Arriving there, she entered at once into the spirit of my mission and became of invaluable assistance to me. She had looked forward to it as a dreary exile from home and friends in a dull and uncivilized community. Instead, she soon found, as I had already, that the diplomatic circle was a group of charming people, intellectually stimulating, and engaged in the fascinating game of high politics. She shared as well my intense interest in the work of the missionaries, just as she had shared in New York my interest in the Bronx House and other works of social betterment. She enjoyed, besides, a most unusual opportunity that was denied to me, namely, the opportunity to study, under the most favourable circumstances, the strangely interesting life of the Oriental woman. This life was not only very different from the life of Western women but was also very different from our preconceived ideas of it. Mrs. Morgenthau found, to be sure, that the exclusion of Turkish women from masculine society was a reality, but she was astonished on the other hand to learn the extent to which the more ambitious ones among them had been able to achieve contact with Western thought. The plight of these intelligent women was really tragical. They were the pioneers of an epochal social change in Turkey, and they were suffering the usual martyrdom of pioneering. They had been allowed to acquire the education and ideas, which have so broadened the mental outlook of Western women, but the social barrier of custom still prevented them from enjoying in practice the advantage of its possession. Their husbands sought their intellectual companions entirely among other men, and continued to regard their women as playthings of the harem. They were thus denied the stimulation and enjoyment of contact with masculine thought and were cut off of course from all active participation in practical works, where the mind exercises its acquired talents. Doubtless in the course of time women in Turkey will be freed from these ancient restrictions of custom and will join their Western sisters in a full freedom to take an active part in the life of the world, but their position during the transition period is truly pathetic.