e
thousand Armenians, anxious to establish a new form of government, had
been wiped out of existence only the week before.

Once on my feet (Joe accomplished his purpose with the help of my
suspenders) and the situation clear, I had sense enough left to uncover
my head and stand in an attitude of profound reverence until the
procession had passed. I can see them now--the coffin wrapped in a
camel's-hair shawl, the dead man's fez and turban resting on top. Then
I replaced my hat and finished the last of the six minarets of the
mosque gleaming like opals in the soft light of the morning.

This act of courtesy, due so little to my own initiative, and so
largely to Joe's, gained for me many friends in and about the
mosque--not only those of the dead man, one of whom rowed a caique, but
among the priests who formed the funeral cortege--a fact unknown to me
until Joe imparted it. "Turk-man say you good man, effendi," was the
way he put it. "You stoop over yourselluf humble for their dead."

On another occasion Joe again stood by my side when, with hat off and
with body in a half kotow, I sat before the Pasha, who was acting chief
of police after that stormy Armenian week--it was over really in five
days.

"Most High Potentate," Joe began, translating my plain Anglo-Saxon
"Please, sir," into Eastern hyperbolics, "I again seek your
Excellency's presence to make my obeisance and to crave your permission
to transfer to cheap paper some of the glories of this City of
Turquoise and Ivory. This, if your Highness will deign to remember, is
not the first time I have trespassed. Twice before have I prostrated
myself, and twice has your Sublimity granted my request."

"These be troublous times," puffed his Swarthiness through his
mustache, his tobacco-stained fingers meanwhile rolling a cigarette; a
dark-skinned, heavily-bearded Oriental, this Pasha, with an eye that
burned holes in you. "You should await a more peaceful season, effendi,
for your art."

"On account of the Armenians, your Excellency?" I ventured to inquire
with a smile.

"Yes." This, in translation by Joe, came with a whistling sound, like
the escaping steam of a radiator.

"But why should I fear these disturbers of the peace, your Supreme
Highness? The Turk is my friend, and has been for years. They know me
and my pure and unblemished life. They also know by this time that I
have been one of the chosen few among nations who have enjoyed your
Highness's confid