_February 1st, 1917._--Four months have gone. As I write the earth is white with feet of snow. It is a white world, the roofs no longer brown, the trees no longer green, for even those few trees, like pines that have not shed their verdure, have donned the white raiment of winter's carnival. Snow! This pure and godly element, silent and secretive, the _avant-courrier_ of the Ultimate, of Things doomed, one day to be reclaimed by the once again triumphant elements when, from the dome of the universe, the last white great snow sheets shall fall, fall, fall--and this universe, once again locked in the ice-grip of the Snow God, shall drive forward mysteriously on its lonely way--lonely for it shall have been separated from Life, and the Spirit, Man, will have gone. As I look out on the undulating expanse terraced down to me from the mountain horizon to the northward, I am for a minute tempted to believe that the Great Snow Deluge has really come, and I alone am awake to behold it. But looking still closer I see tiny windows peeping out from their white frames, and I know the bees within that human hive are having their winter sleep. With an effort I trace among the smothered definition of the buildings, the snowed-up roads and alleys, and rising above it all I see, scattered over the town, the white upright minarets of the mosques. Kastamuni in wintertime is a picturesque Turkish town, and has a character all its own. The streets are deserted, but on the hill-path white-mottled figures move slowly upwards. It is the hour of prayer, and the _muezzin_ has just begun to swell out in icy circles from the minarets, reaching out to the hearts of the prayerful, and calling them to communion with Allah. _La illaha, illa la._ There is but one God, and that is God. From how many thousands of mosques, and for how many millions of the followers of the prophet does the _muezzin_ cry at this hour? And so I, too, find my silence unlocked after all these months and am at last persuaded to throw off the coma that has been stealing over us body and soul, that has buried beneath its snow-drift our intentions one by one, and I am tempted to jot down a few more notes to my reminiscences.