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Show Wkkimnmum iiiiiiiih yiTfflT7rwnwT .i ... I.. i,,mmm, - - v,ymw oii(e'j.itfi-'JiZxsSiKMa(emi(::w fsimasKiiifrtmtijtciiii mi-M&zxxuiuiTSii IMIift flfftflfcliMl iiMfiftllh I Wrflfl i TiiMth 11 iri U I Mi Mtin Jill : l i InM J(trAVfifii.iTtliHMlWTmTllMailfl A.LOMQ THE WATER. TOMT A STRIKING picture of street life in Saloniki, Greece, is given in a bulletin of the National Geographic society, compiled from a communication to the society from IL G. Dwlgbt. Somebody had told me that Saloniki was rather like Genoa, writes Mr. Dwight. My first impression, therefore, was of a disappointing flatness, not in the least comparable to the lofty alr the piled, bastioned, heaven-scaling air, of the Italian city. Yet Saloniki scales heaven, too, In her more discreet manner. And there is even something faintly Italian about her. This is most palpable on the broad quay of the water front, especially espe-cially when a veritable row of fisher-' men from the Adriatic are drying netV or sails under the sea wall, just as they do In Venice. The crescent of white buildings facing the blue bay would not look foreign in any Rimini or Spez-zia. Spez-zia. The White tower, which is the most conspicuous of them, might perfectly per-fectly have been the work of an Italian Ital-ian prince. Indeed, a doge of Venice is said to have built the first edition of it, and Suleiman the Magnificent employed em-ployed Venetians for his own. A "splendid palace" opens florid gates of hospitality there. A skating rink and a cinematograph offer their own more exotic entertainments to the passer-by. Cafes abound, overflowing onto the awninged sidewalk. Electric trains clang back and forth in proud consciousness of the fact that they existed ex-isted when imperial Constantinople was yet Innocent of such modernities. These cars take you around the eastern east-ern horn of the bay to the trim white suburb of Kalamaria, where consuls and other notables of Saloniki live, and where Sultan Abdul Hamid II spent nearly four bitter years in trie Italian villa Allattlni, looking out at the provincial pro-vincial capital which he and Nero embellished em-bellished In their day. On the opposite horn of the crescent is the latin-enough park of Besh Chinar (Five Plane Trees), where it is good to sip coffee and listen to music in the cool of the day. And if you did not know that-greater that-greater prize and ornament of Saloniki for Olympus, the true Thessalian Olympus Olym-pus of Greek legend, you might easily imagine it to be some white Alp or Apennlne looming magnificently across the bay. Not Wholly Italian in Looks. Look a little closer, however, and this Italian appearing town has unfamiliar un-familiar details. The white campanili that everywhere prick up above the roofs of weathered red are too slender and too pointed for true bell towers. Then, as you land at the quay you perceive per-ceive that the electric cars are labeled in strange alphabets. The cafes do not look quite as they should, either. As for the people in them, a good many would pass without question. Just such slight and trim young men in Italy would sit at little tables on the sidewalk. side-walk. Just such young women, rather pale and powdered as to complexion, rather dusky as to eyes and hair, would sit beside them. And you hear a good deal of Italian. But you hear more of other and less familiar languages. lan-guages. And those red fezzes are a new note. So are those more numerous numer-ous hay-colored uniforms that sat at no cafe in my Italian days. A morn striking note is afforded by numerous dignified old gentlemen taking tak-ing their ease in their bathrobes, ns it were, slit a little up the side and tied about the waist with a gay silk girdle. Over the bathrobe they usually wear a long, open coat lined with yellow fur, which guards them from the cold in winter and In the summer from heat. And none of them is without a string of beads, preferably of amber, dangling from his hand and giving him something some-thing to play with. Queerly Garbed Old Ladies. Such an old gentleman should be accompanied ac-companied by an old lady, who contributes con-tributes what is most characteristic to the local color of Saloniki. The foundation foun-dation of her costume is a petticoat of some dark silk, and a white bodice crossed below her throaf a very thin bodice, cut very low at the neck and palpably unsMffened by any such mail as western women arm themselves with. Over this superstructure the old lady wears a dark skirt bolero lined with fur and two striped silk aprons one before and one behind. The latter is caught up on one side, some corner of it being apparently tucked into a mysterious mys-terious pocket. But the crown and glory of the old lady is her headdress a sort of flat frame, tightly wound about with a stamped or embroidered handkerchief, and crowned with an oval plaque set off by seed pearls. Whatever its color, this creation invariably in-variably ends in a fringed tail of dark g.een silk, also ornamented by a gilt or gold plaque of seed pearls, hanging half way down the old lady's back. In this wonderful tail she keeps her hair, of which you see not a scrap, unless at the temples. And about her throat she wears strings and strings of more seed pearls. She is, this decorative, this often extremely ex-tremely handsome old lady, a mother in Israel. The old gentleman in the gaberdine is her legitimate consort, while many of the modernized young people at the cafe tables are their descendants de-scendants very many. A dozen different differ-ent estimates of the population are given, varying according to the race of the informant; but they all agree on the point that Saloniki contains not far from 150,000 people, and that more than half of them are Jews. |