Christy was a vigorous intelligent man who seemed to hold a leading position in Smyrna. While calling at his house we were offered a delicious sweetmeat flavored with rose leaves, served in a crystal dish. You took a spoonful; then a glass of water was handed you. If that ambrosial conserve had a fault, it was a little oversweet; this made the water doubly welcome. In speaking of Smyrna’s claim to fame Christy said, “You doubtless know that this island was the birthplace of Homer?” I thought of the old English round we used to sing: Seven great towns of Greece, ’tis said, Claimed Homer’s birth when he was dead, Through which, alive, he begged his bread. At Jerusalem the grave of Adam had been pointed out to us; after that nothing surprised me. My mother however confirmed Christy’s statement. Some of the saloon passengers were interested in a forlorn family in the steerage. The mother, an Egyptian, was very ill, and the children needed looking after. An Englishwoman who had lived long in Cairo gave this warning: “Do not notice that fine baby too much! If you were a native, you would say to the mother, ‘What a poor, miserable little girl you have there!’” “But why, when it is a boy, and the best of the lot?” was asked. The Englishwoman smiled and shook her head. “I can’t explain--you couldn’t understand--it is not well to praise a child to these people; it brings bad luck.” I understood! This was “the evil thing come out of Africa”, magic and fear of magic. In Hayti they call it _voodoo_, in Italy, _jettatura_! As we neared the Dardanelles the old captain gave us another sensation. Pointing a blunt forefinger towards the faint blue coast, he said, “Troy once stood there!” “Then Helen passed this way with Paris, Agamemnon, Achilles, and all the rest of them?” The captain nodded. “So they say. There’s a deal more important happened since, though. My father fought the bloody Algerine pirates in these waters before I was born.--The Mediterranean wa’n’t exactly a tourist resort in those days!” We made quite a stay at Constantinople. Much of what we did and saw on this wonder journey is lost to me now, but I have never lost the sympathy for the poetry and art of the Orient. “I heard the East a callin’”--it calls me yet! While in Syria we had some disagreeable encounters with Turkish officialdom and formed a poor opinion of it. At the Constantinople customhouse the officers were incredibly insolent. One snatched a bouquet from my hand and threw it into the sea; another took from my ulster pocket a photograph of a Greek officer. The photograph was handed from one to another amid jeers and laughter.