a sign-painter, got aboard as a steerage passenger. His original intention was to walk from Schiurschewo to Bukureschti in search of work; but we became acquainted on the steamer, and on learning my intention to walk through Bulgaria, he decided to walk with me. I was very glad to have his company. The uncouth people among whom we tramped spoke only Bulgarian and Turkish. It was a relief, after so long a silence, to have even a Handwerksbursch to converse with.

After pedestrian trips through flowery Italy, through picturesque Switzerland, and through Germany between the two lines of fruit-trees which in that country adorn the highwaysafter all this, it was a sad change to the sandy, shadeless roads of Bulgaria. The dilapidated villages in Mexico which excited my wonder when in that country a few years ago are palatial in comparison to the villages of Bulgaria. The houses are made of sun-dried mud; the roofs are thatched, not in a workmanlike manner, but covered loosely with straw or hay. They are not above six feet high. I think a hard rain would dissolve and wash away a Bulgarian peasant village. The people in these villages seemed to have nothing in particular to do. They sit on the shady side of their huts gazing idly at the parched fields around them. Occasionally we saw women threshing wool with twig brooms. The men did no threshing, but they appeared quite pleased with looking at the women thresh.

The heat was so intense we tried walking in the night and sleeping in the day. Walking at night was all right, but not so with the sleeping in the day. It was impossible to sleep under that burning sun, so we were compelled to give up the plan. My companion Ludwig ran short of money. My own supply was dwindling down to so fine a point I was unable to

ductive directions. Another three or four years are lost as Handwerksburschen, so that the German and Austrian mechanic is twenty-five or twenty-seven years old before he settles down and begins the real business of life. This tardiness in becoming producers, together with their inordinate fondness for beer, are, in the opinion of many, two very important causes of the unsatisfactory condition of German labor.

help him. We agreed to stop at the little town SindschereKujudschuk for Ludwig to get work, if possible, to replenish his funds. It was a forlorn hope. That wretched, baked little town looked as if it had never even seen a sign. The signpainter's occupation was not gone-it had never existed. From noon (the hour of our arrival) until bedtime we strolled through the rambling streets, Ludwig stopping at every shop, explaining as best he could his trade and asking for work. At every place the same reception was met-a stare and shake of the head. One man, a dealer in cowhides, chickens, and eggs, spoke a little German.

"Where are you from?" he asked Ludwig.

Ludwig told him.

"And where is your friend from?" pointing at me. "From America."

"America?" repeated the cowhide dealer. "Where is America ?"

Where is America? When a small boy I could answer glibly enough, but I failed in my attempt to make that worthy Bulgarian understand the whereabouts and immense importance of my native land.

The next day we set out on the sandy road, glad to be rid of that little town with the big name and unspeakable shopkeepers, who did not have the good taste to adorn their stores with one of Ludwig's artistic signs. In the first bauerdorf (peasantvillage) another halt was made, this time not with the hope of getting work at his trade, but with the idea of turning "Landsmann," as Ludwig expressed it; that is, working in the fields. In our blouses and knapsacks we doubtless looked as strange to them as they in their heavy boots and short white skirts appeared to us. On neither side was there too much confidence. We managed, however, to come across a man who had not gathered all his grapes. The heat was injuring them, and he agreed to give Ludwig four piasters a day. The ordinary pay of a field-hand in Bulgaria is ten or twelve piasters a day-fifty or sixty cents. I was so disgusted at the fellow's attempt to

take a mean advantage, that I advised Ludwig to let his grapes alone, and see the man in a hotter place than we then were in, rather than do his work for twenty cents a day. I had made a careful calculation, and thought that with economy I could help Ludwig, and still make my funds hold out until I received my next remittance at Kijew, Russia. Accordingly, the plan of getting work in the interior of Bulgaria was abandoned. Indeed, at any other time the idea of working for even ten piasters a day would have seemed preposterous; but we were now living on ten or twelve cents a day, and in relation to the cost of living, ten piasters-forty-eight cents-was by no means a ridiculous figure.

We had little to do with the inhabitants along the way. We could not speak their language, and they seemed little inclined to show us kindness or hospitality. When our provisions gave out, we bought bread and grapes. The latter were very cheap, and were refreshing. They were similar in taste and shape to the Malaga grape, only much sweeter. We paid twenty-five para the ocho-about one and one-third cents the pound. This was simple diet-bread and grapes. Lovers of roast-meat and juicy beefsteaks think hard work or active exercise cannot long continue on a bread-and-fruit diet. I think my pedestrian tour proves the contrary. I walked twenty-five miles a day for days at a time, living the while entirely on black bread and grapes, figs or other fruit. On those hot marches through Bulgaria, I have no doubt but that it was the simple and wholesome diet of bread and grapes which enabled us to stand the fatigue, and even to improve in health and vigor.

We passed a lot of rude stones marking the place where lie the remains of many of the French soldiers who died during the Crimean war, of cholera and other diseases, and then tramped, dusty and tired, into Varna, on the Black Sea. The same afternoon we boarded the Austrian steamer for Constantinople.

CHAPTER XIX.

THE STEERAGE TO CONSTANTINOPLE.-A TURKISH FLIRTATION.SEARCH FOR CHEAP QUARTERS.—THE GREEK RESTAURANT.—A BILL OF FARE IN FOUR LANGUAGES.-HOW I SAW THE SULTAN AHMED MOSQUE FOR ONE HUNDRED PARA.

Ar the time of which I am writing there was cholera in Spain. I do not know that there was cholera anywhere else; nevertheless, the Sultan, who is morbidly afraid of cholera, had ordered a quarantine against vessels from Varna, and for two days we lay at anchor in the Bosporus, so near and yet so far.

There was a Bulgarian ex-Jew in the steerage who aided not a little to pass the time. He was a thorough German scholar, well read in history and philosophy. We had grand discussions on the Darwinian theory. The ex-Jew was a Christian missionary in the Turkish capital. I did not understand then, and certainly do not know now, how he made the two beliefs compatible, but he declared his implicit faith in the Mosaic account of the creation and in Mr. Darwin's theory as to the evolution of the species. When not discussing philosophical questions with the Bulgarian missionary, I watched the strange characters around me. There was one fellow, a Tartar, with extraordinarily strong lungs. He sat, or rather squatted, cross-legged on the deck for hours together, singing all the while a hideous and monotonous chant. His complexion was a muddy yellow, his hair was coarse and straight like that of a horse's tail. There were half a dozen other Tartars in his party, but fortunately they refrained from singing. Had they all made the same horrible noise at once, I would have been deafened for life.

A treacherous-looking Turk with an unusually long, dirty

beard and dirty turban had his wife with him. She was swaddled from the crown of her head to the tips of her toes in a kind of loose gown. The end of her nose, which stuck out just enough to get a whiff of fresh air, was all of her that was visible. The old Turk watched her jealously from morning till night; he rarely spoke to her, merely treated her as a piece of valuable baggage, seeming to think it sufficient if he kept her unpolluted by the impious gaze of Christians. Once I took my knapsack to the corner of the deck where the poor thing had been sitting all day, without daring so much as to move, and squatting down near the railing, I took out my pen and ink and note-book, and under pretence of writing watched her narrowly. I discovered that she was young and pretty. There were some figs in a paper in her lap. Thinking me too busy with my writing to see her, she lifted her veil to eat the fruit. She had an exquisitely shaped mouth, and the whitest, prettiest teeth I ever saw. Her complexion was soft and creamy, her eyes black and dancing. I did not take her to be above seventeen years old. The hoary old Turk, old enough to be her grandfather, had doubtless just bought this young and beautiful girl to displace an old and withered wife. So absorbed did I become in these observations and speculations that I did not stop to think what the husband might have to say of my sitting so near his valuable freight. I was called to myself in a way more startling than pleasant. While gazing at her as she bit off the stems of the figs with her dazzling teeth and admiring her bright eyes, and wondering at her curiously dyed finger-nails and eyebrows, there was a whiz, a flash, and the same instant a big watermelon burst on the railing eighteen inches from my head.

I looked and saw the Turk glaring like an infuriated beast. That portion of the vessel no longer had charms for me. I left. After that the poor slave was guarded more strictly than ever. Until quarantine was raised, she hardly moved from her pallet in the corner by the ship's railing. At certain hours her villanous old husband turned his face to the East, and prayed and prostrated himself, and thumped his head on the deck. Ex