he grand
vizier--who had been requested by Prince Abdul--to request the State
Department to inform Doctor Gilman of these high honors. A request from
such a source was a command and, as desired, the State Department
wrote as requested by the grand vizier to Doctor Gilman, and tendered
congratulations. The fact was sent out briefly from Washington by
Associated Press. This official recognition by the Government and by the
newspapers was all and more than Stetson wanted. He took off his coat
and with a megaphone, rather than a pen, told the people of the United
States who Doctor Gilman was, who the Sultan was, what a Grand Cross
was, and why America's greatest historian was not without honor save in
his own country. Columns of this were paid for and appeared as "patent
insides," with a portrait of Doctor Gilman taken from the STILLWATER
COLLEGE ANNUAL, and a picture of the Grand Cross drawn from imagination,
in eight hundred newspapers of the Middle, Western, and Eastern States.
special articles, paragraphs, portraits, and pictures of the Grand Cross
followed, and, using Stillwater as his base, Stetson continued to
flood the country. Young Hines, the local correspondent, acting under
instructions by cable from Peter, introduced him to Doctor Gilman as a
traveller who lectured on Turkey, and one who was a humble admirer
of the author of the "Rise and fall." Stetson, having studied it as a
student crams an examination, begged that he might sit at the feet of
the master. And for several evenings, actually at his feet, on the steps
of the ivy-covered cottage, the disguised press-agent drew from the
unworldly and unsuspecting scholar the simple story of his life.
To this, still in his character as disciple and student, he added
photographs he himself made of the master, of the master's ivy-covered
cottage, of his favorite walk across the campus, of the great historian
at work at his desk, at work in his rose garden, at play with his wife
on the croquet lawn. These he held until the insignia should be actually
presented. This pleasing duty fell to the Turkish ambassador, who, much
to his astonishment, had received instructions to proceed to Stillwater,
Massachusetts, a place of which he had never heard, and present to
a Doctor Gilman, of whom he had never heard, the Grand Cross of the
Crescent. As soon as the insignia arrived in the official mail-bag
a secretary brought it from Washington to Boston, and the ambassador
travelled