LIFE IN CONSTANTINOPLE 



523 



fessor was much surprised when I told 

 him that no member had any other tongue 

 than English, and I think he thereafter 

 began to consider our country as a sort 

 of western Austria-Hungary, in which a 

 vast Italia irredenta, together with Ger- 

 manies, Polands, Scandinavias, and other 

 east provinces, were domineered by a 

 powerful oligarchy of Anglo-Saxons. 



where; races do not mix 



His idea of Washington would apply 

 much more closely to Constantinople. Of 

 its million inhabitants — no one has yet 

 undertaken an exact census — scarcely 

 half are Turks, the other half being made 

 up of Greeks, Armenians, Jews, and 

 smaller fractions of Levantine races, to- 

 gether with considerable colonies of the 

 principal European nations. What is 

 nnost characteristic of Constantinople, 

 however, is that these various ethnic 

 groups continue to speak their own lan- 

 guages, wear their own costumes, follow 

 their own customs, and otherwise remain 

 distinct to a degree which would be incon- 

 ceivable in western Europe or America. 



New York, it is true, might better be 

 named New Cork, though New Jerusa- 

 lem would suit it very well ; and I am 

 not unaware that it contains a Chinatown, 

 a Little Italy, and other quarters where 

 the signs you see and the languages you 

 hear are from another continent. Yet 

 New York, as a whole, does not look 

 cosmopolitan, and New Yorkers have 

 little of the cosmopolitan in their make- 

 up ; for New York imposes its own code 

 on the newcomer, and has a trick of turn- 

 ing him into a New Yorker in an extraor- 

 dinarily short time. It may be sooner, 

 it may be later ; but if he has come to 

 stay he inevitably yields, or his children 

 after him, to the mysterious metamor- 

 phosis. The secret of the miracle is that 

 he is willing and anxious to yield. He 

 has come to New York with no other 

 intention than yielding. In the majority 

 of cases he has voluntarily given up his 

 own home and language and traditions 

 in order to acquire those of the New 

 World. 



NO OUTSIDER WOULD BE A TURK 



Whereas in Constantinople no outsider 

 wishes to become a Turk. Indeed, some 



of the outsiders, like the Greeks, have 

 just as good a right as the Turks to be 

 there, and in the back of their minds 

 they cherish an idea that the day will 

 come when the Turks will be there no 

 more. That is a matter which we do not 

 need to discuss ; but I state the fact as 

 illustrating the difference between two 

 attitudes, making for and against assimi- 

 lation. The Turk has never assimilated 

 except by force, and as time has gone 

 on he has offered less and less induce- 

 ment to do so. His door is one of ad- 

 vancement, but not of all advancement. 

 He does not set the standards of society. 

 He does not control more than a propor- 

 tion of the rewards of competition. 



It is not even necessary for a subject 

 of his empire to speak his language. On 

 the contrary, he himself tends more and 

 more to yield to outside influences, learn- 

 ing the languages, adopting the costume, 

 imitating the manners, of the West. 



So it is that Constantinople is a babel 

 neither modern nor medieval, not wholly 

 Asiatic and not wholly European, and 

 least of all cosmopolitan, being less a 

 metropolis than an agglomeration, a sort 

 of midway pleasaunce of provincial 

 towns. Life is one thing or another, ac- 

 cording to the world you live in. It is 

 most colored for the sojourner from the 

 West, whose own world is likely to be 

 too small for him and whose eye is more 

 open to the contrasts that surround him. 

 It were well, however, that he have a 

 sense of humor as well as an eye for the 

 picturesque, and that he add thereto a 

 disposition to take things as they come. 



STREETS UNNAMED, HOUSES UNNUMBERED 



So shall he not be too amazed when 

 he discovers, for instance, that his street 

 has no name and his house no number. 

 Those toys of the inquisitive West have 

 begun to penetrate even the reserve of 

 Stamboul ; but the real system on which 

 the addresses of Constantinople are or- 

 ganized is that of quarters — like the par- 

 ishes of Shakespeare's England. I, for 

 one, live in such and such a village of 

 the Bosphorus, in the quarter of Candle 

 Goes Not Out. Find that quarter, and 

 some one in it will be able to find me, 

 if he feel so disposed. 



