cream-coloured "woolly," a waterproof, and a wretched cheap collar of fur. Once she never stepped out of her house but into a car. Now in weather-beaten thin old boots she must tramp from place to place over the cobbles, living in one room with her family, washes the clothes herself, scrubs the floor, has no money. The women have won the unbounded admiration of the British in Constantinople. For pluck these Russian women would be hard to rival. But what a destiny! They spend their money, they sell their jewels and rings, they sell their clothes, they take out trays of chocolates to sell in the streets and shiver at the street-corners; to feed their children they sell more clothes. Hundreds of cases have been discovered in which the women are confined to their rooms, having sold almost all their wearing apparel, and having nothing in which to appear on the streets.

The refugee peasantry and working class are mostly confined in barbed-wire internment camps outside the city, and guarded by Sengalese. Twenty per cent get permission to go into the city each day. The seventy or eighty thousand indigent Russians in Constantinople belong mostly to the upper classes. Very many belong to Petrograd society, and are people who fled to the Crimea and the Caucasus, were caught up in the Deniken or Wrangel panic, and transported hither. They are well-educated people, speaking English and French, and well-read and accomplished. But how little are those modern accomplishments when it comes to the elemental realities of life. A beautiful young countess is employed in a bakery to sell bread, and is lucky. An erstwhile lion and ex-general has a job in a laundry. Pride intervenes only to stop them begging. How few are the beggars! But you see the nicest of girls with pinched white faces trying to sell loukoum. Even hard Scotsmen passing by are fain to give them money and take nothing in return.

You see the strangest vendors—children standing at a street corner trying to sell a blouse and a pair of boots,