singing women, or, more often still, through the gossiping attendants at the Turkish baths; stories which were almost always entirely misunderstood, and which gave rise to false yet strong impressions. It was an interesting study for me to watch the constructions which they put on the circumstances, manners, customs, and forms of worship, of which they heard, but which they could not comprehend or realize. I found it almost as difficult to help them to understand the ways that were not as their ways, and the thoughts that were not as their thoughts, as it would be to describe the nature and effect of light and color to a man blind from his birth.
Helweh, especially, used to ask me suggestive questions about religion. She often said, "Why are not all people of one religion? Why are they not all Moslems? it would be much better."
She always seemed to forget that I was not a Moslem. She sometimes appealed to me, with touching confidence, asking me to tell her what it was right to do under particular circumstances. Instead of deciding for her, I used to try to awaken in her mind some principle by which she might judge rightly for herself.
I often found appropriate and ready answers, by adopting the very words of Christ, conveying the simplest and most comprehensive of those lessons of love which were taught long ago in this land, and listened to by people as uninstructed and eager as Helweh herself, and by Scribes and Pharisees who were put to silence by words addressed not to any particular sect, but to all the world.
These women who thus questioned me made me think more earnestly and carefully than I had ever thought before, and they unconsciously helped me to understand the natural progress and growth of ideas. I could, by identifying myself with them, partially imagine the absence of all those thoughts, feelings, and conceptions which had grown with my growth and strengthened with my strength, till they seemed almost to be a part of my mind.
