Their little towns located in the interior, their villages, their country homes, are the last refuges not only of the calm but also of the patriarchal virtues which are more and more disappearing from our modern world: loyalty and honesty without blemish; veneration of children for parents of a kind that is not longer known to us; inexhaustible hospitality and chivalrous respect for guests; moral elegance and native delicacy, even among the most humble; kindness towards all--even towards animals; unbounded religious tolerance for whomsoever is not their enemy; serene faith and prayer. When arriving among them after leaving our Occident of doubt and cynicism, of noise and scrap-iron, one feels as if suffused with peace and confidence and believes he has remounted the course of time towards some indeterminate epoch, near, perhaps, to the Golden Age.[135] In Anatolia particularly are applicable the words of the English traveler, Walpole, who, when speaking of the hospitability of the people of Turkey, tells us that “in the East alone now do we find in the Oda Nessafer of the village the guest-chamber of Plato. A sum is set apart by the government for supplying these; though usually the more wealthy traveler repays what he receives, adding a small gratuity.”[136] In hospitality the Osmanlis of to-day are heirs of the best traditions of the Greeks of old who, as Homer informs us, were wont to say: _For Jove unfolds our hospitable door:_ _’Tis Jove that sends the stranger and the poor._[137] One of the most striking instances of Osmanli hospitality of which I have recently heard is an experience of my good Franciscan friend, the Reverend Paschal Robinson, Professor of History in the Catholic University of America in Washington, D. C. Some years ago he had occasion to travel through the greater part of Asia Minor. During the seven months of his journey he was always the guest of the Turks, who were all Moslems. And yet, although he was an entire stranger among them, the generous and courteous Osmanlis everywhere received him with the most cordial hospitality. Not only did they supply him gratis with food and shelter, but they also provided him with the necessary means of transportation from one place to another. And never would they accept the slightest compensation for their services. My actual traveling expenses during these seven months [Father Paschal assures me] were the equivalent of only seven American dollars. And, although the passport requirements in Turkey have always been exceedingly strict, I never carried a passport and nobody ever asked me for one. My habit which I always wore in Anatolia was my passport.