the family. In the old days when the ladies did not associate with men they used to live in the main house or in a part of the house, generally the best, where they had their own sitting-rooms, dining-rooms, boudoirs, etc., distinct from the sitting-room, dining-room or den of the men of the family. When I speak of “ladies" and “men” in the plural it is well to remember it was and still is the custom in Turkey for all the members of the same family to live together under the same roof. The Turkish family is a sort of a clan. So while there are always many ladies in a family, foreigners must not imagine that there are many “wives.” This is a true narrative of Turkey and the Turks as they really are, so I have to speak the truth even at the risk of shattering many legends. I am bound therefore not to fall in line with the traditions established by other writers who never fail to refer to a servant in a Turkish household as being a “slave,” and to the ladies of a Turkish family as being “wives.” The truth is that slavery was not generally practised in Turkey even before the Civil War in America, and the “wives” referred to by most of the foreign writers either exist only in their imagination or else are the sisters, sisters-in-law, daughters or cousins of the head of the family which foreign writers innocently or purposely represent as his wives. Of course there might be several wives in the same household—but not the wives of the same man. For instance, when we were visiting my father in Prinkipo, there were four “wives” living together: my father's, my uncle's, my cousin's and my own wife. Anyhow I warned my wife that she would see in Erenkeuy a “harem” in the Turkish sense of the word and not the kind of private cabaret which exists only in the fertile imagination of scenario writers, and in the ludicrous pages of sensational newspapers or dime novels.

Erenkeuy is a little village at about half an hour ride from Constantinople and on the Asiatic side. The shores of Anatolia are here covered with country estates uniting small villages all the way from Scutari to Maltepe—a distance of about fifteen miles and all except Cadikeuy and Moda are peopled with Turks. The Turks living here are mostly conservatives. They are not old fashioned and narrow but they have kept to the Turkish ways of living more accurately than the Turks living in other sections or suburbs of Constantinople. It really cannot be explained but there is here an indefinable something that makes you feel that you are in Turkey more than you do in any other suburb of Constantinople. Perhaps it is only due to the fact that you are on the hospitable soil of Anatolia.

Suburban trains running on the famous Bagdad railroad take you to Erenkeuy. I again had a jolt on these trains. In the old days the company belonged to the Germans and was run by the Germans. But it endeavoured not to arouse the susceptibility of the Turks by flaunting in their faces that it was a foreign company. All the employees on the train wore the fez, the national Turkish headgear, and the greatest majority of them were Turks. Now the Allies have replaced the Germans and have taken over the railroad as part of Germany's war indemnity towards them. The result is that their systematic campaign of humiliating the Turks has been practised even here. The new Allied administration employs mostly Greeks and Armenians—and all the employees of the company now wear caps. Really the difference between caps or fezzes is only one of form, but it has a psychological effect. For instance, even in my case, although I dislike the fez as a most unpracticable and unbecoming headgear, and although I have worn hats the greater part of my life I could not help resenting the change: it rubbed me the wrong way. It made me most vividly feel as if we were not the masters in our own homes—at least temporarily in Constantinople and its environs.

We arrived in Erenkeuy in the afternoon on one of those beautifully clear days-which make of the fall almost the most pleasant season of Constantinople. The air was mildly heated by an autumnal sun shining in a marvellously blue sky. The leaves of the plane trees surrounding the station had turned golden red and had become scarce on the branches. Even now some were volplaning to the earth on the wings of a gentle fall breeze. The square in front of the station, with its clean little shops—each a diminutive bazaar of its own—opened itself smilingly to us as we emerged from the train with our baggage. In the background we could see the little mosque where villagers were entering for their afternoon prayer.

We decided to walk to my aunt's house, which is not far from the station. Besides, it was prayer time and we should avoid arriving while the whole household was at prayer. We heaped our luggage in a carriage—a typically Asiatic conveyance with bright coloured curtains hanging from a wooden canopy and with seats char-a-banc fashion. It disappeared in a cloud of dust to the gallop of its sturdy little Anatolian horse. My wife was delighted, this was at last Turkey somewhat as she had imagined it to be. But what would happen to our bags if the coachman was not honest? Had I a receipt? Didn't the coachman give me a check? At least I had taken the number of the carriage, hadn't I? I reassured my wife: the coachman was not a Greek—he was not even a taxicab driver of one of the “civilized” western metropolises. He was a plain Turk, just an Anatolian peasant, and our luggage was as safe in his keeping as it would be in the strong box of a bank.

We leisurely followed the carriage through a little country road bordered by garden walls on both sides. High stone walls, white washed, protected the privacy of the gardens from the glances of passers-by. A big gate here, a half-opened door there would give us a glimpse of houses, small or large, surrounded with trees—elm trees, plane trees, fig trees, cedars and cypresses—whose dark branches enshrouded the houses in a mystery of falling leaves. The only house of which we could get a full view from the road was a little old house, with a slanting brick roof, an enclosed balcony hanging high in the air and supported by arched pillars, a cobbled courtyard where a few hens were picking their feed while a big brown dog, a relic of the old street dogs, was peacefully sleeping. It was at the corner of a street, its gate wide opened, and there was only one big old tree in the garden. The others must have died of old age, and the owner must have been too poor to replace them.

The road we followed was dusty and almost deserted, with deep furrows left by chariots, carts and carriages since the beginning of time. In winter the rain and the snow turned the soft, pinkish Anatolian soil into a greasy mud and every winter, ever since the days of the Janissaries, chariots, carts and carriages had passed on these roads, furrowing always deeper. One felt as if the clock of time had stopped here years ago. An acute sense of the living past permeated everything.

On our way my wife asked me to tell her something of my aunt's family. Our surroundings reminded me of old stories and I told her the story as told to us by my grandmother when we were tiny little boys. I used to love it as it opened before my mind vast visions of heroic ages. “Centuries ago,” I told my wife, “there lived a young man, almost a boy, in the faraway mountains of Anatolia, bordering the snow-covered peaks of the Caucasus. He was tall and handsome but did not marry because he had to support his old father and mother who were so old and so poor that they could only sit on their divans all day and pray the Almighty to call them back to him so that their boy might be left free