r experience.

It happened to me whilst on a tramp in Trans-Caucasia to enter a
coffee-house that was at once a Turkish coffee-house and Turkey
itself. I lived for a whole night veritably in Turkey. In this way--

I came into a little town; it was a cold night and I wanted shelter.
I entered a noisy Turkish coffee-house--there were at least a hundred
such in the town--and asked if I might spend the night there. The
owner, a young man in shirt-sleeves, very dirty and unshaven, and with
an old fez on the side of his head, intimated that I might stay if I
liked.

The cafe was a room full of poor Turks. Picture a crowd of ragged men,
some in drab turbans with loose ends hanging down their backs, but
most of them in dingy red fez hats, faces unshaved, mottled, ugly--a
squat people, very talkative, but terribly mirthless; and in shadowy
corners of the low dark cafe solitary persons with hook-nosed,
ruminative faces. All about me was the din of the strange language,
the clatter of dice and dominoes. All night long the doors of the cafe
slammed and customers passed in and out, games were begun and played
away, animated groups formed at certain tables and then broke up
and gave way to new groups, loud discussions broke out over Turkish
newspapers and politics and the war, in the course of which
discussions the newspaper, a wilderness of Arabic, was often torn to
bits--a series of scenes of tremendous animation and noise; but no one
laughed.

In the clamour of tongues sounded again and again the name "Italia."
The Turks were angry over the war, full of a restrained resentment and
a profound need for revenge. It was a relief to me when one of them
came to my table and talked to me in Russian.

"How goes the war?" I asked. "Is Italy losing?"

"Of course she is losing," he replied, lying sullenly; "and she must
lose."

"But she has taken Tripoli and guards it with her navy. How can she
lose?"

"The other Powers will make her disgorge it, or we will commence an
endless hostility, not only against Italy and Italian trade, but
against all whom we tolerate--the Western Christians."

A Caucasian, overhearing us, drew his forefinger along his throat from
ear to ear, and smiled.

"There are more Mahometans than Christians," the Turk went on, "and
they are strong men, heroes. The Italians are the worn-out scum of
ancient Rome, getting the better of us ignobly. But they shall not
spoil the Mahometan world. Not even the English,