Turkish and Persian carpets

Seeing we were so much interested in the panorama, our hosts suggested our going on the roof of the Hospital Building where we could see it without any obstruction. As we passed through the drawing room our hostess pointed out to us the genuine Turkish and Persian carpets she had been lucky enough to purchase through the uncle of one of the pupils who had a shop in the Bazaar. She considered them as a real bargain and she proudly told us the price she had paid.

Of course we did not say anything, but my conscience was only set at rest after I found, through skillful investigation, that the pupil whose uncle had a shop in the Bazaar was an Armenian “and one of the cleverest little fellows we have.” Our hostess showed us also, hidden in a corner near the door and patiently awaiting the eventual return of its owners to America where it could be shown to friends from Michigan or Wisconsin as exhibit A of a quaint collection of Turkish antiques, a brass bracero, another bargain purchased from the Armenian uncle of the clever little pupil.

It seemed that this man through his good services to our hosts had been recommended by them to many of their friends and had furnished to several of them similar bargains. No wonder that the family of the little boy prodigy could afford to send him to Robert College.

Principles of American neo mediaeval

We climbed the stairs of the building and stopped on our way in the hospital room, a perfectly equipped place with all the comforts devised by modern science and kept immaculately clean. And as we climbed one more flight we reached the door of the roof, a spacious flat place with an indented parapet built according to the best principles of American neo mediaeval suburban architecture. Here we had the view, and words fail me to depict its gorgeousness. Imagine if you can a limitless horizon extending far into the transparent azure of a limpid Eastern sky, deep into the snow-covered mountains of Anatolia, which are, however, so far away that they almost seem at this distance to be below your level.

All around in the country are little bouquets of trees which, with each slender minaret, represent the location of a small village. Nearer, but still on the Asiatic shores, are the green hills of the Bosporus with their summer residences and their uninterrupted line of homes by the water, while below are the green hills of the European shore. With the blue water in between and the blue sky overhead, the picture is unforgettable. We admired it in silence while our hosts told us of their little country house in America, near a little pond whose waters are as blue as the waters of the Bosporus.