It sometimes happens that, entering a house, one enters not simply into the presence of a family but into that of a nation.  So it was when I was received in a Little-Russian deacon’s cottage in a village, on the Christmas Eve on which I first came to Russia.  I came not to the deacon but to Russia itself, and when the Christmas musicians came and played before me it was not only Christmas music, or village music, that I heard, but the voice of a whole countryside and the song of a whole national soul.  It sometimes happens that, looking at a picture, one sees not only its local and obvious beauty, but its eternal significance and message—­that is a similar experience.

It happened to me whilst on a tramp in Trans-Caucasia to enter a coffee-house that was at once a Turkish coffee-house and Turkey itself.  I lived for a whole night veritably in Turkey.  In this way—­

I came into a little town; it was a cold night and I wanted shelter.  I entered a noisy Turkish coffee-house—­there were at least a hundred such in the town—­and asked if I might spend the night there.  The owner, a young man in shirt-sleeves, very dirty and unshaven, and with an old fez on the side of his head, intimated that I might stay if I liked.

The cafe was a room full of poor Turks.  Picture a crowd of ragged men, some in drab turbans with loose ends hanging down their backs, but most of them in dingy red fez hats, faces unshaved, mottled, ugly—­a squat people, very talkative, but terribly mirthless; and in shadowy corners of the low dark cafe solitary persons with hook-nosed, ruminative faces.  All about me was the din of the strange language, the clatter of dice and dominoes.  All night long the doors of the cafe slammed and customers passed in and out, games were begun and played away, animated groups formed at certain tables and then broke up and gave way to new groups, loud discussions broke out over Turkish newspapers and politics and the war, in the course of which discussions the newspaper, a wilderness of Arabic, was often torn to bits—­a series of scenes of tremendous animation and noise; but no one laughed.

In the clamour of tongues sounded again and again the name “Italia.”  The Turks were angry over the war, full of a restrained resentment and a profound need for revenge.  It was a relief to me when one of them came to my table and talked to me in Russian.

“How goes the war?” I asked.  “Is Italy losing?”

“Of course she is losing,” he replied, lying sullenly; “and she must lose.”

“But she has taken Tripoli and guards it with her navy.  How can she lose?”

“The other Powers will make her disgorge it, or we will commence an endless hostility, not only against Italy and Italian trade, but against all whom we tolerate—­the Western Christians.”

A Caucasian, overhearing us, drew his forefinger along his throat from ear to ear, and smiled.

“There are more Mahometans than Christians,” the Turk went on, “and they are strong men, heroes.  The Italians are the worn-out scum of ancient Rome, getting the better of us ignobly.  But they shall not spoil the Mahometan world.  Not even the English, most powerful of the machine nations, shall overwhelm the true faith.”