CHAPTER III
OTHER FACES, OTHER PHASES
My uncle was now gone—gone, let us
hope, to where he was to find rest
from racial hatred, rest from national
ambition.
Gone though he was, his influence over my life was never to go entirely—in spite of radical modifications. He had enriched my childhood with things beyond my age, yet things which I would not give up for the most normal and sweetest of childhoods. He had taught me the Greek Revolution as no book could ever have done; and he had given me an idea of the big things expected of men. He had given me a worship for my race amounting to superstition, and bequeathed to me a hatred for the Turks which would have warped my intelligence, had I not been blessed almost from my infancy with a power of observing for myself, and also had not good fortune given me little Turkish Kiamelé as a constant companion.
In the abstract, the Turks, from the deeds they had done, had taken their place in my mind as the cruellest of races; yet in the concrete that
