emotion. How wonderful my empress city looked, when the mist gradually lifted and disclosed her to my homesick eyes. Up to that moment I had thought never to see her enchanting face again; yet there I was, standing on the promenade deck of a commonplace steamer, while she was giving me—me, her runaway child—all her smiles and all her glory.
We must be very strong, that we do not sometimes die of joy.
When the little tender docked at the quay of Galata, how I should have loved to have escaped the customs bother, the many and one greetings, and the hundred and several more stupid words one has to say on disembarking. Yet having acquired a little wisdom, I was patient with the custom-house men, and polite to the people who had been sent to meet me. Obediently even I entered the carriage which was to take me up, up on the seven hills where we Christians live.
Not till several days afterwards was I free to start on my pilgrimage; and as I walked up and down the main streets, and in and out of the narrow, crooked, dirty lanes, which lead one enticingly onward—often to nowhere—I was aware that my pilgrimage had a double aim. First, I wanted to recognize my old haunts, and second, to find that part of myself which had once lived within those quarters. Alas! if the streets were the same, I was not. Where was
