It was the brightest, most brilliant Mediterranean sunshine which irradiated the scene the morning on which we arrived at Smyrna.  A score of gaily clad boatmen, whose very patches on their trousers were as picturesque as the patches on Italian sails, held out their hands to enable us to step from one cockle-shell to another, to reach the pier.  In the way the boats touch each other in the harbour at Smyrna, I was reminded of the Thames in Henley week.  We climbed through perhaps a dozen of these boats before we landed on the pier, and in three minutes’ walk we were in the rug bazaars of Smyrna.  Such treasures as we saw!

We were received by the smiling merchants as if we were long-lost daughters suddenly restored, but we practised our newly acquired diplomacy on them to such an extent that their faces soon began to betray the most comic astonishment.  These people are like children, and exhibit their emotions in a manner which seems almost infantile to the Caucasian.  Alas, we were not the prey they had hoped for.  We sneered at their rugs; we laughed at their embroideries; we turned up our noses at their jewelled weapons; we drank their coffee, and walked out of their shops without buying.  They followed us into the street, and there implored us to come back, but we pretended to be returning to our ship.  On our way back through this same street, every proprietor was out in front of his shop, holding up some special rug or embroidery which he had hastily dug out of his secret treasures in the vain hope of compelling our respect.  Some of these were Persian silk rugs worth from one to three thousand dollars each.  Although we would have committed any crime in order to possess these treasures, having got thoroughly into the spirit of the thing, we turned these rugs on their backs and pretended to find flaws in them, jeered at their colouring, and went on our way, followed by a jabbering, excited, perplexed, and nettled horde, who recklessly slaughtered their prices and almost tore up their mud floors in their wild anxiety to prove that they had something—­anything—­which we would buy.  They called upon Allah to witness that they never had been treated so in their lives, but would we not stop just once more again to cast our eyes on their unworthy stock?

Having had all the amusement we wanted, and it being nearly time for luncheon, we went in, and in half an hour we had bought all that we had intended to buy from the first moment our eyes were cast upon them, and at about one-half the price they were offered to us three hours before.  Now, if that isn’t what you call enjoying yourself, I should like to ask what you expect.

Ephesus, the graves of the Seven Sleepers, the tomb of St. Luke, the ruins of the Temple of Diana ("Great is Diana of the Ephesians"), the prison of St. Paul, are only a part of my vivid experiences in Smyrna.

In Athens we bought nothing modern, but found several antique shops with Byzantine treasures, also silver ornaments, ancient curios, more beautiful than anything we found in Italy, and ancient sacred brass candlesticks of the Greek Church, which bore the test of being transplanted to an American setting.