general
supervision of one of the great bankers residing there, that it
might be remodeled according to his own wishes, and made a
first-rate school. This was deemed a needful preliminary to shutting
up the mission High School. Early in the year, the parents were
summoned before the vicar, and ordered to withdraw their sons from
that school. The plan of the opposing party was, in this case, after
breaking up the school, to procure from the Turkish government the
banishment of Hohannes. But they had misapprehended the banker, and
great was their astonishment when they heard that Hohannes was no
sooner released, by their own act, from his connection with the
mission school, than he was engaged by the banker of Has Keuy to
take the superintendence of the national school they had placed in
his hands. In vain they remonstrated. To their assertion, that it
was the American system he had adopted he replied, that he knew
nothing of the Americans, but had adopted the system because it was
good. To their objection, that the principal was evangelical, he
responded, "So am I." He at length declared, that unless they
permitted him to manage the school in his own way, he would withdraw
from the Armenian community. They could not afford to lose one of
the leading bankers; and one of the principal opposers, finding it
necessary, in a business transaction, to throw himself on his
clemency, opposition ceased for a time, and a school of six hundred
scholars went into successful operation, with Hohannes for its
superintendent, and Der Kevork, the active priest, for one of its
principal teachers.

It is worthy of special note, that up to this time, the banker was
wholly unknown to the missionaries, and to the evangelical brethren
generally. He was evidently raised up by divine Providence for the
occasion. Not only did the Has Keuy school greatly exceed the
mission school at Pera in the number of its pupils, but it was
formally adopted as the school of the nation, and Hohannes was
appointed its principal by the Armenian Synod. Having liberty of
action, he devoted an hour each day to giving special religious
instruction to a select class of sixty of the more advanced pupils,
besides his more general teaching, and the daily good influence
exerted by Der Kevork and himself. The course of study was liberal,
the philosophical apparatus of the mission was purchased by the
directors, lectures were given on the natural sciences, and the
school ob