the coming of the railroad through it. Small wonder that, when the trains began to run, the inhabitants brought their luncheons and sat all day long close to the rails, waiting to see the wonderful thing pass, which ran of its own accord, with a speed beyond the dreams of the fastest horse. Small wonder, too, that the rents of the houses near the track began to go up like speculative stocks in a Wall Street boom.
The house we took belonged to a Turkish lady, who became at once the great interest of my life, although she was never to be seen. We heard that she was the former wife of dashing young Nouri Pasha, whom we knew on the island of Prinkipo, and who was famous for his looks, his riches, and his many beautiful wives. We transacted our business with her through one of her slaves. The lady herself had never been seen since the day she left her husband, eight years before, and came to bury herself in her maternal property here.
Our house was surrounded by a very large garden and an orchard, the trees of which were so old and so patched that I was never surprised on climbing a cherry tree to find plums growing there, or at the top of a plum tree to discover dzidzifa. It became a game with me to climb the highest trees, to see what would grow on the top branches. These trees were grafted with the
