collected my strings again, suspecting that they had not been out of Asturah's belt pocket since the day I gave them to him. You ought to see those belts! The natives take a square of wool material with a striped blue and brown and red Persian design, fold it corner-wise, and attach one end to their potato-sack trousers. Then they wind this affair around and around their middle and fasten it on the other side. The shawl is pretty big to begin with. They keep an amazing number and variety of things in the fold of this belt; dagger, package of bread and cheese and olives for lunch, and a little brass contrivance for holding pen and ink. There is really some sense to this kind of a belt in a blow-cold, blow-hot country, for it keeps tummies warm and protects from intestinal troubles. No wonder natives get along without expensive Jaeger cholera belts.

This time I sent Socrates with my strings to the tinsmith in the bazaar. He made me a tin affair according to my measurements. Baby's bathtub. Next I sent the bathtub to the Fellahin with orders to make a basket covering for it, the same shape as the "tin dish" to protect it during a long journey we expected soon to take. The weaver then had in his mind's eye just how tub and basket would be strapped on one side of a pack-saddle. For these people, a journey means going somewhere on horseback. When we sail for Marseilles in June, I will put the tub into the basket, pillows, didies and mattress into the tub, cover the whole with a Turkish cradle shawl we bought yesterday, and fasten it with a big strap. The cradle shawl is two yards square, made of coarse woolen material. If you please, it is dyed brilliant red and green, with alternating checks. How is that for something dainty for a baby? In the middle of the shawl, about a yard apart, are round buttonholes. One is worked in green and the other red. A native mother would hitch these buttonholes to little pegs that stand up at either end of the box-like affair she uses for a cradle to protect the baby inside from fresh air. Germs are carefully tucked into the cradle with the baby. Never mind, I am going to give my cradle shawl a good cleaning, and I expect it will serve me well as outer covering for the package I shall make of the tub and bed and bedding. I must plan thoughtfully for that journey. It will be worth while to do this because we have to go to Egypt in order to get a good boat for Marseilles and that makes a twelve-day voyage.

Cotton crops are coming in. I bought a pile, and had a man fluff it up with a stringed instrument that looks for all the world like a giant's violin bow. On the first windless day I put it on a sheet, spread out in the tennis court, for a day's sunshine. The sunshine here reminds me of Nice at its best.

In the bazaar I bought white material, something like piqué. When I washed and ironed it, I cut out two oval pieces a little larger than the bottom of the basket, joined the two ovals with a band five inches wide, stuffed this with the cotton,—and behold a jolly little mattress! Lucky thing I am so attached to those two wee pillows I had at college. Lucky, too, that I bought a new set of pillow cases for them before I left home. After I find suitable material and make a pair of blankets, my cradle will be ready. When the Queen of Holland's baby comes, it won't find a better bed.

We have been laughing at Daddy and Mother Christie. One night there was chicken for dinner, and by accident not quite enough to go around. Daddy fussed and made jokes, and we soon forgot all about it. Not so Daddy. He went to the bazaar, and came home with the announcement that he had bought one hundred chickens. Boys were hastily put to work to make a pen, and fenced off a run! The chickens arrived that same afternoon, and Daddy laid down the law to the two chaps who were to take care of them. He said his chickens would cost the school nothing. He was paying for them out of his Civil War pension. The chickens were photographed. Dr. Christie had a lot of prints made and sent to America. On the back of each photograph he wrote: "The lay workers of Tarsus." Now he has the laugh on all of us. The photographs and Daddy's inscription have already brought in much more money in gifts to the college than the chickens and photographs and postage cost. Typical! Such a darling he is. He looks like Carnegie. If he had Carnegie's fortune, we should have to call him Daddy Christmas.

This is a great life. We may have evil-tasting fat made of melted-down sheep-tails, and no butter for our bread, but there are bowls of thirst-quenching bonny-clabber and rolled pats of buffalo cream. The rice may be half-cooked, and the bread may taste sour, but almost any day I can send to the kitchen where the students' food is prepared and get a plate of bulgur made of coarse ground wheat. We have fresh figs stewed or raw and honeysweet, and oh, the oranges. I am guilty of one "notion." I eat quantities of these golden oranges, about fourteen a day. I may feel the limitations of life in Turkey in many ways, but until I outgrow them, I can put on my khaki riding things, swing into my Mexican saddle and at sunset ride like the wind across the Cilician Plain with the crying of jackals and the chant of the muezzins in my ears. The law of compensation is a fact, my dear, and let me tell you this—don't feel sorry for missionaries.