I was born January 20, 1853, in a suburb of Antioch; twelfth child and youngest son of a family of nine boys and four girls, and therefore considered the Joseph of the family, and as a small boy went to a missionary school with my elder brothers. My father was a banker and merchant. His partner in the former business was Mr. Edward Barker, English consul at Aleppo; in the latter a Greek, Jabra Antaki, their traffic being in raw silk, for which and for silk-worms Antioch is a great center. Millions of dollars passed through his hands, and he was considered one of the wealthiest men in the city. A common saying was, "If you can drain the Mediterranean dry, you can drain Filian's money dry." This saying roused the cupidity of the local governor; he imprisoned my father, and proposed to torture and kill him, and confiscate his property. Americans would relish living under this sort of government. His partner, the consul, saved him, however, and won his undying gratitude; and when Mr. Barker died, my father gave his son a part of his own orchard for a burial ground. The son erected a beautiful $25,000 monument there, which still stands, the ground being owned by my brother, Moses Filian. When I was fourteen or fifteen, my father lost all his money through the failure of others, became hopelessly bankrupt, and was too old to regain his position, and sank into a poor and broken-hearted old man: his Mediterranean was not inexhaustible. He often patted me and said, "My dear boy, I am sorry--I helped your brothers and gave them good educations, and I meant to do the same by you; but I cannot, for I am too poor. You will have to make your own way." He was a devoted friend of education, himself highly educated, master of three languages,--Armenian, Arabic, and Turkish,--and of strong reasoning powers, logical, imaginative, profound, and far-sighted. Moreover, he was a zealous Christian, greatly respected and liked. In person he was tall, and very stout, with large, bright eyes, and full, rosy cheeks; built like my great-grandfather, from whose elephantine figure the family took its surname. Filian means "Son of an elephant," and his descendants--about 150 in all, one of the largest single families in the Orient--have been mostly large-framed men and women.