Next time you have to go to Doctor Smith's office, give him my thanks for his kind message. I can hear him gravely telling you to advise me "by all means to go to the nearest hospital." Take with you my old geography, and put your pretty forefinger on the right-hand upper corner of the Mediterranean. Show him that we are where the map begins to turn around that right-hand upper corner down towards the Holy Land. Then tell him the nearest hospital is a two days' sea voyage away. Do you suppose Herbert's salary could send me to Beirut? And could I take the journey alone? You are quite justified, however, in your wish that I make plans now for baby's coming. The only trained nurse in Cilicia is Miss Hallie Wallis. She is forty miles away. She receives at her house at least one hundred natives a day and has more work than her limited strength can accomplish. Moreover, she has such a mixed crowd that it might not be wise for her to handle a baby case. If we had taken the little church in Squeedunkville we used to talk about in Princeton days, instead of setting out to see the world like a couple of fellows in a Grimm's fairy tale, you would now be forwarding the bassinette Grandma gave me when I was born. Some nosey old parishioner would be trimming it up for me. I am a Presbyterian, turned Congregationalist on account of geography, but "conformity unto" would give me fits when it came to parishioners' notions. I am much too hasty and human to suit anybody. Your grandbaby will open its eyes five thousand miles from its grandmother. The family heirlooms must wait for the second grandbaby. Some weeks ago I had the school steward (name, when spoken, sounds like Asturah) go to a Fellahin village near Tarsus and have a basket made for me. A Fellahin village itself looks like a dusty unfinished basket turned upside down. The houses are made of a crude reed matting, and the side walls have the reeds untrimmed and upright at the place where you expect to see eaves. I figured out the size for my cradle basket, then cut strings of the right length for the various dimensions. Through an interpreter I explained that the basket must be oval. As wide at the top as my blue string, as wide at the bottom as my red string and as deep as my white string. A week later the basket was brought to our balcony. Herbert and I climbed into the thing. It was big enough for us to sit down in it Turkish fashion, both at the same time.