My mother is a woman of tact and great natural intelligence, but owing to the backward condition of women in the East, due to their surroundings, her intelligence has not had the benefit of culture. She is, of course, a fatalist, and she believes all she is told by her religious teachers, who are not very learned themselves. She is not ignorant; on the contrary, she was in her time the most well-read woman of our town. Indeed, so far was she in advance of the other ladies, that they used to visit her for the purpose of hearing her read aloud from the books of sacred legends and hymns which are their principal literature. She cannot write at all. This perhaps requires some explanation. Formerly girls in Turkey were not allowed to learn the mystery of caligraphy. We have had some excellent poetesses in days gone by, but none of them could write--they dictated their inspirations. The common explanation given of this traditional prohibition--for it is a custom rather than a rule--was that if girls once learned writing they might have indulged in talismanic pastimes, and eventually have become witches. As a matter of fact, the real reason was quite different There was a fear, perhaps not ill-founded, that having once learned to write they might hasten to make use of the accomplishment by composing love-letters to young men with whom they could not otherwise communicate, for the strict seclusion of females cuts off all intercourse between young people of opposite sexes almost as soon as they have ceased to be infants. This absurd, in fact harmful, prohibition has of late, and for some time past, been losing its force. But it was still strictly observed in my mother's younger days, and so she was not allowed to learn to write. In spite, however, of her incomplete education, she kept us happy, and by her inborn tact preserved the appearance of our social standing. All members of my mother's family have a practical business-like instinct, a quality which is so conspicuously lacking in those Turks who have no strain of foreign blood. I am convinced that there is some European blood in the veins of my mother's ancestors. She belongs to a family of soldiers who for generations were charged by the Ottoman Sultans with the defence of the provinces and the frontiers of Bosnia and Herzegovina In those days the Turks used to make slaves of their captives in war, just as their enemies used to carry Turks into permanent captivity when invading their territory. The antecedents of the people so enslaved can be traced even now in Hungary and Austria by their Turkish names. But the captives of the Turks, as a rule, had to adopt Turkish names, and so the presence of European blood can only be determined in Turkey by the personal appearance and characteristics of the descendants of the captives. My mother's soldier-ancestors doubtless intermarried with European captives. I before disclaimed all pretensions or desire to pass myself off as a descendant of a European race when I was describing the Asiatic origin of my forefathers. I am not, nevertheless, contradicting myself here; for when the pedigree of a person is being considered with us, it is only his ancestry on the father's side that counts.