DOI Page / Citation link:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.4752#0238
228 THE AMERICAN MISSIONARIES
came up and entered into conversation in English.
His English was not perfectly correct, nor did he
speak it with ease ; but it was really remarkable
that he should have picked it up so well with his
slender opportunities. He told me that he was a
Protestant, related some part of his history (which
I cannot remember), and inquired carefully about
the means of getting out to America. He was a
watchmaker ; but, as he said, there was no trade
and no possibility of getting work or earning money
in Turkey. America, where the missionaries came
from, was the goal of his ambition. His appearance
and manner reminded me much of a decent, steady
Scotch shopkeeper, rather slow, respectably edu-
cated, taking a fairly wide interest in the world,
making the best of his opportunities, and with a
shrewd eye to the main chance: not a lofty type
of nature, but a good average man, indicating a
strong and healthy stock, from which would spring
many others of the same vigorous mould.
Again, in a remote village, on the site of Comana,
buried in a glen of the Anti-Taurus, I met in 1890
a young Armenian pastor, on a round of inspection
of the stations in his district. Meeting him ac-
cidentally and unawares in the squalid street of that
mud-built village, I felt, as he approached, the air
of education and refinement and high purpose which
belonged to him. He had been trained first at the
came up and entered into conversation in English.
His English was not perfectly correct, nor did he
speak it with ease ; but it was really remarkable
that he should have picked it up so well with his
slender opportunities. He told me that he was a
Protestant, related some part of his history (which
I cannot remember), and inquired carefully about
the means of getting out to America. He was a
watchmaker ; but, as he said, there was no trade
and no possibility of getting work or earning money
in Turkey. America, where the missionaries came
from, was the goal of his ambition. His appearance
and manner reminded me much of a decent, steady
Scotch shopkeeper, rather slow, respectably edu-
cated, taking a fairly wide interest in the world,
making the best of his opportunities, and with a
shrewd eye to the main chance: not a lofty type
of nature, but a good average man, indicating a
strong and healthy stock, from which would spring
many others of the same vigorous mould.
Again, in a remote village, on the site of Comana,
buried in a glen of the Anti-Taurus, I met in 1890
a young Armenian pastor, on a round of inspection
of the stations in his district. Meeting him ac-
cidentally and unawares in the squalid street of that
mud-built village, I felt, as he approached, the air
of education and refinement and high purpose which
belonged to him. He had been trained first at the