more than can be said of the houses and apartments in Pera. The Greeks and Armenians evidently do not consider bathrooms as a necessity. In fact I believe that the bathroom in this house—although in the cellar—has greatly contributed to make of the place an American headquarters ever since we gave it up.

Anyhow we took the place and we settled in it as best we could. Of course my father, my mother and my brother became our frequent visitors. My sister came to live with us so that my wife would not be too lonely when I was out during business hours. We were in a Greek section and not one of the best. A lady alone may be quite safe in Stamboul or even in a lonely house in the suburbs. But in Pera, in the midst of the riff-raff, it is not quite safe to leave her alone even during the day. My sister is about the same age as my wife and speaks fluently English, French, Italian, German and of course Turkish. This knowledge of foreign languages is not extraordinary in Turkey where everybody speaks at least three or four. But it made her very useful until my wife could pick up Turkish. It interested me beyond words to see how easy, after all, it is to establish good understanding between two people of a certain education, no matter how far apart their racial origins may be, no matter how little each one knows of the other's customs, breeding and upbringing. Language is enough to avoid serious misunderstanding, personal contact is enough to bridge any previous misconception. Here was my wife, born in New Orleans and bred in New York, who had never before been out of America, and my sister, born and bred in Turkey. The only apparent point in common between the two was that one had married the brother of the other. But between the two developed a friendship and devotion which can be built up only upon good understanding, irrespective of any legal bonds.

We were leading a very retired life at the time and the two girls were thrown entirely upon their own resources. The prevailing political conditions would have made it disagreeable and at times even unsafe to go out extensively. The city was full of British and French colonial troops—mostly Australians and Senegalese. While outwardly everything seemed calm and quiet, a sense of impending tragedy hung in the air. Vague rumors of riots and risings, reports of atrocities committed by colonial troops were circulating from mouth to mouth. Turkish newspapers appeared every morning heavily censored: nearly one blank column out of every four. A general and indefinable uneasiness prevailed. Under the circumstances we did as other Turkish families; we led a retired life, sufficient unto ourselves, and sought our distractions in small every-day happenings.

The local colour of the street we lived in, with its vendors, its Greek children playing on the sidewalks, the nearby open-air fish market, the milk man making his morning calls at the neighbouring houses and milking his goats on their doorsteps afforded us the greatest part of our distraction. We took advantage of this general lull of things to get our bearings and to become thoroughly acclimatized to our surroundings.

Thus we were as happy as could be under the circumstances and perfectly contented with our quarters, until the beautiful summer sun started to shine. Then the local colour became somewhat more than local: it became stagnant. The noise of the Greek children in the street began to resemble too much that of the tenement district in New York. The vendors and the milk men became commonplace. The sun became too warm for the fish market. The narrow streets surrounding our house—badly ventilated streets, without proper drainage, like most of the streets of Pera—developed an odor which reminded my wife of the French quarters of New Orleans, increased to the Nth. degree! To top it all a case of bubonic plague broke out in a neighbouring house. Greek quarters, with the Armenian and Jewish quarters, are the centers of contagious diseases in Constantinople.

We had already decided that we would elect for our permanent domicile Stamboul, as far removed from the Greek, Armenian, Levantine and foreign elements as possible. Stamboul is exclusively Turkish and we preferred to live in a Turkish milieu. We had succeeded in finding a house which was to be vacated in the fall It was right opposite the Sublime Porte, on a broad avenue, bordered with plane trees, typical of Stamboul. It was in a decent, quiet Turkish surrounding. It had large, airy rooms and a private Turkish bath, as is usual with all the old houses in Stamboul. True, it needed a few repairs, but we arranged with the landlord to have the floors recovered, to install electric light and telephone and to add a shower in the bathroom. The house would be ready for us in a few months. However, we decided that we could not pass the summer in Pera. We would go to visit my Father in Prinkipo, an island at commuting distance in the Sea of Marmora, where my family passed the summer and where many of my old friends lived and later we would visit my aunts, my mother's sisters, for a couple of weeks, at Erenkeuy and possibly a distant cousin of mine who lives on the Bosphorus. In this way we would make the round of the summer resorts in the neighbourhood of Constantinople. These long visits are customary in Turkey and the different members of the family expect you to make a round such as the one we considered, especially when you return after a long absence. Furthermore they were all anxious to know my wife better and we desired to tie up solidly the family bonds uniting us to our different relations before we started our new Turkish life. By this time my wife understood a little Turkish and wanted to identify herself as much as possible with her new relations.

II

SUMMER MONTHS

PRINKIPO reminds me of Bar Harbor. It is the largest of a group of four islands. It is covered with pine trees and has large and small country estates and villas scattered all over its balmy hills. It has several hotels and two beautiful clubs and many prominent Turkish families have their summer residences there. In the old days it was the Turkish resort “par excellence” as opposed to Therapia on the Bosphorus where all the embassies and foreign missions have their summer headquarters. But now the Turkish families who can still afford to live there lead a retired life, depressed as they are by the general political situation of the country and by their own much depleted finances. Therefore the Levantines, the Armenians, and especially the Greeks have invaded Prinkipo and try to crowd out the Turks from this island as they have crowded them out from Pera. They are in a better material and moral situation than the Turks for indulging in amusements and they have made of Prinkipo—which used to be in the old days a refined and distinguished resort, like Bar Harbor—a common playground for holiday makers.

Casinos, gambling houses and even less reputable institutions have lately flourished on the balmy shores of the island. On Saturdays and Sundays a noisy crowd invades the place, while on every pay-day it becomes the picnic ground of intoxicated soldiers belonging to the international navies guarding Constantinople! The day we arrived a few intoxicated British sailors were making themselves generally conspicuous and disagreeable right on the landing pier, in front of the casinos. They rushed the Italian officer commanding the police of the island, who had tried to make them behave in a manner more in harmony with their supposed mission of maintaining order and peace in a foreign country. Finally the Italian officer had to draw his