of a stranger and the whole village; some day, if she doesn’t be more reasonable, her husband, instead of satisfying his outraged feelings by chastising her with a hoe-handle, will, in a moment of passion, bid her begone from his house, which in Turkish law constitutes a legal separation; if the command be given in the presence of a competent witness it is irrevocable.  Seeing me thus placed, as it were, in an embarrassing situation, another woman — dear, thoughtful creature! — fetches me enough wheat piilau to feed a mule, and a nice bowl of yaort, off which I make a substantial breakfast.  Near by where I am eating are five industrious maidens, preparing cracked or broken wheat by a novel and interesting process, that has hitherto failed to come under my observation; perhaps it is peculiar to the Sivas vilayet, which I have now entered.  A large rock is hollowed out like a shallow druggist’s mortar; wheat is put in, and several girls (sometimes as many as eight, I am told by the American missionaries at Sivas) gather in a circle about it, and pound the wheat with light, long-headed mauls or beetles, striking in regular succession, as the reader has probably seen a gang of circus roustabouts driving tent-pins.  When I first saw circus tent-pins driven in this manner, a few years ago, I remember hearing on-lookers remarking it as quite novel and wonderful how so many could be striking the same peg without their swinging sledges coming into collision; but that very same performance has been practised by the maidens hereabout, it seems, from time immemorial-another proof that there is nothing new under the sun.  Ten miles of good riding, and I wheel into the considerable town of Yennikhan, a place sufficiently important to maintain a public coffee-khan and several small shops.  Here I take aboard a pocketful of fine large pears, and after wheeling a couple of miles to a secluded spot, halt for the purpose of shifting the pears from my pocket to where they will be better appreciated.  Ere I have finished the second pear, a gentle goatherd, who from an adjacent hill observed me alight, appears upon the scene and waits around, with the laudable intention of further enlightening his mind when I remount.  He is carrying a musical instrument something akin to a flute; it is a mere hollow tube with the customary finger-holes, but it is blown at the end; having neither reed nor mouth-piece of any description, it requires a peculiar sidewise application of the lips, and is not to be blown readily by a novice.  When properly played, it produces soft, melodious music that, to say nothing else, must exert a gentle soothing influence on the wild, turbulent souls of a herd of goats.  The goatherd offers me a cake of ekmek out of his wallet, as a sort of a I peace — offering, but thanks to a generous breakfast, music hath more charms at present than dry ekmek, and handing him a pear, I strike up a bargain by which he is to entertain me with a solo until I