52 MEMORIES OF MY LIFE 



well have accredited them, as they did, with the 

 power of shutting like jaws and crushing vessels that 

 attempted to pass between them, for the apparent 

 width of the intervening space changes rapidly with 

 changing perspective. Then we steamed through the 

 glorious Bosphorus, whose sides were far less built 

 upon than now, past Therapia to Constantinople, or 

 Stamboul, as it was commonly called. 



I revelled in the glory of the place and in the 

 picturesque and turbaned groups. The hotel kept by 

 Miseri was then a small establishment, more like a 

 pension. He had been courier to a connection of mine, 

 and I was taken in and made very comfortable. The 

 numerous acquaintances I picked up there and the 

 stories I heard of the current rascalities gave an 

 insight into a phase of humanity which I did not 

 esteem but was glad to know about. 



Though I am now inclined to twaddle about what 



o 



was then so new, so strange and exhilarating to me, it 

 would not interest readers who are probably familiar 

 with far more graphic accounts of this capital of the 

 East than I have skill to write. The sherbet, iced with 

 snow from the neighbouring Mount Olympus, shares, 

 I suppose, with similar sherbet at Granada, iced with 

 snow from the Sierrra Nevada, the honour of parent- 

 age to our very modern ice-creams. In my youth 

 the only good ice-cream maker in London was 

 Gunter in Berkeley Square, and the very existence of 

 such a luxury as ice-cream had then, as I know, been 

 recently scoffed at by the educated daughters of a 

 clergyman in South Wales. After about six days' 

 stay in Constantinople, I had to move onwards, taking 

 a steamer to Smyrna. Olympus stood grandly above 



