But the time came when Cyrus Hamlin faced problems a thousand times more serious than making an ox-yoke or moving a boulder. He became a missionary as he had intended and was sent to Constantinople. There he taught Armenian boys in Bebek Seminary, and it became the dream of his life to build a college.
"Education is the way to peace and enlightenment," he would say. "If we could found Christian institutions where we could train young men in all professions, then they could go out to set an example to their fellow countrymen and be their leaders."
He never walked through the narrow streets or crossed the Golden Horn without looking all round for a suitable location, and he had already about twenty in mind. But his dream did not come true. In the first place, there was no money. In the second place, he had to fill with other work all the time he might have spent planning for a college. He had to be textbook as well as teacher, and he had to make all his own apparatus.
When he moved into a house, he had to repair it; when his poor Armenian students and their families were without clothes, he had to find a way to cover them. When they were refused work by the cruel Turks, he had to find work for them. He taught them how to make and sell stoves and stove-pipes and various useful articles.
One poor man became insane when he had no way of supporting himself and his family and believed that he was turned to stone. Just as soon as Dr. Hamlin gave him work, he was cured. Dr. Hamlin suggested to him that it was best to make an article for which there was a demand.
Courtesy of Robert College
Robert College, Constantinople
This picture taken in Turkey in Asia looks across the Bosphorus, a mile wide at this point, to Turkey in Europe and the site chosen by Cyrus Hamlin for his college. The modern buildings "rub elbows" with towers six hundred years old.
"If there are thirteen hundred thousand inhabitants in Constantinople, there are thirteen hundred million rats," said he. "Make rat traps! I'll show you how!"