The Birmingham age-herald., 1916-11-29

MW 2S.-(Special)-A striking pic-
 ture of street life in Saloniki, Greece, is given in a war geography bull letin of the National Geographic society, compiled from a communication to the society from H. G. Dwight.
 Somebody had told me that Salonik1 was rather like Genoa," writes MT. Dwight. My first impression, therefore, was of disappointing flatness, not in the least comparable to the lofty air--the piled, bastioned, heaven-scalling air-of the Italian city Yet Salonilli scales heaven, too, in her more discreet man. ner.
 And there is even something faintly Italian about her. This is most palpable on the broad quay of the water front, especially when veritable row of fish, ermen from the Adriatic are drying nets do in Venice. The crescent of white buildings facing the blue bay would not look foreign in any Rimini or Spezzia.
 "The white tower, which is the most conspicuous of them,p might perfectly have been the work of an Italian prince. have built the first edition of it. and Suleiman the Magnificent employed Vene- tians for his own.
 "A splendid palace opens flortd gates of hospitality there. A skating rink and a cinematograph offer their own more exotic entertainments to the pass er-by. Cafes abound, overflowing onto the awninged sidewalk. Electric trans clang back and forth in proud conscious ness of the fact that they existed when imperial Constantinople was yet innocent of such modernities.
 "These cars take you around the 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 the Italian villa Allattini, looking out at the prov incial capital which he and Nero em- bellished in their day. On the opposite horn of the crescent Is the Latin-enough park of Besh Chinar-five plane trees where 1t is good to sip coffee and listen to music in the cool of the day.
 And if you did not know that greater prize and ornament of SalonilSi for Olym- pus, the true Thessalian Olympus of Greek legend. you might easily imagine it to be some white Alp or Apennine looming magnificently across the bay.
 Look little closer, however, and this Italian appearing town has unfamiliar details. The white campanili that ev- anywhere prick up above the roofs or weathered red are too slender and too you land at the quay, you perceive 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, good many would pass without question. 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 good deal of Italian. But you hear more of other and less familiar languages. And those red fezzes are new note. So are those more numerous hay-colored uniforms that sat at no cafe in my Italian days
 "A more striking note is afforded by numerous dlgnfied old gentlemen talk ing their ease in their bathrobes, as 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 win ter 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 to play with.
 "Such an old gentleman should be ac- companied by an old lady, who con- tributes what is most characteristic to the local color of Saloniki. The founda- tion of her costume is petticoat of some dark silk. and white bodice crossed below her throat-a very thin bodice, cut very low at the neck and palpably unstiffened by any such mail as western women arm themselves with.
 lover this superstructure the old lady wears dark satin bolero lined with