The Autobiography of a Journalist, Volume II — John Shaqi
The Autobiography of a Journalist, Volume IIStillman, William James
History
The Autobiography of a Journalist, Volume II
Stillman, William James
Journalists -- Biography; Stillman, William James, 1828-1901
The accumulated oppressions of Ismael Pasha had finally the usual
effect on the Cretans, and they began to agitate for a petition to the
Sultan, a procedure which time had shown to be absolutely useless as
an appeal against the governor; and, while the agitation was in this
embryonic condition, I decided to go back to Rome and get my wife and
children. We were still in the state of siege by the cholera, and
there was still no communication with the Greek islands, so that I
accepted the offer made by my English colleague, the amiable and
gratefully remembered Charles H. Dickson, of whose qualities I shall
have to say more in the pages to come, of a passage on a Brixham
schooner to Zante. Sailing with a clean bill of health, we had to make
a fortnight's quarantine in the roadstead, and, taking passage on the
Italian postal steamer to Ancona, I was obliged, on landing, to make
another term of two weeks in the lazaretto, though we had again a
clean bill; and, on arriving on the Papal frontier by the diligence,
we had to undergo a suffocating fumigation, and all this in spite of
the fact that no one of the company I had traveled with had been at a
city where cholera had existed at any time within three months, or on
a steamer which had touched where the cholera was prevalent. At that
time there was no railway northward from Rome, and traveling was
conducted on the system of the sixteenth century, except for sea
travel.
I was not long cutting all the ties that bound me to Rome, though I
left a few sincere friends there, and, drawing a bill on my brother
for my indebtedness to the kind and helpful banker, an Englishman
named Freeborn, to whose friendship I owed the solution of most of the
difficulties and all the indulgences I had enjoyed while in Rome, I
started on my return to Crete in the problematical condition of one
who emigrates to a foreign land through an unknown way. I had money
enough to get through if nothing occurred to delay me, and no more,
for, with the high rate of exchange on America, I felt distressed at
the burthen I was laying on my brother, though I had always been told
to consider myself as to be provided for while he had the means, and
by his will when he died. His death took place at this juncture, and,
curiously enough, the draft reached him in time to be accepted, but he
died before it was paid. His will made no mention whatever of me, but
left all his property to his wife during her lifetime, and to three
Seventh-day Baptist churches after her death.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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