with candles, and
told us in Turkish what an honor we were doing their house, all of
which touched me deeply. I wondered how many people I would have
assisted up to _our_ roof if _my_ clothes were tied up in sheets in
the hall, with the fire not a square away!

Fortunately, it came no nearer, and from that high, flat roof we
watched the seething mass of yellow flames grow less and less and then
go completely under control. It was Providence which did it, however,
and not the Constantinople fire department, with its little streams of
water the size of slate-pencils!

The dogs were one of the sights we were anxious to see; the Sultan was
the other. We found the bazaars more fascinating than either. But we
wanted to photograph the Sultan--chiefly, I think, because it was
forbidden. I have an ever-present unruly desire to do everything which
these foreign countries absolutely forbid. But everybody said we could
not. So we very meekly went to see him go to prayers, and left our
cameras with the kavass. We had, with our customary good fortune, a
window directly in front of the Sultan's gate, not twenty feet from
the door of the mosque.

"If I had that camera here I could get him, and _nobody_ would know!"
I declared.

"But there are so many spies," our Turkish friend said. "It would be
too dangerous."

We waited, and waited, and waited. Never have the hours seemed so
mortally long as they seemed to us as we watched the hands of the
clock crawl past luncheon-time, hours and hours later than the Sultan
was announced to pray, and still no Sultan. His little six-and
seven-year old sons, in the uniform of colonels, were mounted on
superb Arabian horses. These horses had tails so long that servants
held them up going through the mud, as if they were ladies' trains.
The children were dear things, with clear olive complexions and soft,
dark eyes--Italian eyes. Then they grew tired of waiting, and
dismounted, and came up to where we were, and shook hands in the
sweetest manner. My companion was for coaxing the little one into her
lap, but she looked somewhat staggered when I reminded her that she
would be trotting the colonel of the regiment on her knee.

Then more cavalry came, and more bands, playing a little the worst of
any that I ever heard, and we impatiently thrust our heads out of the
window, thinking, of course, the Sultan was coining, but he was not.
Then some infantry with white leggings and stiff knee-joints, with