ROUND ABOUT TARSUS
April fourth, Nineteen-Nine.
Dearest Mother:
I haven't written since I told you the biggest news a girl can give her mother, and then I was so full of it that I did not answer the questions your letters have been re-iterating for many months. What is Tarsus like? What sort are the people, and your school boys? What do you and Herbert do with yourselves out there in that God-forsaken country? It is precisely because we have been trying to find out all about Tarsus and get to know the people and the boys that I have neglected writing. That is part of the reason. The biggest part has to do with horses. You know how we love to ride—and here we have learned what it really means to ride. It isn't a genteel afternoon tea parade through a park where every one you meet is as sick of seeing you and the park as you are sick of seeing them and the park. When conventional city folk look at a bird or an animal in a cage, and are sorry for the poor thing, it is only another sign of lack of realization as well as of imagination. With my teas and balls and clothes I was blissfully happy at home: but so was our canary. Neither of us knew any better, for we knew only our prison.
We have been round about Tarsus everywhere, and every day, rain or shine. There is very little of the former. From the moment of our arrival in Mersina last August, aside from an hour or so in the morning of tennis, and an occasional visit to the bazaars, all our out-of-doors has been on horse. We have explored the city and the neighborhood, and have tried the roads on the Plain in every direction. Herbert's sky-piloting in Idaho gave him a taste for restless stallion mounts, and I encourage it. Mastering horses is training for mastering men. There is nothing in the world better for the teacher than to ride high-spirited horses. The other day we took out a new horse Henri Imer is thinking of buying. We had him from a villager, who declared the horse was in a town for the first time. It was true! For he shied at every little thing. I tried him first, and had great fun making him go through crowded streets and the bazaars. The noise in the copper and tin bazaar drove him wild. But I had him in hand: for Turkish bits give you the hold. He did not like the butcher stalls. Such a time. It cost me ten piastres to the indignant butcher to get the better of the horse. But I did it by making him go straight up and rub his nose in freshly-cut pot-roasts. There was no danger for pedestrians. In Turkey the people are used to camels and horses and buffaloes "acting regardless." Pedestrians know how to get out of the way.
Coming home, Herbert was trying the fractious beast. We took him around by a water-wheel which we call the "third degree." It is our final stunt in town-breaking a village horse. The water-wheel stands almost at right-angles with the road. Its little buckets dip up the water and empty some ten feet above into an irrigation trench. The hub of the wheel screeches and the buckets keep up a clank-clank, accompanied by a thud as they go into the water and a sucking sound as they come out. The road is narrow—brook on one side and wall on the other. Over the wall protrude branches of a tree, wrapped round by hanging vines. It is low bridge for fair. Herbert, leaning over the neck of the frightened beast, had all kinds of trouble. We knew the animal had no intention of falling into the stream. Horses don't. The horse, however, refused to pass the wheel. Each time he backed Pony and me some yards down the road. Finally Herbert lost his whip. It fell into the stream. Herbert looked relieved. But you know, Mother, the elemental in me would not allow me to see a horse get the better of my man. I gave Herbert my whip. He tried again, and got by. Pony, who had long ago received "the third degree" when we first discovered that wheel, followed easily.
Alas, the days of horseback have passed for me until next summer.
The other day we made a second trip to the sea, this time in a carriage. Socrates was on the box, and Herbert was gallant enough to forego his mount and ride with me.
Halfway we stopped at a tchiflik (farm-house) to water the horses and try to buy eggs. Every farmer has half a dozen dogs—ugly fellows that give low growls. They hate you the way their Mohammedan masters hate you. After the tenant of the farm-house had driven back his dogs, he surprised us by showing unusual friendliness. We asked for eggs. He said he had none. This we knew was cheerful mendacity: so we pressed him further. Finally he brought us a whole basket of eggs, saying that he ought not to sell them, because he was supposed to send them all to the town to Pasha Somebody or Other. As we were leaving, we put a coin into his hand. He would not take it! Socrates gave it to a little girl who was apparently the child of the tenant. Some superstition made the father hesitate to take the money directly from us.
Farther along, a lone dead tree twisted itself above the masonry of a typical oriental well of ancient origin. As we stopped our carriage a moment, we saw a solitary owl sitting motionless on a loosened stone. When we drove on, the owl turned his head slowly following us, like a spirit of a forgotten century resenting with superb unconcern the investigating energy of modern times. A flock, no, I ought to call it a whole nation, of wild geese was quietly standing, undisturbed by our approach and arranged in little groups as if according to tribes, although all were facing the same way. They looked like the men of different counties in the same state—drawn up in military line and waiting for orders. Herbert and Socrates growled because they had no guns with them. I was glad that such perfect unity did not have to be broken up just to amuse us.
When we reached the sea the old gray horse wanted to have another roll in the sand. The last time he had seen the sand was the day he tried to roll with me on his back. Socrates unhitched the horses, and soon it was time for luncheon. We settled ourselves on steamer rugs and unpacked our provisions. We had tea made in my tea-basket and cold turkey, the remains of Sunday dinner. When lunch was finished, Herbert and I took a long walk on the beach. It was a blustery day when sunshine alternates with low swiftly-moving clouds. Ahead of us was the town of Mersina, a curved line of mingled flat roofs and slender minarets. A mile out to sea lay half a dozen ships, and we knew that there must be mail for us in Mersina.
After we turned back towards the place where our camp was, we could see beyond it a ramshackle structure, lonely and abandoned now—since the New Constitution. Here used to be stationed a guard—not a Life Saving Guard, such as we should have in a similar place—a guard whose whole duty it was to watch for Armenians, who chose this part of the seashore to escape in small boats. From here it was comparatively easy to get a ship and go away from Turkey forever. There was romance, as well as adventure, in these escapes. A young Armenian found means to go to America, and there made plenty of money. Back here on this Cilician Plain a girl was waiting. The man saved up enough to come back and get the girl. His friends smuggled her out to the ship, a missionary was pressed into service, and a wedding at sea took place. The bride and groom sailed away, returning to New York or Chicago, to live happily ever afterwards. You see the young man had become an American citizen. If he landed on Turkish soil, the new citizenship would have been lost. That is why his bride had to go out to the ship to be married. The guard-house must have frequently intercepted such weddings: for it is built where it commands the coast Mersina-wards.
On the way home we saw a great deal of black smoke. This meant some people were having fun driving wild boar out of the swamps. You get natives for "beaters," build fires through the canebrake, and then you wait patiently. There is sure to be a reward if your "beaters" don't take the stick or the shot before you get your spear or your gun ready. The last time we were visiting the British Consul in Mersina, the Doughty-Wylies took us pig-sticking. After making elaborate arrangements, with any number of native "beaters" in tow, the best shot of the day was lost just this way. The "beaters" did not remember that their job was to beat—not to steal shots they were paid to let slip.
It began to rain. But we didn't care. It was a slanting rain and fortunately dashed against the back of the carriage. We had rugs and coats: so the rain was an addition to the fun. We were careful to protect our driftwood, of which we had gathered enough to make two or three glorious fires. That evening we burned the driftwood, only to be disappointed. Of wonderful colors we got not one flicker. Is this another superstition disproved?
When Herbert writes the letter about Tarsus that he has long been talking about, but never gets down to, he will probably say much about the bazaars. But I am now going to anticipate him. Why not? I have only the typewriter to console me for having to give up my horse. Anyway, we may get away from here and into other things before Herbert tackles Tarsus. I am still waiting to see his letter on the trip he took to the Holy Land.[2]
There are very few women in the bazaars. None at all are engaged in selling. Turkish ladies never go. Rarely one sees Armenian and Fellahin women buying. When the time came to get Christmas gifts for Herbert, I did the markets with one of the Seniors. It is perfectly proper for me to go to the bazaars. Foreign women are a different order of beings, absolutely beyond the comprehension of the natives. They look at me as if I had dropped from Mars. I suppose they consider me a sexless being, resembling their women only in the lack of a soul. Menfolks in Turkey, you know, have a corner on souls. Herbert and I have a great deal of fun as we walk about Tarsus.
But I was telling you about my Christmas shopping. I took Harutun, my Senior, to the markets half a dozen times. You cannot go to a shop and select the thing you want, then ask the price and have it sent home. Oh, no! You go, and appear to be looking at something else, and let your attention be attracted to the thing you really want—by merest chance. Even then you do not mention this to the merchant. You simply say to your English-speaking boy: "See that little brass bowl in the opposite corner of the shop? I will give him eight piastres for it." Boy says: "Yes, Mrs. Gibbons," and you turn up your nose a little higher as the merchant urges upon you the purchase of some other thing you do not intend to buy. You draw yourself up to your full majestic height, incline your head backward the least little bit, raise your hand in a queenly waving aside, give a little click with your tongue, perhaps emphasizing it by exclaiming in good Turkish: "Yok" (which being interpreted means "nothing doing, old man"), and then you indifferently withdraw, followed by your boy. Next day Harutun sends another boy, who gets your brass bowl for about one-quarter the price you'd paid if you had insisted on buying it yourself. That is how shopping is done in the Orient. In this way I got Herbert a fine old copper tray and a queer pitcher-like thing to go with it. I found two coins whose owner did not appreciate them, and these I had made into a pair of cuff-links. A tiny silver cup, about an inch and a half in diameter, with the dearest little carved handle, was the best thing of all. We use it on our desk as a place to keep pens. I pursued a camel-train, and after a great deal of intrigue came into possession of several camel-bells. These are especially interesting to us because they were bought right off the camel. It reminded me of pig-tail days in the Engadine, when I followed a pretty cow home to her owner's chalet, and bought the bell on her neck.
Tarsus markets are cosmopolitan. You can find a dozen races rubbing elbows there. The predominating four are Turks, Arab Fellahin, Armenians and Greeks. There is a babel of these four tongues. One hears also Russian, Persian, Hindustani and Italian. We manage with French in Mersina, but it is little spoken in Tarsus. The Turkish language rules in inter-racial transactions. Armenians must use this language. Educated Armenians struggle valiantly to maintain the two surviving elements of national identity: the church and the language. But oddly enough the mother-tongue of the average Armenian is Turkish. Greek has a strong hold upon the Greeks here. It is something like the tenacious hold of the French language in Canada. The Fellahin speak a form of Arabic, but are too ignorant to care whether they make themselves understood or not. Some weeks ago Jeanne Imer and I were being carefully escorted through a Fellahin village by one of the students. Suddenly a little boy ran into the road. He took hold of my bridle, looked up at me with a winning smile, and said: "From where you come? From America?" Imagine my surprise. I was delighted to hear my own language away off here in the outskirts of the town. I reached into my coat pocket, pulled out an orange, and gave it to the little fellow. He said "Thank you" most politely. I found afterwards that there is a mission school in the quarter of Tarsus nearest where these people live. The child was evidently a pupil. But wasn't it cute of him to spot me for an American!
To-day my rooms are getting an extra house-cleaning, and I have two boys hard at work. One is washing three of my rugs. He has, as little Cousin Myers used to say, "his bare feet on." He jumps up and down on the wet, soapy rugs; then pounds them with a big flat stick that looks like a cricket-bat. They are certainly getting clean—though I doubt whether you and I should adopt that method if we had the job. The boys are trying to talk Armenian to each other. They try hard. But they cannot help falling into Turkish. For in this part of Turkey their mother-tongue is the language of their oppressors—the badge of servitude.
Armenians of breeding and education foster their language with all their heart and soul. There is a desperate attempt to preserve the national unity, always with the opposition of the terrible Turks! The Armenians have natural ability along the line of enterprise and making money, but this has been so curbed by the oppressor that even stout hearts have given up and lapsed into a paralysis of the will that would be contemptible if one did not understand it. Under favorable circumstances, when the Armenian has been given a square deal, he is successful. He is a born merchant. This is proved when he goes to another country where his enterprise can have its own way.
We met a fine young fellow in Adana not long ago. He had come home to see about the education of a little sister in the mission school in Adana. He was in America only six years, but has come back thoroughly Americanized, with a lot of money earned as a candy drummer. He is a good example of our young American hustler who is almost blatantly successful. It was refreshing to meet him, for he sounded like home. The appearance of such a man among his old associates causes considerable dissatisfaction, for he has made more money in this short time than his cousins and brothers can make in a lifetime. The educators of Armenian boys have a problem before them. Are they going to educate the boys in order to encourage them to go to America? Isn't the reason for having the schools to help these people to a better life in their own country? Why educate the bright boys at all, if it is not to equip them to spend their lives for the good of their countrymen? Yet, what can you answer to the pathetic and conclusive argument that the educated Armenian has no chance for advancement, so long as Armenia is under Turkish rule? They really have no chance, the boys with a diploma. They are educated for unhappiness and for danger. We cannot shut our eyes to the fact that after they have been years in our schools, American education fits them for American opportunities, and unfits them for Turkish opportunities. More than this, after we have given them the vision of another kind of national as well as another kind of individual life, they are marked men among the Turks, and are the first to be sought out when a massacre comes. Herbert and I have our misgivings about all this work here. In spite of the heralded liberty of the Constitution, it requires more optimism than we have to believe that Armenians are safer under Young Turks than they were under old Turks.
Bairam means feast. After every religious fast, a bairam. It is an occasion for eating immoderately, and for giving a little pleasure and break in the dull monotony of woman and child life. During the last bairam, in the field of the camel market there was a funny little "merry-go-round" and a crude Ferris wheel, which had hanging wooden cages each big enough to hold four children—if they were small. A beaming brown-faced peasant was taking in the money and bossing the two men who turned the wheel and the merry-go-round. He came up to us, and with real pride in his voice, asked: "Have you anything like this in America?"
On Sunday morning, the classes have their lesson taught in their class-rooms, and then they come together in the assembly-room for the concluding exercises. As these are given in Turkish, Herbert and I do not feel called upon to go. So we commit the heresy of slipping out for a walk. It is a heresy, Mother, to these dear good people. The missionaries have puritanical notions of Sabbath-keeping that are different from anything Herbert and I have ever run across. Of course, we say nothing to the boys. But we often wonder if they think that American life is run on missionary principles. The boys are taught that smoking is a sin. That is only one instance. On Sundays, they are not allowed to leave the college grounds except to go over to the Armenian Protestant Church for the afternoon service. Taking walks is taboo. What do you think of that? We easily forego the smoking. It is a question of example to boys: and we see the reasonableness of the point of view. But we simply cannot stay indoors on these glorious days.
We always take the same Sunday morning walk: for it never fails to interest us. We circle the college grounds, and climb up on a mound, under which Cleopatra's castle or Sardanapalus's tomb is supposed to be. There we hear the boys singing. They are wonderful singers, and we love to listen to the familiar hymn tunes. Last Sunday a Moslem wedding was being celebrated at the same time. Men in gay-colored jackets and sashes were moving toward the house where the wedding was taking place: others were already around the door. A native orchestra was playing. The instruments were squeaking reed whistles, two-stringed guitars and drums. You can imagine the music they give forth, when I add that they never get off the minor key. On the flat roof a group of women, veiled and silent, huddled pathetically together. The blending of heathenish music with a Moody and Sankey hymn was indescribable.
Crossing the open space from the mound to the Mersina road, we see ill-kept cattle trying to get grass to keep them from starvation. Sometimes there is a sick or aged horse brought here to die. With all the frightful cruelty to animals everywhere evident, Orientals strangely enough will not kill animals. They do not put out of misery beasts suffering from their neglect and cruelty. This distorted kindness comes to cap the climax of misery for patient burden-bearers broken with toil. When an animal falls by the roadside, and the owner cannot whip or kick it into going farther, he just leaves it there. In riding we see frequently the remains of a camel or a horse. In spite of wanting to avoid the offense to nostrils as well as the struggle with a mount shying for good reason, we have to pass by. For the carcass is generally right alongside the road, and we cannot always make a detour through the fields. Filthy jackals skulk away at our approach, howling in savage protest and yet trembling with fear of us.
We pass out of the town to the Mersina road under an interesting arch, called St. Paul's gate. It is one of the gates of the old walled city, but whether it is of Roman, Byzantine or Arabic origin it is impossible to tell. In Tarsus and all around Tarsus there are numerous archeological remains. But they have been so defaced and mutilated and built over that it is hard to get any idea at all of the original construction. The natives declare that the Mersina gate was built by Harun-al-Rashid, hero of the Arabian Nights. Harun's walls did pass at this point, and the city has never gone beyond. A few yards outside the gate, we are in a Fellahin village. Between two of the reed huts is a mud oven, patted into oval form, baked outside by the sun and inside by a fire of grass. When we pass, the women are always making bread. The whole operation is before your eyes. The wheat is threshed out of its stalks and winnowed, and ground in a stone basin with a huge pestle of iron or copper. The coarse flour is mixed with water, and kneaded in pats about as big as my hand. These are passed to an old hag, who quickly flattens them out on a board, using her forearm as rolling-pin. They are put in the oven with sticks. Two or three minutes—and you have your bread. It is not in loaves. Think of a griddle-cake nine inches in diameter, or something even thinner than a griddle-cake, and you have the Fellahin bread. It is splendid wrapping paper. When there are no fig-leaves at hand, the peasants give you butter and cheese done up in bread.
The Cydnus River runs through and around Tarsus in a dozen branches, all of which do the quadruple service of mill races, drinking troughs for man and beast, washing places for man and beast and carriage and clothes, and irrigation ditches. There is plenty of water and it runs so fast that there is always time for it to get clean for the user below. Tarsus is full of mills: cotton, sesame, flour and sawmills. One of the largest cotton-mills—for ginning and weaving both—is on the Mersina road. Here we stop to watch and tease the turtles in the mill-race. They are lined up on the bank, generation after generation of them—like a family group for a photograph in New England (of the old days only, alas!). The timid ones flop into the water at our approach. Most of them, however, are insolently indifferent. Our idea is to make them all "vamoose." We throw pieces of sugar-cane at them, and Herbert, everlasting kid, is not satisfied until only ungraceful claws, wildly waving above the surface of the water, reveal where the sprawling creatures have taken refuge. Not a head dares appear: for Herbert is near baseball days, and sugar-cane is heavy enough to carry straight. In the wider water beyond the mill, we frequently see long shapeless ridges of brown-black shifting lazily about, moving just enough to show that they are not mud-banks. A rude cart stands on the edge of the stream and on its pole is fastened a double-yoke. Those ridges are the buffaloes that belong to the cart. The lumbering beasts sway back and forth through the streets dragging incredibly high and heavy loads of cotton-bales to the railroad. Occasionally they are unhitched and allowed to get into the water for a rest and a bath. There they lie in the gray mud, absolutely relaxed, languidly flapping their ears to splash water on their heads.
Our walk ends at the bridge half a mile beyond the cotton factory. West of the bridge the Adana-Mersina road enters the great Cilician Plain once more after the long break of Tarsus and its suburbs. Half a dozen broken places in this bridge are a constant menace to horse and camel. It keeps getting worse and worse. An enormous traffic passes over it: but does any one think of mending it? They will wait until it falls down. The motto of this country is every man for himself. There is no public spirit—no idea of the common weal. One is moved only by what affects him directly, and acts only for what he believes is his interest. But none sees farther than immediate interest. To-morrow is in God's hands. The Young Turk régime, on which we see the American newspapers and magazines publishing extravagant eulogies—how will it succeed? The governing classes in Islam cannot be regenerated until Islam is imbued with a different spirit—self-sacrifice, initiative, thought of the future.
Every day we look out of our window to see what there is to see. This is no idle curiosity or idle waste of time—there is always some sight to be memorized, visualized, and tucked away in your mind for future reference. A little group of haggard, prematurely old women, with veils over their heads, and tall green or terra-cotta water-bottles on their bent shoulders, passes by. The women of the poor wear shabby black bloomers, shoes without stockings, gay-colored blouses open at the throat, and on their heads veils made of cheesecloth. One corner of the veil they hold in their teeth, so that but half of their hopelessly tired, haunting, unhappy faces can be seen. Only the children and the men look happy at all. Very early the lines of care and cruelty are indelibly penciled upon girl-faces. Half a dozen horses bravely struggle along under the weight of an odd-looking burden: the bakeries here burn in their ovens green branches of a kind of resinous bush that grows in the foot-hills and mountains. The bush is gathered and bound into rough bundles, and put in bulging loads on the groaning pack-saddles of uncomplaining horses. The horse is hidden in his leafy burden. A passing train looks like a moving forest. One could believe Shakespeare had been here to get the idea of the Burnham beeches moving to Dunsinane!
Childish voices call up hopefully: "Madama." I see sometimes as many as a dozen children holding out their hands. Some girls have tiny babies strapped to their backs. I go to the window armed with savory ammunition, and before I know it these fascinating young ones have charmed away all my store of dates and figs and candies from the last day in Mersina.
If you look higher than the street you see a sky-line that leads from flat grass-topped roofs, through the town, up to the foot-hills. Domes mean mosques, when flanked by minarets. The minarets are tall, slender and pointed at the top. Where the cone begins, a door opens to a small iron-railed ledge, and here it is that the muezzin walks when he sings the chant that calls the faithful to prayer. You know as you look at these minarets at the hour of prayer that men are lying prostrate before each of the mosques, and more men are grouped around the city fountains washing their feet in preparation for prayer. It is not pleasant to think of the curse against "infidels" in the call to prayer—even if the muezzin has a sweet voice that rings out over the houses and comes to you mingled with the sweeter voice of the muezzin in a more distant minaret.
Away to the left are the beloved Taurus mountains. They are never-failing—and we look at them with new eyes every day. As we go down to breakfast, we stop just a minute to see the color and outline of these old friends. We can distinguish the pass that leads to Namrun—and often in the moonlight we think of the lovely night last autumn when we rode into Tarsus while the deep rich bell of the clock-tower was ringing. The clock strikes the hour, then after a pause of two minutes repeats it. Splendid idea: for you can check up on your first count.
A whole letter could be written about what we see from the windows. Whatever I write, the culmination, the climax, must be the camels. They are the best of all "sights" to me. The first I saw were in Smyrna, or rather just outside of Smyrna, taking refuge under a clump of trees from the noon-day sun. It was a group of at least thirty, the most camels I had ever seen together in my life. I wanted then to stop, but we were en route for Polycarp's tomb, and had only a few hours ashore. Now I have camels to my heart's delight and satisfaction. But never enough! Our street is one of the roads to the market-place. During the autumn, when much wood and cotton was being transported, camels passed under my window every morning. About six o'clock they began. Train after train wound slowly along. The camels travel single file, fastened from saddle to saddle.
Until I came to Turkey, I had seen few camels outside of a Zoo. The only loose one I remember is the camel ridden in Paris by the beggar that used to haunt the Place Saint-Michel. No two camels are alike. In a hundred that pass, each is different from the one ahead, very different. Camels are just as different as people. They are dark brown, tawny brown, on and on through the various shades up to the palest tan. The colors run from that one gets from polishing russet shoes with the black shoe brush to that produced by whitewashing a dust-covered wall. The shades are the echoes of the blending shifting tones of desert sand. The wide cushioned foot speaks fervently of the silence and patience of the camel's journeyings to and fro. The camel's eye is sorrowful. His air is supercilious, as if his claim to aristocracy among animals was forever settled by the fact that he was the favorite of Mohammed.
FOOTNOTE:
[2] More than seven years have passed, and neither the Tarsus letter nor the Holy Land letter has yet been written. Our life moves so fast, in the midst of a great and changing drama, that the event at hand demands all there is of time and energy.
HAMLET AND THE GATHERING
OF THE STORM CLOUDS
April seventh, Nineteen-Nine.
Dear Mother:
But I tell you, my dear, I am glad that Anna Bess put me on the scenery committee the first time 1906 had a play. Ever since I left Bryn Mawr I have been looking for the things I learned that were "going to prove useful in after years." For the first time I've hit something. When the boys wanted to get up a play I showed them how to put squares of canvas together, tacked on poles at the platform end of the big schoolroom. I marked out a court scene with charcoal, and painted it in. One advantage of making scenery here is that paint dries quicker than it did in the cellar of our dormitory.
I economized time by sewing costumes while the boys rehearsed. It was the most unimaginable sort of rehearsing. For the play was to be given in Turkish, of which Jeanne and I understood not a word. All the same with my little red leather-bound English Shakespeare stuck in the corner of the divan near my lapful of sewing, I was supposed to criticize the acting. I kept looking from needle to book to actor. Jeanne, on the other side of the divan, was following in a French translation. Hamlet and Ophelia dashed around while I put ermine on the king's coat. The boys would not listen to cutting. They were game for the whole play—not quailing before scenes that Irving and Terry could not swing. They have prodigious memories. We found that out when one of them memorized Herbert's entire lecture on the Rise of the Papacy, and gave it afterwards as answer to a question in term examination. Their patience and endurance are limitless. They never get bored.
Jeanne and I were back of the scenes on the great night to start the play with everybody dressed and bewigged, painted and securely hitched together. Clothes had to be sewed on the ladies. The boys entered so fully into the spirit of the thing that when the show was actually on, they hadn't time to think about their clothes. My red Cretan rug, firmly strapped to the shoulders of Hamlet's mother, made a real court train. (The actors had practised not to walk on it. Luckily they learned this early in the rehearsals, when Ophelia, passing his future mother-in-law, stepped on the Cretan rug and "sat down too much" on the hard schoolroom floor.) Crowns and wigs had to be anchored with adhesive tape. Ophelia, young and rather slender for his age, was capable of the martyrdom of forcing his feet into my satin dancing slippers. It was possible only when I made him wear my silk stockings. His own knitted socks were much too thick for stage purposes as well as for slippers. A schoolroom bench, assisted by the boxes of two croquet games and covered by rugs, made a passable throne. The stage manager was dismayed when he realized that Doctor Christie's pulpit was screwed fast to the platform. I discovered that the top of the pulpit could be removed, and comforted the boys by pointing out to them that those in the audience who had ever seen a real theater would certainly think the pulpit was a prompter's box.
The audience of students and teachers was increased by the parents of boys living in Tarsus and local Moslem dignitaries, the Kaïmakam, the Feriq and the Mufti.[3] They were delighted to come, and praised our school and its hospitality. At the end of each scene they applauded conspicuously. The Mufti's parchment-like cheeks wrinkled to expose his yellow gumless teeth in an appreciative grin, while the Kaïmakam shook hands with the asthmatic Feriq Pasha until his Hamidian decorations jingled on his breast.
Our efforts to persuade the boys to cut out a part here and there were in vain. They insisted on giving the whole blessed thing. Candied almonds and glasses of water passed around in the audience helped to keep them awake. The atmosphere was hot and close, and the petroleum was getting low in the lamps. Between the first and second acts the school band—all individualists—did their favorite piece, the very march that the old German orchestra leader in Philadelphia used to play at the Country Club dances just after the last waltz before supper. The boys put the vigor of their youth and the enthusiasm of the occasion into their playing. I was glad the venerable Mufti had cotton in his ears. The place was already so full of people and talk and lamp-baked air that I thought the floor of the dormitory above would spill down on us when the band thundered a climax of horns, trombones, drums and cymbals.
As the play went on, the audience did not need candied almonds or music to keep them awake. Things began to go badly for Hamlet's mother's husband. People stopped fanning. The dignitaries moved uneasily in their places. With heads hunched down in their shoulders, they kept their eyes glued on the stage. They are not familiar with our great William, and believe, no doubt, that we invented the play as well as the actors' costumes. Horror of horrors! We had forgotten what they might read into the most realistic scene. An Armenian warning for Abdul Hamid? The assassins mastered the struggling king. He lay there with his red hair sticking out from his crown, and the muscles of his neck stiffened as he gasped for breath while his throat was cut with a shiny white letter-opener.
As I fell asleep last night, I saw the three dignitaries leaning forward frowning. The Mufti had clinched the sides of the bench with his thin hands. Could they be seriously disapproving of our show, because we killed a king in it? I went to sleep laughing over Doctor Christie's story of the way the authorities would not permit him to teach physics in the early days because he was obliged to use the word "revolution."
April ninth.
Last night Herbert and I drove on the Mersina road. We love this drive in the late afternoon. It leads in the direction of home—straight to the sunset. Camels came towards us. From the head the line was double. As they parted to the sides of the road, I said to Herbert, "Let's count the beasts. You take your side and I'll take this." They numbered more than two hundred, all laden with petroleum tins.
* * * * * * *
We drove again this evening. Even walking is proscribed for me now. I can go out of the college grounds only in a carriage, and then not far. In a Moslem quarter, on a road between vegetable gardens, boys threw stones—the first time it has happened to us. As Charlemagne was nervous and reared from being hit several times, Herbert did not dare to get out and leave me alone. There was nothing to do but drive on, and accept the stoning. I was hit on the left shoulder—a big stone it was. The bruise is painful.
* * * * * * *
April thirteenth.
Could not finish for Thursday's post. We have had Easter to think about—examinations, and the boys going off for their ten days.
Miss Talbot has come to stand by me. Isn't she a dear? Imagine a soft-voiced Englishwoman of the upper class being a trained nurse, and my nurse—when there is none in the world for me to turn to. It seems as if she has been dropped from Heaven at my door. Miss Talbot is a woman of independent means, who studied nursing to equip herself for doing good. She came out here to Turkey to find work at her own expense. She is going into mission dispensary nursing, but thinks just now that I am "the duty at hand." Lucky for me!
The annual meeting of the American Mission is being held in Adana this week. It opens to-morrow. Dr. Christie and Miner, of course, had to go, and they persuaded Herbert to go with them. It was a chance for him to meet the missionaries from the interior, and get an idea of mission problems. Herbert was very anxious to meet the missionaries of whom we have been hearing so much. They are to reach Adana overland on horse from Marash, Hadjin, Aintab and other stations. It is the jubilee year—the fiftieth annual meeting. The native Protestant pastors of this whole field are to hold a reunion at the same time. An important question is coming before the Mission—what to do with the orphanages that were established after the massacres of 1894-96. The orphans are practically all grown up now.
I urged Herbert to go. It is only forty miles, and he can return to-morrow if we have news to telegraph him. Miss Talbot thinks it is all right, and her being here reassures him. He needs only to be gone one night. At the last minute he hesitated, but I pushed him out with the others.
As we said good-by, Herbert stood below me in the school grounds, and I was on the steps a few feet above, leaning over and talking to him. Just for fun, I took his fez off—a black velvet fez. My giggle and smile died away as I idly twirled that fez around my finger. Sometimes in the sunshine one sees the shadow of Islam. After all, wouldn't he be safer in a hat? I put this into words. Herbert scoffed at the idea, but he humored me and went to find his gray felt hat.
Must go to marking examination papers of my rhetoric class. Can you imagine me an English Reader like Miss Marsh? You were afraid three lectures a week and two rhetoric lessons would be a lot for me to manage, but Mother dear, these boys are hungry for an education. I long for a copy of one of the rhetorics we used at college. Have improvised a text book. Coaxed it out of my memory. I averaged two hours a day, typewriting the material on our Hammond. The boys drink in my stupid lectures the way the Cilician Plain drinks in the first autumn rains. I gave a stiff quiz just after the Easter vacation. I am continuing the daily themes and the critical papers. I have learned a lot from the boys about the fable in Turkish literature. Also about habits of camels, and the real Abraham Lincoln. Can't you see me rehashing Bryn Mawr English and adapting it to the Tarsians?
FOOTNOTE:
[3] The Kaïmakam is at the head of the civil administration of the municipality, the Feriq of the military administration, and the Mufti of the religious administration. Civil and military government and religion are all closely connected—essential factors in Turkish society. Constantinople has its hold directly on every community in Turkey.
THE STORM APPROACHES
Wednesday, April fourteenth.
Mother:
This afternoon I sent Socrates to the station with the buggy (the word is not misused—we have a real American one). Herbert was to return by the afternoon train. An hour later, Socrates came back alone and told me that "bad things" were happening in Adana. There was a massacre starting. Yesterday four Armenian women were killed. This morning there was killing begun in vineyards just outside of the town. While he was telling me this news, a telegram mercifully arrived from Herbert. It read: "Reviendrai demain. Aujourd'hui tout bien." Herbert's French is far from what it might be. But telegrams in English are not accurately transmitted in Turkey.
When I went over to Mrs. Christie's sitting-room for afternoon tea, I found several Armenian women there, among them the mothers of two of our teachers. One mother was begging for permission for her son to sleep at the college. He came later, bringing his precious violin, which he asked me to hide for him. I put it back of our bathtub. The other mother was in tears. Her son is in Adana for the holidays with his bride. This poor woman has a right to fear. She lost two children in the 1895-96 massacres. One little girl was trampled to death by a squad of Turkish soldiers. The son, our Armenian professor,—the one in Adana—was saved with the greatest difficulty, having been hidden for several days in the dark corner of a mill.
Excitement grew this afternoon. Patrols are going through the streets. We are told that this is done to calm people. The unrest is showing itself. I asked Socrates not to repeat what he had seen and heard. Panic is contagious. He was unmoved by my caution. He shook his head, saying, "It is going to be very terrible, very terrible."
I wish it were not Easter vacation. So many of our boys have gone to their villages. They would be safer here. Dr. Christie and Herbert and Miner would not be in Adana. If this had to occur, why not when college was going, and we were all together? The regular routine would do much to keep minds occupied. When you are busy, you are normal, no matter what may be going on around you.
* * * * * * *
Thursday, April fifteenth.
Mother dear:
I wasn't afraid last night. I slept the whole night through. This morning there was quite a crowd of Armenians in the school dining-room. They look to us for protection and food and shelter. They are terror-stricken, and have reason to be. How would you like to live in a country where you knew your Government not only would not protect you, but would periodically incite your neighbors to rob and kill you with the help of the army?
Socrates asked to be allowed to go to the station again to see if Herbert came by the morning train. Off he trotted, leaving me to my sewing. He came back in the greatest excitement. At the station all was confusion. People jumped off the train, and shouted madly that the whole of Adana was burning. Immediately a mob formed, and some of these men seized the buggy and made off with it, leaving Socrates to get home as best he could. Henri Imer had gone over on horseback, and he had a bad time too. His horse was struck by a Turk, but he succeeded in getting away. He went right to the barracks and found the buggy there. Henri secured permission for Socrates to bring it home.
Another telegram has come from Herbert saying, "Tout bien. Retournerai Tarsous aussitôt que possible, peut-être pas avant demain."
The afternoon train failed to appear.
Just before dark, the boys of the Sub-Freshman class who were spending the Easter vacation at the college came and told me they wanted to be my bodyguard. They are to sleep to-night on my balcony—the balcony on the inside of the building just outside my bedroom. Their beds, mattresses and blankets have been given to refugee women for the little children. It is April—but still cold at night. I have taken from the walls and floors all our Turkish rugs—every single one of our treasures—and spread them on the boards for the boys to sleep on—or under. They mean absolutely nothing to me. I do not care if they are lost in the confusion.
Johnny tells me there is not much oil in my lamp. I cannot be without light. It may be needed badly in the night. It may be vital for me to have light. To get candles and petroleum from the large school-building was impossible for the boys. The precious things might be taken from them in the crowd. For our compound is filling: and many of the refugees we do not know at all. I must go with the boys. I shall take Kevork and Samsun as well as Socrates. To be without Herbert at a time like this! These blessed boys of mine are splendid. They are thoughtful, devoted, courageous, and most delicate in their attention. I could not be in better hands. The best in people comes out at a crisis. If I live through these days, I shall never cease to cry out against the supercilious, superficial travelers, who, enjoying a sheltered life for themselves and their loved ones, say mean things about Armenians—even that they deserve to be massacred—that massacres are their own fault. All I can say is this: May God Almighty forgive them their judgments, for they know not what they say. My Armenian boys and my Greek Socrates are every bit as fine, every bit as thoroughbred, as Anglo-Saxon boys of the best blood and training.
I am back safely—with oil and candles, too. Now I am ready for what may come in the night.
In the assembly-room of the big school-building, some of the refugees had gathered around the pastor of the Protestant Church. It was an impromptu prayer-meeting. They were singing hymns. I do not understand Turkish, but, as they use our tunes, I knew the hymns. It was a comfort to steal in, and sit down for a while among my fellow-sufferers. Only eight months ago, when we first came to Cilicia, and went to church up in the Taurus Mountains summer place, I remember how queer these people looked to me. They belonged to another world. I was an outsider. I had difficulty in understanding some traits of their character. I was hasty in my judgment of them—hasty through ignorance. I was impatient with their constant fear of what "might happen any time" to Christians living under Moslem rule. I had no conception of what "might happen any time"—that was why. During the singing, I looked up to the ceiling. The trap-door brought back vividly the day when Daddy Christie had showed it to me, saying, "We have that for use in time of massacre." I had laughed. The constitutional era was here. Those were things of the past. Probably it is a mercy that youth and inexperience make one refuse to believe that bad things—horrible things—which have happened to others may come in one's own life.
We sang softly (for the sound must not get outside) "Lead, Kindly Light." The hymn had never meant so much to me. For, until now, there never had been "encircling gloom." I understand now. Because I need the Light, I ask for it.
THE STORM BREAKS
Tarsus,
Friday, April sixteenth,
Nineteen-Nine.
Mother dear:
Men came here to tell Mrs. Christie trouble was coming. Offered to send a guard for our gate. They knew that Dr. Christie and Miner Rogers and Herbert—three of the four men of the mission family—had gone away to Adana. The fellows were Kurds. They looked like brigands. Mrs. Christie put them off, saying we were not afraid. This with a calm little air as if she didn't quite realize. When I asked her about it, she replied: "Didn't you see? They wanted to get hold of the college gate." What a woman she is! To-day with Armenians coming to us in greater numbers every hour, I say to myself: What if the Kurds had possession of our broad gate?
From our study window I can see the Cilician Plain stretching on and on to the Taurus. The Plain to-day looks like a monstrous Turkish rug. It is a riot of color, quantities of poppies and irises and other spring flowers. Did you ever think of this: red predominates in Turkish rugs?
* * * * * * *
Last night we learned that the train going through towards Adana had turned back at Yenidje. By this time one hundred refugees had come to us. Massacre seemed imminent. Socrates barricaded all my shutters, and watched outside my door.
This morning another telegram came from Herbert saying that he was detained, and would get back when he could. There were no trains in either direction, so we knew the whole country was upset. Rumors began to leak through about the terrible times in Adana and I knew why Herbert had not returned. This morning there were more than five hundred refugees with us.
In the course of the morning we heard that Armenians had been killed at the Tarsus station and that the station master and other employees had fled. Then there was the whistle of a train from Adana. It brought a wild mob of Bashi-bazouks. For concentrated hatred, a Bashi-bazouk is a small-pox germ. I saw the train vomiting forth its filthy burden. The men wore no uniforms. They were dressed in dirty white bloomer-things, with bits of carpet fastened up their legs with crisscross ropes, in place of shoes. They looked like worn out rag dolls. I saw them gather in a mud colored fan-shaped crowd at the flimsy entrance to the Konak, where the authorities could not be quick enough in passing out guns and ammunition and other instruments of the Devil to every one. Then Hell broke loose. The townspeople joined themselves to this mob. Along the road that crosses the space between us and the railway they went in groups of fifty, going at an easy run and brandishing their arms, uttering low weird howls that grew in a crescendo of rage. They made for the Armenian quarter, the last houses of which are only one hundred and fifty yards from us.
Shooting started and continued all day. Along with the sound of the shots we could hear the screams of the dying.
All day there has been a procession of refugees. They seem to have gathered in little groups first, for they came in a few hundred at a time in pulsation. In the afternoon they came steadily. Mother! the sound of the feet of the multitude. Some poor things were wounded, some were looking for husbands or children that could not be found. They brought nothing with them. Sick women were carried on the backs of their husbands. Little children struggled to keep up with panic-stricken elders. Children, feeble old people, chronic invalids, the desperately ill, were possessed with supernatural strength. When they reached the goal, our gate, they were like the Durando we described in the Marathon race last summer. A big fellow in the meager guard at our gate was a host in himself. He had a hearty voice, and kept waving his arms and shouting, "Come in, everybody. Inside this gate is safety for you all! Courage, little children." Occasionally he would pick up a crying baby or a sick woman, and help them inside. It was the one cheerful kindly sight of the day—to see that soldier.
About noon from Jeanne and Henri's study I saw an attack on a house very near us. There was a low hum in the distance: then a roar, and on the second-story balcony twenty-five Bashi-bazouks climbed, bursting in the door to the house of the richest man in Tarsus. There was shooting and screaming: then flying bits of burning paper came out of the windows, followed by blue and red flames. By opening our shutters cautiously we could hear the cruel hiss of the flames and smell kerosene in the smoke. Then the rending and crashing of the floors made a deafening noise, and the sparks began to alight on our property.
This is the regular order of things,—kill, loot, burn. The Armenian quarter is the most substantial part of the city. Most of the people store cotton on the ground floor, and this, together with liberal applications of kerosene, served to make a holocaust. Now at evening-time we realize our own imminent danger.
I have made tea about twenty times during the day. What a blessing you sent those provisions. Good thing we chose from among our wedding gifts the chafing-dish and the tea-basket to bring along on our journey. I have given away everything I could spare. Things to drink out of are a vital necessity. I gave away my tooth-mug to a thirsty old woman, and reserved as my drinking cup the little china affair one keeps tooth-brushes in on a washstand. It stands unabashed beside the smart little silver tea-kettle and spirit lamp. How I miss my oranges. Mother Christie found a stray one this morning and sent it in to me. The boys brought some charcoal and made a fire in a mangal in my fireplace. I have tried my hand at a pilaf. Kevork brought some sheep-tail grease in a bit of paper and I held my nose while I melted it and poured it into the pilaf. I do not see why these people do not cook with wagon grease and be done with it.
Your tins of condensed milk I have given to Mary Rogers for her baby. A mother brought her two-year-old boy to me. The poor little thing had had nothing to eat since yesterday. The whole Armenian question sums itself up for me in those big brown eyes and their kindling with sudden light as I held a bowl of warm milk to that baby's trembling mouth. I couldn't make him smile, though, for all my coaxing.
The meals of our immediate family are served in my bedroom. Mrs. Christie's house, the big dining-room, the school buildings are overflowing with refugees. It is only the most strenuous efforts of the college boys that prevent them from over-running us too. I have just my bedroom, Mary the other bedroom for herself and the baby, and Miss Talbot is in our study. Jeanne's extra bedroom eighteen women have managed to get into. Henri's study is crowded too. I am working on baby clothes to keep my mind occupied. I am making flannel nighties: there are hundreds of babies out under our trees and on the hard asphalt of the tennis court without one change of clothing.
Dear, dear, here is a woman who has been in terrible suffering all day long. Her husband and brother were with her and several times tried to flee with her. They picked her up a bit ago and started with her through the red and black streets. Overpowered, she stopped in ——'s garden and had her baby. Wrapping the baby in something and putting it in the mother's arms, the men picked her up and made the final dash for safety. We have pulled the buggy out of the carriage-house and made a place for her in the corner. She is resting nicely now.
* * * * * * *
Socrates came to me and said that friends of his, Greeks like himself, have invited him to join them in an attempt to escape to Mersina. They have a dead Greek's passport for him. He asked my advice. I told him I could not take the responsibility. Danger? There is little choice—staying here or trying to get away. I told him to go off by himself to think it over. He came back to tell me this: "You are alone. If you have to run away, you have nobody to go with you. Professor Gibbons—no one knows where he is. I will stay with you."[4]
* * * * * * *
Have been sitting on the steps leading up to the rooms of the Imers, looking out over the pathetic throng in the garden. Kevork in his snug little coat and long gingham student-apron has been sitting beside me. "You are hungry," said he. "Your future may be five minutes long. Your husband is missing. Maybe he is dead. Those telegrams were dated yesterday, you know. Your baby is not born. You cannot defend yourself or run away. You are just like an Armenian woman. Tell me what you think about revenge?"
* * * * * * *
Dostumian hunted wildly and fruitlessly for his mother and little sister among the crowd. Harutun urged that he, on account of his red hair, would not be taken for an Armenian. He could find them. When he got to the house, he put the mother on his back and ran to us before the Bashi-bazouks knew what he was up to. When he took the mother, he hid the little girl in a corner by piling sticks of wood on her. Told her to keep quiet, and wait for him to come back.
By the time he returned to excavate the youngster, and had put her on his back, and climbed to the roof of the house, the Bashi-bazouks were after him. Oh, the flat Oriental roofs! Harutun skipped from one to the other, taking amazing distances, with the child on his back. Danger is a prod. He got to a place on some roof beside which a foreign construction company had set up a pole in anticipation of the electric lighting system. Down that pole slipped Harutun. He ran like mad, and restored the youngster to her mother and her brother.
But electric lighting companies do not sandpaper their poles. Harutun's hands were cruelly torn. His first thought when he began to think of himself again was to come to me to get his hands dressed. He sat down on Herbert's steamer trunk and I picked out the splinters. I washed the wounds and bound them up with gauze and camphenol, also the palms of the hands and the wrists. He begged me to leave the fingers out so he could work. The boy was as happy as a bird: for it flooded into his brain what he had done. While his hands were still trembling from the pain and excitement, he said, "Meeses Geebons, I am not afraid to die. Dying is as natural as borning. But before I die I want to kill a Turk—just one Turk!" If his hands had not been so wrapped up in bandages, I could have shaken his right one.
After I fixed up Harutun's hands I was kept quite busy for a space with that sort of thing. A woman came and asked for some clothes for her baby and showed us the only dress she had for him. It was covered with blood—the blood of his murdered father. One dear little fellow, a favorite of Herbert's, came to me with a gash in his head. His father has been burned to death in their house and his little sister is wounded also. I prepared the bandages for a man with a gun shot wound in his neck. He was lying just outside my door. Herbert used to joke me about my emergency outfit, saying that there were enough bandages in it to do for an army, and asking how I ever expected to use sterilized catgut. Every bit of that outfit is useful now. It has saved lives!
Friday night.
Sky red with fire. Half the horizon is in flames, the whole Armenian quarter is burning. Our native teachers and boys under the direction of Henri Imer are fighting the flames valiantly. The sparks are flying toward us, driven by a heavy wind, and eternal vigilance is required to note every spark the moment it falls, to quench it in time. The blaze is so brilliant that we can read by it. A telegram came from Herbert about eleven o'clock. I signed the receipt by the light of the flames. I cannot read it. It is a mixture of Turkish and French. What I can make out is the hour of sending—this means that twenty-one hours ago he was still alive.
Our condition is becoming desperate. The fire threatens us. The fury of the mob may lead them to attack us. We are sheltering more than four thousand refugees, a wailing, terror-stricken mass, all trying to get out of bullet range.
We have not been able to get any word to the outside world: we realize now that Adana is cut off and we feel sure that our husbands are in as desperate a plight as are we. Word must go to Mersina. We have a Turkish hand-writing teacher, a Moslem, who is faithful to us. We have sent him to-night by horse with Harutun, the senior whose courage was thoroughly tested this afternoon. They rode into the jaws of death perhaps, but there is nothing else to do. Not only our lives but those of the refugees are at stake.
Nearly midnight.
We have prepared a few things in case we have to leave the place suddenly. Run? Where? Somebody or other remarked grimly enough: "Fix only what you can carry by yourself."
I came into the bedroom, and here I sit on Herbert's steamer chair. The wood fire has gone out. The room is chilly and looks so very large. One candle gives such a little light. The big blue rugs have been carried off for bedding. How bare the place seems. Oh, how lonely! The chafing-dish stands there unwashed and tilted crooked in its stand. I have torn the bed to pieces to get a blanket for my bundle. The baby basket all dainty and waiting is on the steamer trunk beside our bed. Will it cradle my little one? If it is born out in the open, at least it won't be cold, for I have taken from the basket the knitted blanket you sent me and the package of fragrant clothing inside the tiny sheet. For some time I have had clothes ready there for after the first bath. I tied up the bundle with our double blanket, but it was too heavy for me. I have rearranged it with a small blanket, tied corner-wise. In it are diapers, a piece of tape sterilized and a pair of surgical scissors wrapped in gauze, a length of uncut flannel, and that is all. This will be heavy enough: for I must save Herbert's thesis, and that in its filing case is a pretty solid weight. Precious thesis—it won him his fellowship, and if there is any future, that thesis must go to Paris. Poor little Mariam out there in the carriage house—how I pitied her this evening. Was it only a few hours ago they brought her in? I envy her now. Her baby is born.
My reason tells me that this bundle beside me is necessary: but it seems futile. Everything has gone. One support after another has been removed. Humanly speaking, the fact of safety is gone. Am I cold-blooded, that the sense of it remains? Sufficiency of food? Gone. Human ties? Gone. No sister, no brothers, no mother, no husband. Railway communications? Gone. There is no Consul at Mersina. No protection from my own Government. Did you ever wonder which end of your life you are living? Kevork was right a bit ago about the future looking five minutes long. My religion has suddenly become like a solid rock, and I have planted my back right against it. Religion is simple, and it works.
Tell Herbert I have not cried once, that I am not afraid. Tell him possessions mean nothing. What good can things do? There are hundreds of gold liras in the safe. What good are they? I see where life stretches beyond the place money can signify.
All this time I have boosted myself up by saying, "Don't break down yet, wait for something worse." If you wait for real trouble—then you are so busy, you have no time to worry. My religion has in one night become vitally subjective. I know—because when I reason about it, I marvel at my own calm. Shall it be with me as it was with Elsie Hodge, the Bryn Mawr girl who was killed in the Boxer uprising? All day I have been thinking about her. I am writing this and shall leave it here—in case. I cannot write the words needed to describe the fate of women in my condition at the hands of these fiends. Maybe some day I can tell you.
* * * * * * *
Sitting on the floor in Mary Roger's room, writing with my paper on my knee. When I left our room, I went to Herbert's wardrobe and put his overcoat on. In one pocket I stuffed Educator crackers out of the box you sent. Some fell on the floor and I left them there. A wee knitted hug-me-tight went into another, and into a third pocket I put the silk American flag Clement gave me when I was married. Miss Talbot is lying down on a cot in our study. Being a Britisher, she is able to sleep. Before I left her in the study, I got out the filing case containing Herbert's thesis. I put it down by the door here in Mary's room, right close to my feet. Then I lay down on the floor with my bundle as a pillow.
* * * * * * *
We, from our darkened room where that blessed baby Rogers is sleeping quietly, have been looking out of the window. Two or three Turks pushed a pump affair up in front of a house near by. "Humanity is not dead yet!" I thought, "they are going to try to limit the fire." The water streamed from the hose and it was kerosene. They soaked the roof. Little fingers of flame began waving in the wind. Heavy black smoke is hanging over the town. We can feel the hot air and smell the oil—like a gigantic smoking lamp. Sparks fell on the windowsill just now as I stood there. I patted them with my hands and put them out, but not before they burned little holes in the wood.
We closed the blinds and sat down cross-legged on the floor and talked quietly. About being widows. The boys must soon come back to us—either that, or they are dead. We wondered which one of us was a widow. Perhaps both.
Once Mary asked me: "Brownie, what are you praying for?" "Goodness, Mary, I don't know what I am praying for. Guess I have just got to live with my soul opened toward Heaven." A little later Mary spoke again, this time cheerfully, for she had thought of something: "I know, let's pray for the wind to change."
Sure enough, it was blowing in our direction. We went to the window again, never thinking of danger. You cannot consistently keep your mind on danger to yourself. As we looked, the flames were lying low, blue tipped with yellow, and reaching towards us. We concentrated on a change of the wind, and there was a change. The flames instead of lying low were vertical, licking and swaying. Then they lay low again, this time back on the ruined buildings. This may have been coincidence. You may think so if you like. But I believe I saw the hand of the Lord come down and forbid those flames to move farther. Never again will I have to be reasoned with to believe in miracles.