There were always visitors at the mission, and sometimes they were peculiar people. One morning a forlorn native appeared at the door with a dejected wife and two miserable children; they stood in a row, salaaming submissively with their thin hands crossed upon their empty stomachs. We went out to inquire their business, and heard the following not unusual story. The man was unfortunately a Bulgarian, and for that crime had been cast into prison in the general incarceration of his race. During his confinement his shop had been plundered by bashi-bazouks, and now he had nothing to live on, and nobody would give him work. (It was a case of ‘No Bulgars need apply’; men who employed Bulgarians were suspected of sympathy with the insurgents.) This Bulgar had called at the mission--here he showed some embarrassment--to see how much money he would receive if he and his family became ‘Americans’! This missionary explained that the Protestant Church did not offer pecuniary inducements and other mundane rewards for converts, as did the Greek, Bulgarian, Servian, and Rumanian Churches, and told him that he would not become an American if he chose to join the Protestant Church. The missionaries had a British relief fund at their disposal at this time, and out of it gave the man a couple of mijidiehs. He was made to understand, however, that this beneficence was a gift, pure and simple, and in no way meant as a bribe to induce him to leave the Orthodox Church. It is difficult for the Macedonian to see why men give up comfortable homes in happy countries to come out and live in a land like theirs. On another occasion we received a visit from a more enlightened Macedonian. He, too, was a Bulgarian, so he said; and in the same breath told us that he had two brothers, one of whom was a Servian and the other a Greek. This peculiar phenomenon, prevalent in many parts of Macedonia, here came to my notice for the first time. I was puzzled, and asked how such a thing was possible. The Macedonian smiled, and explained that his was a prominent family, and, for the influence their ‘conversion’ would mean, the Servians had given one of his brothers several liras to become a Servian, while the Greeks had outbid all the other Churches for the other brother.