"We are all Christians," said an old, and very dirty Armenian, who looked as if water and he had long been strangers to each other.
"It is a pleasure to see a Christian," he added. "It does me good."
"We are all delighted!" said the rest of the company. Whereupon we salaamed again.
"How do you like the Turks?" I now inquired.
"They get on very well together," observed the Pole, who had accompanied me home, "and the law is carried out very fairly for all classes. I will give you an instance. The chief of the telegraphs in Yuzgat is an Armenian. One day he saw a few Turkish boys teazing some Armenian children, and calling them giaours. He beat the Turkish children. Some Turks, coming up, took the part of the Mohammedan lads, and struck the telegraph-man. The latter complained to the authorities; the Turks who had beaten him were at once imprisoned."
"Twenty years ago this would not have happened," said another of the visitors; "but here things have altered for the better."
"However, at Sivas," he continued, "you will find that the Christians are horribly ill-treated by their Pacha. The prison is full of Christians. There is no sort of justice in that city. The Pacha takes away Christian little boys and girls from their parents, and shuts them up in his seraglio."
"Is this true?" I inquired of Mr. Vankovitch.
"They say so. But you must remember that you are in the East," was the Pole's reply.
"Personally," he added, "I make a rule to believe nothing except what I see myself. You are going to Sivas?"