It is gratifying to find in this far-off country ladies and gentlemen who have been educated in the United States and are familiar with American institutions. The most influential woman in Bulgaria is Mrs. Ivan B. Kassuroff, who was a pupil of Miss Stone. She is notable for having been the first Bulgarian woman to engage in active mercantile business. She violated the customs and traditions of the country and for a time created considerable stir, but Mme. Kassuroff’s character and abilities have not only carried her through a trying ordeal, but have gained for her the respect, confidence and admiration of the entire population, and she now has many imitators. She opened the field of business for women. Although the native citizens, with their oriental conservatism, had a hereditary prejudice against women engaging in business enterprises, they now lift their hats to Mme. Kassuroff when they meet her in the street.

Mme. Kassuroff’s business career, however, was not entirely voluntary. Her husband was proprietor of the principal bookstore in Sofia, and in 1874 died, leaving no one to carry on his profitable business. Rather than make a sacrifice, his widow assumed the responsibility, has since taken personal charge of it, has developed remarkable capacity, and, as I have said, is honored and admired by all classes. She supplies the government with books and stationery, and her shop is known as the “Court Book Store.” It stands upon the opposite side of the public square from the palace. She is a typical example of what an American education and American ideas introduced by the missionaries can do for a Bulgarian woman, and illustrates the advancement women have made in the East under missionary influence.

Mrs. Popoff, wife of the pastor of the Protestant church in Sofia, is also a graduate of the Painesville (Ohio) Seminary, and has done much to bring American ideas into the family circles of Bulgaria and develop the ambition and independence of Bulgarian women. Her husband, Rev. Marko N. Popoff, is a graduate of Hamilton College, was prepared at Fredonia, New York, and took a course in theology at Auburn Seminary. Altogether he spent about eleven years in America, is a fine all-round scholar, an orator of ability, and exercises a large and growing influence. His church is always crowded and he is a popular lecturer.

Another American product is Stoyan Kristoff Vatralsky, a son of a Bulgarian shepherd, who graduated at Harvard in 1894, was class poet, and was engaged in literary work and on the lecture platform in the United States until recently, preparing himself for educational and literary work in his own country. Mr. Vatralsky is a graduate of the missionary school at Samakov, where he was inspired with an ambition to go to the United States and prepare himself for greater usefulness to his fellow countrymen.

The supreme representative of Russia in Bulgaria to-day is Mr. Bakhmeteff, a diplomatist of great talent, learning and long experience, who disguises his cleverness under an air of cynical indifference. He is well known in the United States, for he has spent much time in Washington, his wife being a daughter of the late General Edward F. Beale, who was General Grant’s roommate at West Point and his most intimate friend for a lifetime. Mme. Bakhmeteff is as clever as her husband, and although she naturally sympathizes with his efforts to keep Bulgaria within the Russian “sphere of influence,” she is thoroughly American in her habits and sympathies. To her benevolent spirit is due the establishment of several much needed charities in Bulgaria. She organized a free hospital and interested in her work the Czarina, who at her own expense sent to Sofia a staff of nurses from a Russian religious sisterhood. Mme. Bakhmeteff also introduced the Red Cross Society into Bulgaria, has interested herself in the improvements of the schools, and as the social leader of the capital has made charitable work fashionable among the Bulgarian women. She has also started a school for trained nurses, in which other ladies of high position take an active interest.

While his wife is engaged in charitable work Mr. Bakhmeteff keeps the government straight. The prime minister never does anything of importance without consulting him, and his advice is equivalent to an order from the Czar.

XI
THE KIDNAPING OF MISS STONE

The capture and detention for five months and twenty days—from the 3d of September, 1901, to the 23d of February, 1902—of Miss Ellen M. Stone, a representative of the American Board of Foreign Missions, and her companion, Mrs. Katarina Stephanova Tsilka, wife of the Rev. Gregory Tsilka, has excited much interest in Bulgarian affairs and the cause of Macedonian liberty, but failed to provoke intervention on the part of the United States or the European nations, as the conspirators hoped it might do. That was undoubtedly their chief purpose, and it was successful only so far as it attracted public attention to the condition of anarchy that prevails in Rumelia and the dangers with which missionaries and other foreigners are surrounded.

Miss Stone is well known in Sofia and throughout all the Balkan Provinces. She has been engaged in missionary work in that region ever since the independence of Bulgaria was established at the close of the Russo-Turkish war. Her headquarters have been at Salonika, a Turkish port on the Mediterranean, which was formerly known as Thessalonica. St. Paul addressed his Epistle to the Thessalonians to its inhabitants, and the city is otherwise identified with important events in the history of Christianity. Rev. John H. House of Painesville, Ohio, whose influence and usefulness extend beyond the borders of Bulgaria, where he was a pioneer in missionary work, has charge of the headquarters at Salonika, and Miss Stone has been associated with him for many years. Her especial duties have been to supervise the educational work, and it has been her habit to travel on horseback throughout the country, opening schools, establishing native teachers and looking after their work. In this way she has acquired a wide acquaintance and is universally respected and beloved, not only by the Protestant converts, but by all classes. In her own personal narrative she says:

“During the frequent missionary tours which I have made in Macedonia during the last twenty years and more, I have often been conscious of danger from the brigands who have long infested that country. Thrice before my capture I had come into personal contact with them. Once I spent the night in the common room of a khan or inn with a brigand sleeping on the other side of the fire; once two horses were stolen from the party with which I was traveling; and the third time two bandits stopped us on the road, but hesitated as to what manner of people we were, and so let us pass. On our journey in September, however, we had no thought of fear. Only three weeks before, I had come to Bansko by way of Strumitza and Djumia with two Bulgarian ladies, teachers in our village schools, accompanied only by a muleteer and a young native boy. We had ridden through a wild and rugged country, spending four days on the road, sleeping one night in a native house, and two in khans, all without molestation. I had, indeed, traversed the road on which we were finally captured many times before, and, knowing the people and their ways, I was conscious of all the safety of long familiarity.”