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John Freely was born in New York and joined the US Navy at
the age of seventeen, serving with a commando unit in Burma
and China during the last years of World War 11. He has lived
in New York, Boston, London, Athens and Istanbul and has
written over thirty travel books and guides, most of them about
Greece and Turkey. He is author of Strolling Through Athens
(also Tauris Parke Paperbacks) and the bestselling Strolling
Through Istanbul.
Tauris Parke Paperbacks is an imprint of I.B.Tauris. It is dedicated to publishing
books in accessible paperback editions for the serious general reader within a
wide range of categories, including biography, history, travel, art and the
ancient world. The list includes select, critically acclaimed works of top quality
writing by distinguished authors that continue to challenge, to inform and to
inspire. These are books that possess those subtle but intrinsic elements that
mark them out as something exceptional.

The colophon of Tauris Parke Paperbacks is a representation of the ancient

Egyptian ibis, sacred to the god Thoth, who was himself often depicted in the
form of this most elegant of birds. Thoth was credited in antiquity as the scribe
of the ancient Egyptian gods and as the inventor of writing and was associated
with many aspects of wisdom and learning.
 f HE WESTERN
SHORES OF
TURKEY
Discovering the Aegean and
Mediterranean Coasts

JOHN FREELY

lrppl
TAURlS PARKE
PAPERBACKS
Published in 2004 by I.B. Tauris & Co Ltd
6 Salem Road, London W2 4BU
175 Fifth Avenue, New York NY 10010
www. ibtauris.com

In the United States of America and Canada distributed by

PaQrave Macmillan a division of St. Martin's Press
175 Fifth Avenue, New York NY 10010

Copyright O 1988. 2004 by John Freely

First published by John Murray (Publishers) Ltd, 1988.
Spine and back panel illustration on cover: Medusa head at Didyma

The right of John Freely to be identified as the author of this work has been
asserted by the author in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patent
Act 1988.

All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations in a review, this book, or any
part thereof, may not be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval
system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical,
photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior written permission of
the publisher.

ISBN 185043 618 5

EAN 978 1 8 5 0 4 3 6 1 8 8
A full CIP record for this book is available from the British Library
A full CIP record is available from the Library of Congress

Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: available

Printed and bound in Great Britain by MPG Books Ltd. Bodmin

 CONTENTS

Illustrations vii
Acknowledgements viii
A note on Turkish spelling and pronunciation ix

Introduction
The Hellespontine shores
Troy and the Trojan plain
The Troad
The Gulf of Edremit
Pergamum and the Attalids
The Aeolian shore
Izmir, the ancient Smyrna
Ancient Lydia: the Hermus valley and Sardis
The northern Ionian shore
Ephesus and the Mother Goddess
The Maeander valley and Aphrodisias
Miletus and the vanished splendours of Ionia
The Carian hills
Bodrum, the ancient Halicarnassus
The Ceramic Gulf
Cnidus and the southern shore of Caria
From Caria to Lycia
 CONTENTS

I8 The Xanthus valley and the Tomb

of Bellerophon
19 The western Lycian shore
20 The eastern Lycian shore
21 The Pamphylian plain
22 The Cician shore
23 TOthe 'fair crown of the Orient'

Chronology
Turkish glossary
Architectural glossary
Bibliography
Index
 ILLUSTRATIONS

(between pp. r I 4 and I 15 )

I The defence walls of Troy VI
2 The Hellenistic theatre on the acropolis of ancient
Pergamum
3 Izrnir's Bazaar
4 The Hellenistic Temple of Artemis at Sardis
5 A coffee-house in the village of Geyre
6 Church of the Blessed Virgin at Ephesus
7 The Embolos, or Colonnaded Way
8 A colonnade of the Roman agora at Aphrodisias
g The Roman odeion and the Temple of Aphrodite at
~phrddisias
10 The classical Temple of Athena Polias at Priene
I I The Graeco-Roman theatre at Miletus
12 The Hellenistic Temple of Apollo Branchidae at Didyma

vii
 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

The author and publisher wish to thank the following for

permission to reproduce photographs:
Ergun Cagatay (Plates 3 , 10,and 14):Ara Giiler (Plates I. 2,
4, 5, 6,7,8, g, XI, 12, 13, and 16);$emsi Guner (Plates 1 8
and 22); and the Turkish Ministry of Tourism (Plates I 5, I 7,
xg, 20, and 21).

viii
 A NOTE ON T U R K I S H SPELLING
AND PRONUNCIATION

All letters in the Turkish alphabet have one and only one
sound, and no letters are silent. Vowels have their short Con-
tinental value; i.e. a as in father (the rarely used ci sounds
rather like ay), e as in get, i as in sit, o as in doll, and u as in
bull. However, I (undotted) is between i and u, somewhat as
the final a in Anna, o is pronounced as in German or as the u
in further; and u as in German or as the French u in tu.
Consonants are as in English except for the following: c as j in
jam; c as ch in church; g is always hard as in give, never soft
as in gem; g is almost silent, tending to lengthen the preceding
vowel; s is always unvoiced as in sit, never like z; and $ is as s
in sugar. Turkish is very lightly accented, most often on the
last syllable, but all syllables should be clearly and almost
evenly articulated.
 For Jacob and Mimi Maya
and Roddy and Olga O'Connor
xii
S e a

xiii
 INTRODUCTION

Much of the fascination that Turkey holds for foreigners stems

from the fact that it extends into two continents, for history
and geography link it to both Europe and Asia. The European
and Asian parts of Turkey are separated by the Bosphorus, the
Sea of Marmara, and the Dardanelles, with the Black Sea
bounding its shores to the north, the Aegean to the west, and
the Mediterranean along the western half of its southern side.
Ninety-seven per cent of Turkey's land mass is in Asia, com-
prising the huge subcontinent now officially called Anatolia
but more generally known in former times as Asia Minor. Both
names have been used since antiquity, Asia Minor in Graeco-
Roman times referring to this westernmost extension of the
Asian continent, while Anatolia is the Greek word for East,
more literally the Land of Sunrise.
Turkey is bounded in Asia by Syria, Iraq, Iran, and Russia,
and in Europe by Bulgaria and Greece. Turkey also has a
maritime boundary with Greece that winds through the
eastern Aegean between a series of Greek archipelagos and
the Asian shore, extending from the south-eastern corner of
Europe to the south-westernmost promontory of Anatolia
where the waters of the Aegean and the Mediterranean merge.
Thus the Anatolian subcontinent of Turkey is part of two
worlds, its remote eastern marches leading into the vast time-
lessness of Asia, its western shores washed by the Aegean and
the Mediterranean, where European civilization emerged.
 THE WESTERN SHOKES OF TIJRKEY

I tirst saw the western shores of Turkey in January 1961,

travelling with my wife Dolores and our three children aboard
an old post-boat of the Turkish Maritime Lines, the Tarih,
which has long since gone to its rest in a maritime graveyard
along the Golden Horn. Boarding the Tarih in Istanbul, we
embarked on a voyage that would take us along the Aegean
and Mediterranean coasts of Turkey as far as Antalya, from
where we returned across Anatolia by bus. The schedule and
itinerary of the Tarih fitted in perfectly with the academic
calendar at Robert College, the American school in Istanbul
where I had started teaching in September 1960. Our mid-
winter vacation began on the day that the Tarih set off on its
monthly voyage around the Turkish coast from Istanbul, and
it arrived in Antalya a week later, allowing us another week
to make our way back to our home on the Bosphorus before
the beginning of the second semester. The ship was well named,
for in Turkish Tarih means 'history', appropriate for a vessel
that each month sailed to places known in antiquity as the
Thracian Chersonese, the Troad, Aeolia. Ionia, Caria, Lycia,
Pamphylia, and Cilicia, one of its ports-of-call being Hal-
icarnassus, birthplace of Herodotus, the 'father' of history.
This was the first of our many journeys along the western
shores of Turkey. Some of them were made aboard more
modern ships of the Turkish Maritime Lines; others on the old
wooden fishing-boats known as caiques, sailing along remote
stretches of the Anatolian coast; still others by land on local
buses or by dolmus, the public taxi that serves as the beast of
burden in modern Turkey, replacing the donkey and camel of
Ottoman times. Later on we acquired our own car, a second-
hand Ope1 that has now also gone to its deserved rest in an
Istanbul scrap-yard, and in this we were able to reach out-of-
the-way places in Anatolia that had previously been inac-
cessible to us. By these means we travelled around the Aegean
and Mediterranean shores of Turkey from the Dardanelles to
the Syrian border. We also made our way inland along the
valleys of the Hermus, the Maeander, and the Xanthus, the
 INTRODUCTION

three rivers along which the first Greek settlers penetrated into
Asia Minor at the end of the second millennium B C and where
they came into contact with the much older Anatolian civil-
izations that had preceded them. These travels took us to
virtually all of the archaeological sites in western Anatolia,
beginning with Troy and the Trojan plain, where we used
Homer's Iliad as our guide, and ending at Seleucia-ad-Pieria,
which in Hellenistic times was the port of Antioch, the 'fair
flower of the Orient'. En route we saw in turn the ruins of
Alexandria Troas and Assos, the two most important sites in
the Troad south of Troy; Pergamum, capital of the brilliant
kingdom of the Attalids; Cyme, which Strabo called 'the biggest
and best of the Aeolian cities', now almost vanished; Izmir, the
Greek Smyrna, now as in ancient times the largest seaport on
the Aegean coast of Anatolia; 'golden Sardis', capital of Lydia,
now being excavated in all of its archaic splendour; Ephesus,
shrine of the Mother Goddess, whose majestic ruins still survive
along with those of other cities of the Ionian League, most
notably Teos, Miletus, Priene, and Didyma; Aphrodisias, the
'Florence of the Hellenistic world', where Kenan Erim is now
unearthing numerous masterpieces of Graeco-Roman sculp-
ture; the Carian cities of Heracleia-under-Latmus, Euromus,
Alinda, and-Alabanda, to which we were drawn by the lure of
their romantic names and legends; Labraynda, the ancient
shrine of the Carian people, and Halicarnassus, the last capital
of the Carian kingdom, still guarded by the Crusader castle of
St. Peter at Bodrum. Further, we visited the sea-girt ruins of
Cnidus, famed for its statue of Aphrodite; Xanthus, last capital
of Lycia, whose other tomb-haunted sites we found in the
south-western corner of Anatolia, including Telmessus,
Patara, the Letoon, Myra, and Phaselis; the 'pirate coast of
Pamphylia', where we visited the port of old Antalya as well
as the ruins of Perge, Aspendos, and Side; Alanya with its
extraordinary Selcuk fortrcss; the succession of ruined medi-
eval fortresses along the Cilician shore, principally those at
Anamur, Silifke, and Kiz Kalesi, the Maiden's Castle; the
 T H E W E S T E R N SHORES O F TIJRKEY

ancient sites around the eastern end of the Turkish Medi-

terranean coast, the most dramatic being Yilan Kalesi, the
Castle of the Snake; and then finally the port of ancient Antioch
in the Hatay, the Turkish province just above Syria on what
was once the northern approach to Phoenicia, where our long
series of journeys along the western Anatolian coast came to
an end, at least for the time being. There, as we completed the
odyssey that had taken us through a quarter-century of our
lives, we recalled the good times and adventures we had shared
with our children and old friends who had accompanied us on
our Anatolian trips, remembering also the enduring friendships
we had made along the way with the local people who had
welcomed us into their homes and their lives. We thought with
particular poignancy of our dear departed friend Cevat Sakir
Kabaagaq, the Fisherman of Halicarnassus, whose stories of
Bodrum life have immortalized the Aegean coast of Anatolia
as it was when we first saw it in his company, an enchanted
world where time seemed to have stopped somewhere between
the end of antiquity and the beginning of our own era, an
idyllic scene that has now in my own imagination taken on
the mythic qualities of what Homer called 'the country of
dreams'.
The enduring memories of these Anatolian journeys are
images of a surpassingly beautiful succession of promontories,
coves, and isles, with romantic ruins on every well-protected
headland, an historic coast that since time immemorial has
been a marchland between East and West, with nations of
people passing through in their migrations and wars, leaving
their imprint upon the landscape and the ways of life of those
who dwell there today. The tides of history have left their traces
everywhere along these shores, where Ottoman, Byzantine,
Crusader, and Selcuk fortresses share the terrain with Greek
and Roman temples and theatres, Carian and Lycian sar-
cophagi and tombs, and the mounds of ancient sites going as
far back in time as the first human settlements in Anatolia
toward the end of the Stone Age. Thus the western shores of
 INTRODUCTION

Turkey have become a palimpsest of civilizations, like a much-

used canvas that has been painted over time and time again,
a deeply layered scene that awaits discovery by those who
travel there.
The chapters that follow are a distillation of our journeys
along this ancient coast of vanished civilizations, our various
voyages and drives telescoped in time just as they are inter-
woven in my memory. The book in one sense is meant to be
an informal guide to the archaeological sites and historical
monuments that one might see along the way; but it is also
written with the thought that it might evoke the spirit of these
places for those who are embarking upon their own odysseys
along the western shores of Turkey. To help those readers in
particular, I have added to each chapter maps of the area being
described and its particular features, including the traditional
sign :. for 'ancient monument'. I have inserted too at the
beginning of the book a note about Turkish spelling and pro-
nunciation, so that readers not acquainted with the language
can begin to 'hear' it as they read. Also, at the end of the
book I have included what I hope will be helpful practical
appendices: a chronological table; a glossary of Turkish words
used in the text; and a separate glossary of architectural terms.
The book concludes with a bibliography and an index.
 THE HELLESPONTINE SHORES

The western shores of Turkey begin along the Dardanelles, the

ancient Hellespont, at least for travellers setting out from the
imperial capital at the confluence of the Bosphorus and the
Golden Horn, Istanbul. The eastern end of the Dardanelles is
about I 25 miles from Istanbul by sea, following a course along
the European side of the Sea of Marmara. Most passenger ships
leave Istanbul around noon, and so it is usually dark by the
time they approach the Dardanelles, particularly in winter.
That was the season when we made our first voyage aboard
the Tarih. My first sight of the Hellespontine shores was from
the flying-bridge, with lights showing from scattered hamlets
off both the port and starboard bows as we drew near the
entrance to the straits. One of the crewmen pointed out a
large cluster of lights on the European shore, identifying it as
Gelibolu. This was the town known to the Greeks as Kallipoli,
the Good City, which in the West came to be called Gallipoli.
It was there that we really began our first journey along the
western shores of Turkey.
The harbour at Gelibolu is just a few miles downstream from
the beginning of the Dardanelles, known in Turkish as the
Canakkale Bogazi.* Here the Sea of Marmara narrows at its
western end into a definite channel between Europe and Asia.
The Asian side of the straits was known in antiquity as the

* See the note on Turkish spelling and pronunciation on p. i x and the glossary of
Turkish words on p. 3 8 I.
 THE HELLESPONTINE SHORES

Troad, the land of Troy, and it forms the north-western corner

of Mysia. The European shore is formed by the Gallipoli pen-
insula, known to the Greeks as the Thracian Chersonese, and
is less than a mile wide where the straits begin at Bolaylr. From
there the waters of the Dardanelles follow an occasionally
serpentine course of some forty miles in the general direction
north-east to south-west, finally flowing west to enter the
Aegean. The straits are about four to five miles wide at Bolayir,
but from there westward the European and Asian shores con-
verge to the stretch known as the Narrows, between Canakkale
and Kilitbahir, where they are less than a mile in width. Beyond
the Narrows the straits diverge again to a width of about five
miles before the shores converge once more so that, at the
western end of the Dardanelles, they are only 4 , 0 0 0 yards
apart.
There are numerous myths associated with the straits, the
earliest being the legend of Phrixus and his sister Helle, children
of Nephele, goddess of the clouds. Their father, King Athamas
of Boetia, was about to sacrifice Phrixus and Helle to propitiate
the gods during a time of drought, having been persuaded to
do so by their evil stepmother Ino. When Nephele learned of
this she flew down from the clouds to save her children, sending
them off on a golden-fleeced ram given to her by Hermes. The
ram carried them eastward through the heavens, but, as they
soared over the first of the two straits separating Europe from
Asia. Helle fell off and was drowned, after which these waters
came to be known as the Hellespont, and the Greek people
themselves as Hellenes. Phrixus managed to hang on as the
ram carried him to the land of Colchis, where he was received
with honour by King Areetes and wedded to the Princess
Chalciope. As a token of gratitude for his safe arrival, Phrixus
sacrificed the ram to Zeus; he then gave the golden fleece to
Areetes, who hung it in a grove of oaks sacred to Ares. The
golden fleece was later retrieved by Jason, son of King Cretheus
of Pelion and brother of Athamas. When Jason set out on his
expedition he built a ship called the Argo, and heroes from all
 THE WESTERN SHORES OF TURKEY

over Hellas volunteered to fill the fifty seats on its rowing-

benches. They came to be known as the Argonauts, the crew
of the vessel that Spenser, in the Facrie Queene, called 'the
wondred Argo, which . . . first through the Euxine sea bore all
the flower of Greece'.
Still another myth tells the story of Dardanus, a son of Zeus
who was one of the ancestors of Aeneas, the mythical founder
of Rome. According to tradition, Dardanus founded a town
bearing his name on the Asian side of the straits, 'which was
peopled first, ere Ilion [Troy] with its teeming crowds was
settled in the plain'. During the Renaissance the popularity of
Homer's epics revived the myth of Dardanus, so that in Europe
the Hellespont was known as the Dardanelles, although in the
Greek language it retained its ancient name.
On our several journeys down the Dardanelles we always
spent the first night in Gelibolu, and had breakfast the following
morning at a ~ a y e v i ,or tea-house, on the waterfront before
setting out on our way down the straits, either by ship or by
land. The scene on the Gelibolu waterfront is lively and colour-
ful in the morning, particularly if the fishing-fleet has been out
the night before, for then the local fishermen will be hawking
their catch on the dock beside their galleon-like caiques. The
broad-beamed wooden hulls of these boats are painted in all
the bright colours of the sun's spectrum and each vessel bears
on its prow the whirling blue eye or oculus, the talismanic sign
with which sailors in these waters have since antiquity warded
off evil. And if it is a warm and sunny morning the fishermen
will have spread out their nets to dry on the quay, they and
their families sitting cross-legged on the cobbles to mend the
billows of brilliantly tinted twine. Often one of them will make
time pass as if in a dream by playing the gayda, the Aegean
bagpipe whose wild, wailing sound evokes visions of what
these straits were like when the Greeks first settled here in the
dark ages of the ancient world.
The only monument in the port of Gelibolu is the ruined
fortress in the inner harbour, the medieval Castle of Gallipoli.
 THE HELLESPONTINE SHORES

This edifice is thought to have been erected by the emperor

Philippicus Bardanes, an Armenian who ruled the Byzantine
Empire from A D 711 to 713." The Castle of Gallipoli was the
key to the Hellespont throughout the Middle Ages, and as long
as the Byzantines held it they controlled the western maritime
approaches to Constantinople. But in I 303 Gallipoli was occu-
pied by the Grand Army of Catalonia, a wild band of Spanish
mercenaries hired by the emperor Andronicus I1 to help the
Byzantines fight against the Turks. The Catalans used the
castle as a base to ravage all of Thrace, holding out there for
seven years against repeated attacks by the Byzantines and
their Genoese allies. The Grand Army of Catalonia finally
abandoned Gallipoli in 1310, after which the Byzantines
regained the fortress. Then in 1354 this castle and another
Hellespontine fortress were captured by Prince Siileyman,
eldest son of Orhan Gazi, first sultan of the Ottoman Turks.
Thus the Turks established their first foothold in Europe, and
by the mid-fifteenth century the Ottoman Empire extended far
into the Balkans and Asia Minor. Constantinople finally fell to
Sultan Mehmet I1 on 29 May 145 3, ending the long history of
the Byzantine Empire, with some of the last ships of Greek refu-
gees sailing down the Hellespont on their way to the Aegean.
After the Turkish conquest, Gallipoli became a major port-
of-call for the Ottoman navy, whose warships always stopped
there on their way to and from their campaigns in the Aegean.
A number of Turkish mariners seem to have stayed on to live
in Gallipoli after their retirement, for on the outskirts of the
town there are several domed turbe, or mausoleums, whose
inscriptions record that they were built by Ottoman captain-
pashas. The most renowned of these is Piri Reis (1465-1 554),
the Ottoman navigator whose Kitabl Bahriye, or Book of the
Sea, is the earliest Turkish geographical compendium and
includes a chart of the North American coast. A statue of Piri
Reis has recently been erected on the waterfront in Gelibolu,
and there is a small museum related to his life and career.
* See the chronolog~caltable on pp. 373-80.
 THE WESTERN SHORES OF TURKEY

During Ottoman times the Castle of Gallipoli was also used

as a prison. The most celebrated of its inmates was Shabbetai
Zevi, known to history as the False Messiah. He was imprisoned
there in the spring and summer of 1666, and during that time
the castle became a place of pilgrimage for Jews from all over
the Middle East and Europe who believed that Shabbetai was
indeed the long-awaited Messiah. When these pilgrims came
to see Shabbetai he received them in his cell, dressed in his
medieval rabbinical robe, and told them of his apocalyptic
visions; afterwards he entertained them by playing on his lute
and singing old love-songs in Ladino, his favourite being a
cantada about the 'tragic romance of 'Meliselda, the Emperor's
beautiful daughter'. Shabbetai remained in the Castle of Gal-
lipoli until 3 September 1666, after which he was brought to
Edirne for a hearing before Sultan Mehmet IV. Thereupon he
converted to Islam, eventually convincing thousands of his
followers to do the same and thus creating the arcane cult
whose adherents are known to the Turks as Donme, or Turn-
coats. There are many Donme still living in Turkey, principally
in Istanbul and Izmir, and a number of them continue to
believe that their revered Shabbetai will one day return and
lead them to Paradise. For them the Castle of Gallipoli is still a
sacred shrine, as evidenced by the few tattered pieces of cloth
that can be seen tied to its barred windows, votive offerings of
those who continue to keep faith with the lost Messiah who
was once imprisoned there.
The first port-of-call on the Asian side of the straits is Lapseki,
just a short distance downstream from Gelibolu. A car ferry
crosses between the two towns several times a day. There is
also a car ferry farther down the straits, between Eceabat
and Canakkale, so that, in driving along the shores of the
Dardanelles, one has a choice of routes. During the course of
our trips we have driven up and down both its European and
Asian sides, as well as sailing down the straits in the Tarih and
other vessels; and we have been able to explore most of the
historic sites on both shores.
 THE H E L L E S P O N T I N E SHORES

Lapseki was originally known as Lampsacus, and was a

Greek colony founded in 654 B C by Phocaea and Miletus, two
Ionian cities on the Aegean shore of Asia Minor. During the
Graeco-Roman period Lampsacus was a more important town
than Kallipoli, because the cove on which it was located made
it a much better harbour for ships passing through the Hel-
lespont. No trace remains of the ancient town, one of three
places given by Xerxes, the king of Persia, to Themistocles.
Xerxes presented him with 'Magnesia for his bread, Myus for
his meat, and Lampsacus for his wine'.
Lampsacus was the last home of Anaxagoras, the first great
philosopher to reside in Athens, where his most famous student
was Pericles. Anaxagoras, born c. 5 0 0 B C in the Ionian city of
Clazomenae, moved to Athens at the age of 20 and remained
there until he was banished in ~ ~ O B convicted
C , on charges
of impiety and Medeism (being Pro-Persian). Anaxagoras then
settled in Lampsacus and founded a school of philosophy,
directing its activities until his death in 428 BC. After his death.
the people of Lampsacus erected an altar to his memory in
their market square and dedicated it to Mind and Truth. The
anniversary of the death of Anaxagoras was for long after-
wards celebrated in Lampsacus, and by his dying request the
students of the town were always let out of school on that day.
One of the most historic sites on the Hellespont is directly
across the straits from Lapseki; this is Ince Liman, the Port of
the Pearl, some eight miles down the Dardanelles from Gelibolu
on the European shore. The stream that flows into this cove
was known to the Greeks as Aegospotami, or Goat's River, and
gave its name to a decisive battle fought in 405 BC, when
the Peloponnesian forces led by Lysander overwhelmed an
Athenian fleet commanded by Conon and Philocles. This, the
last battle of the Peloponnesian War, left Athens defeated and
at the mercy of the Spartans and their allies.
The next two historic sites on the Dardanelles are Sestus and
Abydus; the first is on the European shore about a mile above
the Narrows, and the second on the Asian side above Cape
 THE WESTERN SHORES OF TURKEY

Nagara. Both were Greek colonies founded in the seventh

century BC, Sestus by Aeolians and Abydus by Ionians from
Miletus. There is virtually nothing left of Sestus, and the few
stones that remain of Abydus are in an inaccessible military
zone; nevertheless I could identify both sites from my classical
atlas as we approached the Narrows on our first trip aboard
the Tarih. Sestus and Abydus had always interested me because
of their associations in history, literature, and legend, par-
ticularly the fabled romance of Hero and Leander. The legend
tells of how Leander, a youth of Abydus, fell in love with Hero,
a priestess at the Temple of Aphrodite in Sestus, and of how
he swam the Hellespont nightly to see her, guided by a lamp
which she placed on the European shore. But one night the
lamp was extinguished in a gale and Leander lost his way,
drowning in the Hellespont. When his body was washed ashore
in Sestus Hero threw herself into the water in despair and lost
her life too. The legend of Hero and Leander inspired Byron to
swim the Hellespont at the Narrows, a feat he accomplished
on 3 May I 8 10 when he was passing through the straits on
a British schooner. Six days later Byron commemorated this
crossing in his poem. 'Written After Swimming from Sestus to
Abydus'. He later returned to the legend in the Bride ofdbydus,
and as the Tarih approached the Narrows I recalled the lines
that begin the second canto:

The winds are high on Helle's wave

As on that night of stormy weather
When love, who sent, forgot to save
The young-the beautiful-the brave
The lonely hope of Sestus' daughter

The site of Abydus is on the promontory that rises up from

Cape Nagara, where the Dardanelles makes an abrupt turn as
it approaches the Narrows. This cape, according to Herodotus,
Strabo, and Pliny, once marked the narrowest part of the
channel, but erosion of the shore around it has made this
 THE HELLESPONTINE SHORES

crossing a little wider than the stretch between Canakkale and

Kilitbahir. This was where Xerxes began his invasion of Greece,
when the Persian army crossed from Abydus to Sestus in
480 B C on a bridge of boats built by his engineers. As Herodotus
describes the scene, Xerxes held a review of his forces while
seated on a throne of white marble that had been made for
him by the people of Abydus, looking down upon his enormous
army crossing the straits. 'And when he saw the whole of the
Hellespont hidden by ships, and all the beaches and plains
filled with men, he congratulated himself-and a moment later
burst into tears. When his uncle Artabanus asked him why he
wept, Xerxes replied, "I was thinking, and it came to my mind
how pitifully short human life is-for of all those thousands of
men not one will be alive in a hundred years' time" '.
Another historic crossing of the Hellespont took place here
in -j 34 B C , when Alexander the Great began his campaign to
conquer Asia. When the Macedonians reached the Hellespont,
Alexander himself crossed at the Aegean end of the straits to
make a pilgrimage to Troy, leaving Parmenio to lead the army
across from Sestus to Abydus. A few days later Alexander
rejoined his army and led them to victory over the Persians at
the Battle of the Granicus, a short distance to the north-east
of Lapseki.
Two villages on the European side of the Narrows look out
over the most dramatic stretch of the Dardanelles, where it
suddenly bends southward at Cape Nagara. The more northern
one is Eceabat, the European terminus of the car ferry to
Canakkale; formerly known as Madytus, this was founded by
Aeolian Greeks in the seventh century BC. Three miles to the
south is the village of Kilitbahir, which is directly across from
Canakkale at the narrowest part of the straits. Kilitbahir, the
Key to the Sea, takes its name from the picturesque Ottoman
fortress around which it clusters, erected by Sultan Mehmet I1
a decade after his conquest of Constantinople. Kilitbahir con-
sists of two defence towers connected by massive curtain walls,
and its outline forms a heart-shaped enclosure facing out
 THE WESTERN SHORES OF TURKEY

towards the Aegean end of the straits. Mehmet 11, known to

the Turks as Fatih, the Conqueror, also constructed a second
fortress in Canakkale, called Sultaniye-Bahir. The two strong-
holds became known in later times as the Inner Castles.
The Inner Castles were in the thick of the fighting on 18
March I 9 I 5, when the Allied navy attempted to force its way
through the straits at the outset of the Gallipoli campaign.
That assault was a total failure, with two British battleships and
a French Dreadnought sunk by shore batteries and underwater
mines, as well as two more battleships put out of action. A
total of 2,750 Allied sailors lost their lives. But even before
that attack the Allied high command had decided that the
straits could not be forced by a fleet alone, and they had begun
planning for a large-scale amphibious landing at the Aegean
end of the Dardanelles, the main thrust to be made on the
Gallipoli peninsula. The initial landings took place on 2 5 April
1915, the beginning of an eight-month battle in which more
than ~ o o , o o omen of the Allied and Turkish forces lost their
lives fighting over a few square miles of barren ground at the
western end of the Thracian Chersonese. But the invasion too
proved unsuccessful, and early in 1916 the Allies evacuated
their troops from the Gallipoli peninsula, leaving the Turks in
control of the Dardanelles.
On one of our journeys we drove to the site of the Gallipoli
battlefield. We followed the road that at first leads down the
straits from Kilitbahir and then turns inland to the crossroads
at Alqtepe, where signposts indicate the way to the various
British and Commonwealth war cemeteries in the vicinity. The
Cape Helles War Memorial, near the tip of the peninsula,
commemorates the 35,000 British and Commonwealth ser-
vicemen who were killed in the Gallipoli campaign. Farther up
the straits on the European side is the Turkish war monument
at Abide, honouring the 60,000 Turks who died at Gallipoli,
while elsewhere on the peninsula there is a memorial to the
9,000 French and Senegalese dead. There is also a small war
museum in the village of Alqtepe, where a local Turkish
 THE H E L L E S P O N T I N E SHORES

scholar has devoted his life to collecting memorabilia picked

up on the battlefield. The most moving of these mementoes are
letters found on the bodies of men now buried out on the
deserted peninsula, some of the pages stained with blood shed
when they were killed in battle.
There are reminders still of the Gallipoli campaign in Canak-
kale, a sprawling mass of houses on the Asian shore at the
narrowest point of the straits. Carved into the cliff face of the
promontory upstream from the harbour is a huge inscription
with the date I 8 March I g I 5, commemorating the Turkish
repulse of the Allied naval attack on the straits. On the hillside
opposite there is a memorial to the Turkish servicemen who
died in the Gallipoli campaign.
Canakkale is not an ancient town. It dates only from the
second half of the fifteenth century when Fatih built his fortress
of Sultaniye-Bahir on the shore just to the south of the harbour
area. Within this fortress there are a number of interesting old
European cannon of the Ottoman period, some of them bearing
the marks of English foundries. At the southern end of the pier
there is also a military museum with exhibits relating to the
Gallipoli campaign, particularly the successful defence of the
straits by the Turkish navy. Another place of interest in Canak-
kale is the archaeological museum; this is housed in a former
Greek church in one of the back streets of the town, the building
having been abandoned by its congregation in 1923 when,
after the Graeco-Turkish war of I 9 I 9-2 3 , the ethnic minorities
of the two countries were exchanged. Anatolian Greeks were
sent to Greece and Turks from Greece moved to Turkey. The
museum has a small collection of minor antiquities found in
the Troad, including votive objects, figurines, and jewellery.
The most interesting of these come from a collection that
once belonged to Frank Calvert, the man who led Heinrich
Schliemann to Hisarhk, the true site of Homeric Troy.
Beyond Hisarlrk the straits quickly expand to a width of
some four miles. This makes it difficult to identify sites on the
Hellespontine shores from the deck of a passing steamer like
 THE WESTERN SHORES OF TIJRKEY

the Tarih, so on one of our spring vacations we hired a local

fisherman named Ahmet to take us in his caique through the
lower Dardanelles, starting at dawn from Canakkale, crossing
to go down the European side of the straits, and returning
along the Asian shore.
Ahmet and his ancestors had been fishing in the waters of
the Dardanelles since as far back as family memories extended.
He was in his mid-sixties, he said, and had been a lad of about
I 4 when the Allied fleet tried to pass through the straits on
18 March 1915. He had watched the battle from a hilltop
south of Canakkale and saw the French Dreadnought Rouvut
go down. After the war he and the other boatmen of Canakkale
were employed for some time in salvage operations on the
Allied battleships and so he knew their sites well. On the Asian
side were the Bouvet and the British battleships Irr~sistibluand
Ocean, all three of which went down on I 8 March 191 5; and
along the shallows of the European shore were two more
British battleships, Majestic and Triumph, sunk on 15 May of
the same year. Ahmet said that the fishermen of Canakkale
still sailed out to drop their lines on these sites, for schools of
fish continued to shelter in the wrecks.
After we crossed the straits, Ahmet steered his caique down
along the European shore until we reached the promontory
just south of Kilitbahir, the first stop on our itinerary. This
cape was known to the Greeks as Cynossema, thc Dog's Grave,
because of a myth that Hecuba was transformed into a dog
and buried here after the fall of Troy. Cynossema gave its name
to a naval battle fought in the Narrows in 41 I nc, in which
the Athenians defeated the Spartans. The Battle of Cynossema
was the last major action recorded by Thucydides in his History
ofthe Peloponnesian W a r , for he breaks off his narrative abruptly
shortly afterwards. Six more years passed before the final defeat
of the Athenians at Aegospotami, just a few miles up the
Hellespont from where our caique was anchored.
We then sailed down the European shore of the straits
toward the Aegean, a distance of six miles, the most prominent
 THE HELLESPONTINE SHORES

landmark being the Turkish war memorial towering above the

cliffs at Abide. The only ancient site marked on my classical
atlas beyond Cynossema on the Thracian Chersonese was
Elaeus, which was shown near the Aegean end of the straits.
I had brought along a detailed map of the lower Dardanelles
and the Trojan plain, based on the survey made by Graves and
Spratt in I 840 and published in I 883 by Schliemann in one
of his books on Troy. This showed that the site of Elaeus was
on the promontory that formed the eastern arm of Morto Bay,
the last indentation on the European shore of the straits.
We went ashore there and looked for Elaeus, the westernmost
of the ancient Greek towns on the Thracian Chersonese.
Schliemann had found evidence of an ancient settlement here,
its stones scattered around the ruined Ottoman fortress known
as Eski Hisarhk, the Old Castle. However, Eski Hisarlik was
one of the places where the Allies landed on 2 5 April I 91 5,
and the bombardment was so intense that any ancient rem-
nants on the site were pulverized.
Ahmet then took us over to the large tumulus on the western
side of Morto Bay. Both ancient and modern travellers, includ-
ing Schliemann, have sought to identify this as the Tomb of
Protesilaus, the first of the Achaeans to be killed in the Trojan
War. This tomb is mentioned by both Herodotus and Thucy-
dides, and it had a renowned oracular shrine which was
visited by Greek mariners who passed through the Hellespont.
Alexander himself offered sacrifice there just before he crossed
the Hellespont. According to his biographer Arrian, 'Alex-
ander's purpose in performing the ceremony was to ensure
better luck for himself than Protesilaus had'. After visiting the
tomb, Alexander made his pilgrimage to Troy. 'It is generally
believed', Arrian wrote, 'that Alexander sailed from Elaeus to
the Achaean Harbour, himself at the helm of the admiral's
ship, and that half way over he slaughtered a bull as an offering
to Poseidon and poured wine from a golden cup into the sea
to propitiate the Nereids'. (The Nereids were the daughters of
the sea-god Nereus, and Greeks of an older generation still
 THE WESTERN SHORES OF T U R K E Y

believe that they haunt bodies of water such as the Hellespont.)

Ahmet now headed the caique across the Dardanelles to the
Asian side. As he did so we passed Seddiilbahir, one of the two
capes at the western tip of the Gallipoli peninsula, with Cape
Helles still out of sight to the west. Ahmet brought us close in
so that we could see the old Ottoman fortress at Seddiilbahir,
one of the two Outer Castles, the other fort barely visible across
the way at Kum Kale on the westernmost point of the Asian
shore. The Outer Castles, erected in I 6 59 by Mehmet Kopriilii,
grand vizier of Mehmet IV, were rebuilt in I 773-5 by Baron
Franqois de Tott, a Hungarian military engineer in the service
of Abdiil Hamit I. During the Gallipoli campaign the Outer
Castles came under heavy bombardment, and today both are
just ruined shells, grim reminders of the intensity of the battle
here at the Aegean entrance to the Dardanelles.
As soon as we passed the ruined fort at Seddiilbahir we
spotted Cape Helles, the outermost tip of the Gallipoli peninsula
and the site of one of the two lighthouses at the entrance to
the straits. No doubt there were beacons on these capes in
ancient times, for Aeschylus writes that Clytemnestra received
word of the fall of Troy through the series of fire signals flashed
all the way from the Hellespont to Mycenae.
After crossing the Dardanelles again to Kum Kale, which in
Turkish means Sand Castle, we could see the bomb-blasted
ruins of the second of the two Outer Castles, standing on the
sandy Asian promontory where the Dardanelles flows into the
Aegean. We could not land there, Ahmet told us, without
permission from the military authorities in Canakkale, and so
we continued up the Asian shore. As we did so we had our
first close-up view of the Trojan plain, which extends for miles
inland between two streams that enter the Dardanelles
together in a marshy estuary just to the east of Kum Kale.
These streams have been identified as the Scamander and the
Simoeis, two rivers which figure prominently in the Iliad.
About two miles up the Asian shore we passed the second
of the two Heroic Tumuli on the lower Hellespont, a mound
 THE HELLESPONTINE SHORES

known locally as In Tepe. Early travellers attempted to identify

this tumulus with the Tomb of Ajax (in Greek, Aias), son of
Telamon, and it is so marked on Schliemann's map. As Homer
tells the tale in the Odyssey, Ajax committed suicide during the
siege of Troy, bitterly disappointed that the armour of Achilles
had been presepted to Odysseus rather than to him. There was
a sanctuary of Ajax here in ancient times, for Mark Antony is
known to have removed a colossal statue of the hero from his
tomb on the Asian shore of the Hellespont. The statue was
returned to its rightful place by Augustus after his victory over
Antony and Cleopatra at Actium in 3 I B c. In I 8 79 the tumulus
was excavated by Schliemann, who dated it to the Hadrianic
era, A D I I 7-38, but he also found evidence that the mound
was probably erected on the site of an older heroon, or shrine
dedicated to a hero. Close to the tumulus Schliemann dis-
covered 'a mutilated marble statue of a warrior, draped and of
a colossal size'. This was probably the cult statue of Ajax,
the one removed by Antony and returned by Augustus. This
sculpture has since disappeared, probably burned by local
farmers to make lime for whitewash. That has been the fate of
so many ancient marbles of the Graeco-Roman world.
Three miles farther up the straits we passed a promontory
called Baba Kale. This has been identified as the site of
Rhoeteum, which in Graeco-Roman times was one of the
richest towns on the Hellespont. The Rhoeteum promontory
figures in all topographical studies of the Iliad, for during the
siege of Troy the Achaean ships would have been beached
between this point and the Sigeum promontory, on the Aegean
coast some two miles south of Kum Kale. Archaeological exca-
vations have revealed that the site of Rhoeteum was inhabited
continuously from c. 7 0 0 up ~ ~until the beginning of the
Christian era, but there is virtually nothing to be seen there
today.
Another two miles up the coast brought us to a small cape
that has been identified as the site of ancient Ophryneion,
of which all that remains are some architectural fragments
 THE WESTERN SHORES OF T U R K E Y

scattered in an old Turkish graveyard. Three miles beyond this

we passed a promontory that I identified from my classical
atlas as the site of ancient Dardanus. Pottery sherds found on
the site range in date from the early Bronze Age to the Hell-
enistic period, but otherwise virtually nothing remains of what
may have been the first Greek colony established on the Hel-
lespont.
Beyond Dardanus we rounded the point known as Kephez
Burnu, formerly called Cape Dardanus, and this brought us
into the broad bay on the Asian shore which opens out just to
the south of Canakkale. There the Inner Castles at Kilitbahir
and Canakkale came into view at the Narrows, framing the
stupendous spectacle of the Dardanelles surging past Cape
Nagara through the converging continents of Europe and Asia.
Then Ahmet steered the caique back into the harbour at
Canakkale, for we had completed our exploration of the shores
of the lower Hellespont.
 TROY A N D THE TROJAN PLAIN

On our spring vacations we usually drove out to the western

shores of Turkey via the northern coast of the Marmara and
the Dardanelles, crossing the straits at either Gelibolu or
Eceabat, and finally stopping for the night in Canakkale. Then
the following morning we would set off again, taking the Izmir
highway from Canakkale to our first destination, Troy, the
ancient city of Priam.
The first stretch of the Canakkale-Izmir highway leads along
the Asian shore of the lower Dardanelles. This drive is par-
ticularly beautiful in the spring, with the olive-groves of Mysia
giving way to the valonia oaks of the Troad as one goes down
the straits, Judas-trees flowering in glorious bursts of pink and
purple above the sky-blue waters of the Hellespont which here
opens out to its greatest width as it approaches the Aegean.
The road continues along the straits as far as Guzel Yah, where
we would often stop for a morning swim on the sandy beach
that fringes the shore just north of In Tepe, and there catch
our first glimpse of the Aegean out at the western end of the
Dardanelles.
At Guzel Yali the Canakkale-Izrnir highway leaves the coast
and veers inland to the south-west and then south, climbing
uphill through a forest of pine and valonia oak. Along the way,
on knolls overlooking the Dardanelles, the highway passes
a number of whitewashed monuments to nameless Turkish
soldiers (they are always called sehit, or martyr), who died at
 TROY A N D THE TROJAN PLAIN

their guns during the Gallipoli campaign, for these are some
of the artillery positions that rained explosive shells down upon
the Allied fleet on I 8 March I q I 5 . The highway continues its
ascent until it reaches In Tepe, a village near the tumulus of
Ajax, and here, for the first time, one can look southward over
the Trojan plain.
Beyond In Tepe the highway crosses the Dumrek Su, which
has been identified as the River Simoeis, mentioned frequently
in the Iliad along with the Scamander. Soon afterwards a
signpost directs one along a side road to the right toward
Truva, Turkish for Troy, three and a half miles to the west.
The archaeological site itself is known locally as Hisarhk.
At the time of our first visit to Troy the entrance to the
archaeological site was virtually untouched by tourism, pos-
sessing only a little ~ayevi,or tea-house, and a small museum
housing a collection of minor objects uncovered in recent
excavations. But in the past two decades the area around the
entrance to Hisarl~khas become commercialized. There is a
large wooden model of the Trojan horse in which tourists are
photographed with their heads peeping out of portholes as if
they were Achaeans, with sword, shield, and crested helmet
provided by the management of the Casino 'Helen and Paris',
which serves its patrons 'Trojan Wine'. The Trojan Wine is
actually Ada Y~ld~z, the Star of the Islands, a local brand bottled
on the island of Bozcaada (Greek Tenedos) where most of the
Achaeans hid during the stratagem of the Trojan Horse. Thus
that touristic label has a remote historical basis, if only by
accident.
But Troy itself, when we saw the site most recently, looked
exactly as it had that warm and pellucidly clear mid-April day
of our first visit in I 96 I, the ancient mound brooding above the
windy Trojan plain, whose chequerboard of greening farmland
was speckled with myriad poppies undulating in the breeze
that soughed within the olive-groves and forests of valonia oak
in the surrounding hills. Beyond the western limits of Asia the
islands of Tenedos and Imbros were floating in the spray-
 THE WESTERN SHORES OF T U R K E Y

flecked Aegean, there joined by the swirling waters of the

Hellespont as they flowed past the last promontory of Europe.
Off to the left, the cloud-plumed summit of Mount Ida soared
majestically over the highlands south of the Troad, a landscape
which Homer would have recognized.
As soon as we entered the excavated area we climbed to the
top of the great Hisarhk mound to survey the site. At first this
appears as something of an anticlimax, for the site of ancient
Troy is now a scarred and cratered hill cut through by the
excavations of archaeologists, most destructively by the great
trench dug by Schliemann. These excavations have left behind
a huge midden littered with the confused debris of three mil-
lennia of human existence, ringed with the remnants of several
stages of massive defence walls and towers. Among the rubble
of a theatre, gateways, temples, shrines, palaces, houses, wells,
and graves, all jumbled together after successive destructions
wrought by earthquakes, wars, and the erosion of fifty centur-
ies, some definition and order is provided by a few archae-
ological signs, identifying and dating various structures and
archaeological levels.
The first investigation at Hisarlik was made by Frank Calvert
who, in the latter half of the nineteenth century, served as
both American and British consul in Canakkale, while he and
his two brothers also operated a farm in the Troad. The farm
included the mound at Hisarl~k,and Frank Calvert made an
exploratory dig there in I 86 5, which indicated to him that it
might be the site of an ancient city. At that time the mound
at Hisarhk had already been identified as the site of Ilium, the
city that flourished here during the Hellenistic and Roman
eras, and to which Xerxes, Alexander the Great, Julius Caesar,
and others came when they made their pilgrimages to Troy.
Thus it would seem that the location of the Bronze Age city of
Troy was not lost when it was finally destroyed at a date
calculated by both ancient and modern scholars as around
1260 BC. But proof that Hisarllk was in fact the site of ancient
Troy was not provided until Heinrich Schliemann carried out
 TROY A N D T H E T R O J A N P L A I N

his pioneering excavations, which have now led most scholars

to believe that the Iliad was based on Greek folk memories
concerning the siege of a great Bronze Age fortress-city on the
Asian shore of the Hellespont, the epic itself written some five
centuries later by a poet who was familiar with the topography
of the site. Calvert guided Schliemann around the mound at
Hisarlik in the summer of 1868, showing him the finds he had
made and convincing him that this was the site of ancient
Troy. As Schliemann wrote during the following year, the site
'fully agrees with the description Homer gives of Ilium and I
will add that, as soon as one sets foot on the Trojan plain, the
view of the beautiful hill at Hisarlik grips one with aston-
ishment. The hill seems designed by nature to carry a great
city . . . there is no other place in the whole region to compare
with it'.
When Schliemann made his preliminary excavations at
Hisarlik in 1870, he found that the debris of centuries had
accumulated on the hill to a depth of fifty feet. Since he assumed
that the Troy he was looking for lay beneath this, he set out
to clear the debris in one slice, and in three annual campaigns,
from I 8 7 I to I 8 73, employing an average of I 50 workmen
daily, he cut right through the mound in a great north-south
trench some I 30 feet wide. While digging the trench he noticed
that the excavated earth did not form a homogeneous mass,
but was stratified in superimposed layers which he correctly
assumed were the successive settlements on the site. He named
the lowermost, and presumably the oldest, Troy I. Schliemann
thought he could discern seven distinct layers, of which he
believed Troy I1 to be the Homeric city because of the wealth
of jewellery he found there and called 'Priam's Treasure'.
Schliemann continued his excavations at Hisarlik, and in
1882 he was joined there by a young German archaeologist
named Wilhelm Dorpfeld. Eight years later Schliemann and
Diirpfeld made an important discovery in the southern sector
of the mound, in the level later to be called Troy VIIa, when
they unearthed a great megaron, a palatial structure divided
 THE WESTERN SHORES OF TURKEY

into three rooms, with a central hall whose roof was carried
on two pillars.* This megaron was so similar in plan to the
royal halls at Mycenae and Tiryns that Schliemann was forced
to change his mind about the archaeological dating of the
various strata, and decided that the sixth layer from the bottom
at Hisarhk, and not the second, was the Homeric city he
sought. This view is still generally held among archaeologists.
Schliemann continued to dig at Hisarl~kuntil the summer of
1890, working on the excavations until just a few months
before his death on 26 December of that year. Dorpfeld then
took charge of the project, and in 1893-4 he unearthed the
massive fortifications of Troy VI, thus resurrecting the fabled
defence walls, towers, and gateways that would seem to have
been described by Homer.
Dorpfeld concluded his excavations at Hisarhk in the
summer of 1894, convinced that he and Schliemann had
discovered the Homeric city there. The site was then aban-
doned until I 932, when a group from the University of Cin-
cinnati began excavating under the direction of Carl W. Blegen.
Blegen's group continued excavating at Troy until 1938, but
their work was then interrupted by the Second World War
and never again resumed, though their findings were finally
published in 1950. Blegen also wrote a shorter work sum-
marizing the researches of his group and their predecessors,
entitled Troy and the Trojans, published in 1963. I had brought
a copy along. I also carried with me copies of the Iliad and the
Odyssey, in the superb translations by Richmond Lattimore.
for Homer is still the best guide to Troy.
After surveying the site, we set out to identify the various
levels in chronological order, beginning with Troy I. Sub-
sequent excavations have supported Schliemann's belief that
Troy I was the original settlement at Troy, and Blegen has
dated its occupancy to the period 3000-2500 BC. Schliemann
discovered the walls of Troy I when he dug his trench through
the mound at the beginning of his excavations, and we were
'See the glossary of architectural terms on p. 3 8 3 .
 TROY A N D THE TROJAN PLAIN

able to locate them easily, distinguished from later fortifications

by the fact that they were made from piles of field stones as
contrasted with the carefully worked defences of later periods.
We were also able to make out the walls of several houses of
Troy I, all of which were of the megaron type.
Troy 11, dated 2 5 0 0 - ~ ~ O O B Cwas
, rebuilt on the same site
after the original settlement had been destroyed by fire. By this
time the settlement had expanded, so that the walls of Troy I1
enclosed a somewhat larger area than those of its predecessor.
We were able to trace most of the circuit of the defence walls
of Troy 11, which are much more imposing than the earlier
fortifications. As in the earlier settlement, the main gate of
Troy I1 was in the centre of the south wall, but there were other
means of entry as well, notably a propylon, or monumental
gateway, on the south-west arc of the fortifications.From there
a well-paved ramp of limestone slabs leads down to the Trojan
plain. Troy I1 seems to have been one of the earliest sites to
have employed town-planning, for the houses of that date
unearthed within the fortifications appear to have been laid
out in a grid pattern, centering on a large megaron that appears
to have been a royal residence. Unfortunately a very large part
of this structure was destroyed when Schliemann dug his
trench. Most of the golden jewellery and other precious objects
discovered by Schliemann at Troy, including 'Priam's Treas-
ure', were found in and around this megaron, which he called
the House of the City King. It was the grandeur of this megaron,
together with the treasures unearthed in this part of the site,
that led Schliemann originally to identify Troy I1 as the
Homeric city. But he and Dorpfeld afterwards determined that
Troy I1 was destroyed by fire c. 2 2 0 0 about ~ ~ a thousand
years before the fall of Mycenae and the other great cities of
the Bronze Age, and so it was far too early to have been the
city of which Homer wrote.
There is little of note to be seen in the next three levels at
Hisarhk, for which Blegen gives the following dates: Troy 111
(2200-~O~OBC), Troy IV (2050-1900 BC). and Troy V (1900-
 THE WESTERN SHORES O F TURKEY

1800 BC). In fact the only easily identifiable remains are those
of a few house walls. Dorpfeld contemptuously referred to these
three levels of Hisarlik as 'miserable villages', so insignificant
apparently that they were not fortified until the period of Troy
V, when the settlement was enclosed within a defence wall
much inferior to that of Troy 11.
The most clear-cut discontinuity in the remains comes with
Troy VI, which Blegen classified into three major periods,
themselves further divided into eight substrata. The archae-
ological findings clearly indicate that Troy VI emerged in the
middle of the Bronze Age, evidenced by the large number of
bronze swords and other objects of real bronze found in that
level, which Blegen dated to the period 1800-1300 BC. These
and the pottery and other objects found in Troy VI differ
markedly in character from those of the earlier levels, evidence
of the arrival at Hisarlik of people with a quite different culture
from those who had lived there before. A unique find estab-
lishing this difference in cultures was the skeleton of a horse,
indicating that the newcomers were warriors who not only
used bronze weapons but also fought on horseback or from
horse-drawn chariots. That would have given them a great
advantage over the indigenous people of the Troad at that
time. The most striking evidence of the militant character of
the new settlers is the splendid circuit of defence walls with
which they ringed Troy VI, for these fortifications show a
much more advanced knowledge of military engineering and
architecture than the earlier city walls at Hisarhk, erected by
a people who were clearly experienced in both defending and
besieging walled cities. All of this and other evidence points to
the settlers of Troy VI as belonging to the same culture as those
who built Mycenae and the other great fortress-cities of the
Mycenaean age, the Greek-speaking Hellenic people who made
their first appearance in the Aegean world at the beginning
of the second millennium B C and who are known to have
established numerous colonies in western Anatolia during the
period to which Troy VI is dated. Thus it appears that the
 TROY A N D T H E T R O J A N P L A I N

Trojans of the period prior to the Homeric siege of Troy were

themselves Hellenes, part of the same Mycenaean culture as
the Achaeans who besieged them.
According to Blegen, Troy VI was destroyed c. I ~ O O B Cin
a very sudden catastrophe, perhaps an exceptionally severe
earthquake, as evidenced by the toppling of whole sections of
the defence walls of that period. The next level at Hisarhk is
divided by Blegen into three substrata, of which the first, VIIa,
shows no cultural discontinuity whatsoever with Troy VI.
The archaeological evidence indicates that the people who
inhabited Troy VIIa rebuilt the city and its defence walls
immediately after the catastrophe of c. I 300 BC, but less than
half a century afterwards the city was destroyed once again,
a disaster that Blegen dated to c. 1 2 6 0 ~Blegen~. found evi-
dence that this second catastrophe was preceded by the erec-
tion of crude and hastily built structures just inside the defence
walls, as if a shanty town was created to house people from
the surrounding area of the Troad at a time of siege. This and
other evidence led Blegen to identify Troy VIIa rather than
Troy VI as the one described by Homer in the Iliad, a conclusion
that is still controversial in scholarly circles. In any event, the
level which Blegen calls Troy VIIa was destroyed by fire in the
mid-thirteenth century BC, quite possibly by an enemy army
which had besieged and sacked the town. That fate also befell
Mycenae and the other great fortress-cities of the Mycenaean
world at about the same time. So we felt free to imagine that
the walls and other structures of Troy VIIa were those of the
Homeric city and, as we wandered about the ruins, we tried
to identify sites mentioned in the Iliad.
Beside the south entrance to the city, where the remains of
a great propylon form one of the most familiar landmarks at
Hisarhk, we paused on an ancient roadway leading from the
citadel down on to the Trojan plain. This was the main means
of entry to Troy VI and, as it was apparently rebuilt to serve
the same purpose in Troy VIIa, the propylon was identified
by Schliemann as the Skaian Gates. That entrance figures
 THE W E S T E R N SHORES O F T U R K E Y

prominently in a number of scenes in the Iliad, for the Trojans

passed through the Skaian Gates on their way to and from the
battleground on the Trojan plain. Just inside the Skaian Gates
are the remains of the Pillar House, named for the fragmentary
pillar that still stands there, one of two that once supported a
beam along the axis of its great hall. The Pillar House is one
of the largest structures found at Hisarhk, and it quite possibly
was the royal residence in Troy VI and VIIa. If so, one can
identify it with the 'wonderfully built palace of Priam', the site
of several dramatic episodes in the Iliad: and it would have
been here that the very last scene was set, after the death
and burial of Hector, when the Trojans 'assembled in a fair
gathering and held a glorious feast within the house of Priam,
king under God's hand'.
The designation and dates assigned by Blegen to the two
later substrata of Troy VII were V11b1 (1260-1 190 BC) and
VIIbz (1190-IIOOBC). According to Blegen, many of the
inhabitants of Troy VIIa survived the catastrophe that
destroyed their city c. 1 2 6 0 and ~ ~ soon afterwards built a
new settlement on the ruins of the old one. The archaeological
evidence indicates that the new defence walls followed the
same course as the older ones, with the south gate located at
the same place as the earlier entrance. There is no evidence of
any cultural discontinuity between the second phase of Troy
VII and the first one, but then, in I I ~ O B C , Blegen's date for
the beginning of the third phase, a different type of pottery
makes its appearance at Hisarhk, which he and other scholars
have attributed to a new population settling on the mound.
These new settlers, it is believed, came from the Balkans and,
after crossing the Hellespont, seized control of Troy before some
of them moved deeper into Anatolia. This third phase of Troy
VII came to a close c. I 100 BC, when the settlement at Hisarhk
was again destroyed by fire, part of a wave of destruction that
brought to an end the civilization of the Bronze Age all over
the Aegean and in Anatolia and marked the beginning of the
dark ages of the ancient world.
 TROY A N D THE TROJAN PLAIN

After this catastrophe Hisarlik was abandoned for about four

centuries. Then, c. ~ O O B C ,the mound was populated once
again, this time by Aeolian Greeks who settled there and also
elsewhere in the Troad. The city they founded, which Blegen
designated as Troy VIII, came to be known in Graeco-Roman
times as Ilion, or in Latin as Ilium. Little is known of the history
of Ilion during the Archaic period, but in later times it was
venerated throughout the Greek world as being the successor
of ancient Troy, known through the epic poems of Homer, and
Homer may well have visited Ilion during the early years of
the Aeolian settlement.
The last of the Homeric sites which we identified in our
exploration of Hisarlik was the Temple of Athena, whose ruins
have been found on the north-western sector of the hill. The
Temple of Athena, described by Homer as being on the 'peak
of the citadel', is the setting for one of the most moving scenes
in the Iliad, where the priestess Theano leads the Trojan women
in prayer, imploring the goddess to help them and promising
that if she does so they will 'instantly dedicate within your
shrine twelve heifers, yearlings never broken, if only you have
pity on the town of Troy, and the Trojan women, and their
innocent children'.
Ilion was thoroughly rebuilt during the reign of Augustus
( 2 7 BC-A D I 4) and the entire top of the mound was levelled off
to enlarge the sacred enclosure of Athena's temple, which
was surrounded by an enormous colonnade. Another major
structure erected in the Roman era was the theatre, whose.
remains we found just to the east of the Skaian Gates, lying
across that arc of the defence walls. Schliemann determined
that the theatre, which could seat 6,000, must have been
adorned with a splendid colonnade in the combined Doric,
Ionian, and Corinthian orders, and we found fragments of
these columns as well as some of the sculptural decoration as
we explored.
After we had studied the ruins of the temple and the theatre,
we felt that we had completed our tour of Troy for the time
 THE WESTERN SHORES OF TURKEY

being, and so we climbed back to the top of the mound,

commanding a sweeping view of the entire Trojan plain, and
spread out our picnic lunch in the shade of a wind-twisted
valonia oak. We sat there for an hour or so, eating our lunch
of bread, goat-cheese, and olives, and drinking a bottle of white
wine from Tenedos, whose sea-girt silhouette we could see off to
the south-west in the spray-plumed Aegean. It was a beautiful
April day, the brilliant sunshine tempered by a melteme, the
breeze that blows in from the north or north-west all along
the Aegean coast of Turkey in spring and summer; and so after
lunch we decided to walk out to Kum Kale, at the Aegean end
of the Dardanelles, to see whether we could identify any of the
Homeric sites on the windy plain of Troy, particularly the
tumulus of Achilles.
We made our way down the south side of the mound and
walked out through the ancient Skaian Gates, taking the same
path that the people of Troy must have used when they were
going to their lands in times of peace. The Great Tower of Ilion
stood just beside the Skaian Gates, and as we passed through
the ruined portal I recalled an incident that Homer sets there
in Book I11 of the Iliad. In this scene Priam is sitting out on the
tower with the old men of Troy, waiting for an impending
battle between Menelaus and Paris, when suddenly they see
Helen walking towards them. The old men, who had been
chattering away like cicadas, lower their voices at her
approach, one of them murmuring that the Trojans and Achae-
ans could not be blamed for fighting over such a woman, for
'terrible is her face to the likeness of immortal goddesses'.
Priam calls out to Helen, telling her to sit beside him on the
tower, 'to look upon your husband of time past, your friends
and your people'. Then he reassures her by saying that 'I am
not blaming you: to me the gods are blameworthy/who drove
upon me this sorrowful war against the Achaians'.
The first Homeric site we found on the Trojan plain was the
place which Schliemann refers to in his Ilios as the 'cavern of
the three springs'. This spring served as Schliemann's water
 TROY A N D THE TROJAN P L A I N

source during the years he was excavating at Hisarlik, and

today it is used by the local farmers to irrigate their fields.
Schliemann identified this as the spring which figures so promi-
nently in Book XXII of the Iliad. That book begins after the
Achaeans had defeated the Trojans and driven them back
within the walls of Troy, leaving Hector alone facing Achilles
in single combat, standing fast 'in front of Ilion and the Skaian
Gates'. But when the combat began Hector fled in terror.
Achilles pursued him thrice round the walls of Troy while
Priam and his people looked on in dismay from the watch-
tower. The principal landmark in this deadly chase is the well-
spring outside the Skaian Gates, which the Trojan women used
as their washing-place in happier times past, 'when there was
peace, before the coming of the sons of the Achaians'. Finally,
'when for the fourth time they came around to the well-spring',
Hector stopped his flight and turned to face Achilles, who killed
him with a spear-thrust through his neck. Then Achilles tied
Hector's corpse feet-first to the back of his chariot, dragging
him away in the dust 'toward the hollow ships of the Achaians'
while Priam and his people 'were taken with wailing and
lamentation throughout the city'.
From the historic well-spring we headed off on the dirt
track towards Kum Kale. Schliemann believed that this track
followed one of the ancient roads across the Trojan plain,
probably leading from Troy out to the fortress-town of Ach-
illeum at the Asian end of the Hellespont, on the present site
of Kum Kale. This would have been the 'wagon way' along
which Achilles drove his chariot when he dragged Hector's
corpse back to the Achaean camp. We talked of this and
other scenes from the Iliad that are set on the Trojan plain,
exhilarated that on this glorious day we were walking along
one of the oldest roads in the world.
The path took us out to the northern end of the Trojan plain,
walking along the right bank of the Scamander. As we walked
along, I realized that we were approaching the area in which
Schliemann and others place the Achaean camp, at the north-
 THE WESTERN SHORES OF T U R K E Y

ern end of the Trojan plain between the Sigeum and Rhoeteum
promontories, where the Scamander flows into the Hellespont.
The blossoming fruit-trees and profusion of poppies and other
flowers on the banks of the Scamander reminded me of the lines
in Book I1 of the lliad where Homer describes the marshalling of
Agamemnon's army. 'They take up positions on the blos-
soming meadow of the Skamandros/thousands of them, as
leaves and flowers appear in the season'.
We crossed the Scamander on a primitive bridge consisting
of a line of planks slung on cables, with an upper rope to serve
as a hand-hold. As I inched my way across the rapid waters
of the Scarnander, which was in full flood, I experienced several
moments of sheer terror. When I finally reached the other side
I turned back and looked at the swirling stream, which was
here partially blocked by branches and other debris carried
down to the mouth of the river by the force of the current.
This reminded me of a dramatic scene in Book XXI of the Iliad,
where Achilles is nearly drowned in this stream, for the river-
god Skamandros is furious at him for having fouled his waters
with the corpses of the Trojan warriors he has slain. The
Skamandros complains to Achilles, the voice of the river-god
rising 'from the depths of the eddies':

0 Achilleus, your strength is greater, your acts more violent

than all men's; since always the very gods are guarding you.
If the son of Kronos has given all Trojans to your destruction,
drive them at least out of me to the plain, and there wreak
your havoc.
For the loveliness of my waters is crammed with corpses, I
cannot
find a channel to cast my waters into the bright sea
since I am congested with the dead men you kill so brutally.
Let me alone, then; lord of the people, I am confounded.

Achilles is saved from the Skamandros by Athena and

Poseidon, who appear to him on the bank of the stream and
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is polite and kind to his parents, considering their wishes, and
heeding their advice and counsel, paves the way to future happiness
and success. But he who spurns paternal suggestions, speaks and
acts disrespectfully, is seldom respected and is always at a
disadvantage. When Prince Bismarck was a boy, he was rebuked by
his father for speaking of the King as Fritz. “Learn to speak
reverently of his Majesty,” said the old squire of Varzin, “and you will
grow accustomed to think of him with veneration.” Bismarck laid the
advice to heart and from that day profited by it.
The truly polite boy is not only respectful to his parents but also to
his sisters and brothers, always returning a pleasant “Thank you” for
any kindness received at their hands, and showing as much courtesy
to all at home as to those in the home of a neighbor. “A beautiful
form,” says an American essayist, “is better than a beautiful face, and
a beautiful behavior is better than a beautiful form; it gives a higher
pleasure than statues or pictures; it is the finest of the fine arts,” it
gives grace to one’s bearing and enables one to look on the bright and
beautiful side of things.

POLITENESS SHOULD BE ACCORDED ALL.

Politeness is a universal debt that each boy owes to every person.

The matter of caste, sex, position and intelligence have nothing
whatever to do with it. It should be the rule of conduct wherever and
in whatever society one may be, to practise politeness.
Charles V was renowned for his courtesy. When he passed John
Frederick, Elector of Saxony, he took off his hat and bowed to him,
though his prisoner, who had been taken by him in battle. The poet
Burns was one day walking in the street of Edinburgh when an
honest farmer saluted him, which salute he returned, when some one
rebuked him. Mr. Burns replied that it was not the greatcoat, the
scone bonnet or the saunders boot-hose that he spoke to, but the
man that was in them. Daniel Webster was once walking with a
friend in Washington when a colored man passing by bowed very low
to him. Mr. Webster promptly returned as deep an obeisance. “Do
you bow in that way to a darky?” asked his friend. “Would you have
me outdone in politeness by a negro?” replied the great statesman.
 WHAT POLITENESS DID.

Mr. Winans, of Philadelphia, became independently rich through

his courteous manner. One day two strangers called on him. One was
a foreigner who had visited some larger establishments in the city,
but on their coming to Mr. Winans’, a third or fourth rate factory, he
took so much pains to show all its parts and workings, and was so
patient in his explanations and answers to their inquiries, that within
a year he was surprised by an invitation to transfer his labors to St.
Petersburg and manufacture locomotives for the Czar of Russia, He
went, accumulated a large fortune, and ultimately received from his
Russian workshops a hundred thousand dollars a year. Investing his
money in real estate he laid the foundation of one of the largest
private fortunes in Philadelphia; and all this was the result of civility.
It pays to cultivate politeness. To this day the Japanese people
revere the memory of General Grant. While visiting the emperor, he
was invited to cross the imperial foot bridge near the palace at
Tokyo, across which none but the blood royal had ever trod. General
Grant accepted the invitation and walked beside the Mikado until
they reached the center of the bridge. Then he stopped, profoundly
saluted the emperor, and said: “Your majesty, I have come so far to
show you that I was not insensible to the honor you would do me, but
I cannot violate your traditions. Let us return the way we came.”
Politeness serves one well. It is keener than sharpened steel. It is
more magnetic than loadstone and worth more than jewels. At home
or abroad, among young and aged, employers or teachers, inferiors
or superiors, this glorious characteristic is a diadem from which
sparkles a jewel, which is, as Chesterfield said: “The treatment of
others just as you love to be treated yourself.” In the words of One
greater than he, it is, “Do unto others as ye would they should do
unto you.” All other things being equal, the boy who adheres to these
mottoes is the one who succeeds. It makes him an acceptable
companion, wins friendship and creates popularity. “Give a poor boy
fine manners and accomplishments,” said Voltaire, “and he will
become the master of fortunes and palaces, while princes stand upon
their threshold to solicit his friendship.” Charles II. is described by
Macaulay as being “the grandest rascal and most popular man in
England.” Hume in giving the reason of this says, “He was the best
bred man alive.”
“What thou wilt,
Thou must rather enforce it with thy smile,
Than hew to it with thy sword.”
 CHAPTER III
Be Truthful

INTRODUCTION TO CHAPTER III

By Joshua Levering
Once to every man and nation comes the moment to decide,
In the strife of Truth with Falsehood, for the good or evil side.
—Lowell.

It is related of Cyrus, that when asked what was the first thing he
learned, he replied, “To tell the truth.” Truthfulness is the foundation
stone of character. Without it, a life, as it is developed, becomes more
and more marred and falls short of its highest opportunity and
calling. All qualifications that go to make up noble manhood count
for naught, where there is not a persistent adherence to truthfulness.
Therefore be true to yourself and the nobler impulses and yearnings
of your heart by always speaking the truth, acting the truth, and
living the truth.
 CHAPTER III
Be Truthful

While a vessel was crossing the English Channel, a gentleman stood

near the helmsman. It was a calm pleasant evening, and no one
expected a storm. The flapping of a sail as if the wind had suddenly
shifted, caught the ear of the officer on watch, and springing to the
wheel, he examined the compass. “You are half a point off the
course,” he sharply said to the man at the wheel. The deviation was
corrected, and the officer returned to his post. “It must be necessary
to steer very accurately,” said the observer, “if half a point is of so
much importance.” “Ah!” remarked the officer, “a half a point, sir, is
liable to bring us directly on the rocks.” What a lesson for every boy.
The half a point deviation from strict truthfulness strands one on the
rocks of falsehood.

WHAT IS A LIE?

The shortest definition of a lie is, “The intention to deceive.” It may

not be telling an out-and-out falsehood to conceal a crime, or to
shield one’s self, but telling it to mislead or deceive others. “The
essence of the thing,” said Dewey, “lies in the intention,” and if the
intention is to mislead, such, as Immanuel Kant says, “is forfeiture of
personal worth, a destruction of personal integrity.” As he contends,
“a lie is the abandonment, or, as it were, the annihilation of the
dignity of man.” It will undermine the noble instincts of any boy and
cause his character to collapse.

TELL THE TRUTH.

 A story of Abraham Lincoln shows his love for truth. It was a
bright autumn evening, when Abraham, a great awkward boy of
sixteen or seventeen said to his mother, “I’m going to the woods to-
morrow. I’ve got a good job at Laird’s and as I shall be obliged to
start by day-break, I thought there might be some chores you wished
to have done.” “You are a good boy, Abram, always thinking of
helping me,” said his step-mother. “If I was your own mother you
could not be more kind, and God will reward you sometime. To-
morrow, I am going to wash, and I would be very thankful if you
would bring me a few buckets of water from the spring.” Back and
forth the tall boy hurried, until all the tubs and kettles about the
cabin were filled. Early next morning, when Abraham was ready to
start for the place where the rails were to be split, his little sister
Sally said, “Can’t I go, Abram?” “Just as mother says,” replied he,
pausing to give the little girl an opportunity to consult her mother.
The mother would not consent. No sooner had Abram started than
she determined to follow him, and at once cut across the field
intending to reach the ravine before him and give him a genuine
surprise by jumping out unannounced in the path as he came up. She
carried out her plan successfully, and when she heard his merry
whistle in the distance she climbed upon the bank to be ready to
make the spring for his shoulders when the proper moment arrived.
But the poor child had forgotten all about the sharp axe which he
carried, and although she gained her coveted seat on his broad
shoulders, her little bare foot received a gash from the cruel axe,
which changed her merry laugh into a bitter cry. “Why, Sally! How
did you get here?” was all the boy could say as he placed her tenderly
on the bank and began an examination of the wounded foot. Finding
it to be a deep cut, he gathered some broad plantain leaves which
grew near, and by their aid soon succeeded in staunching the flow of
blood. This accomplished, he tore the sleeve from his shirt, and in his
clumsy way bandaged the injured foot. Carrying her home, he learnt
the story of her disobedience. She would have been willing to evade
the truth in order to screen herself from her mother’s displeasure,
but honest, truthful Abraham would not permit this. “Tell the truth,
Sally, no matter what the consequences may be,” he insisted; “better
suffer punishment than lie about it. I don’t think mother will be hard
on you when she sees how sorely punished you are; but never tell a
lie to shield yourself, never.” Such was the course taken through life
by that boy who later became the honored President of these United
States.

WHITE AND BLACK LIES.

Much is said nowadays about degrees in lying. That is lying in a

small way. There is the so-called white lie of custom when a certain
article is slightly misrepresented to make a bargain; the white lie of
courtesy when one makes politeness the garb behind which he
deceives; the white lie of necessity, when one would evade the truth
by nodding the head, or giving a wrong impression. Some men, and
even great men, have maintained that this is sometimes a necessity,
but would it not be a fine moral precept to say, “You must speak the
truth generally, but you may utter a falsehood when it suits your
convenience?” Who ever licensed one thus? Justin Martyr said, “Is
life at stake? We would not live by telling a lie.” When Atillius
Regulus was a prisoner of the Carthaginians he was sent by that great
people to Rome with several ambassadors to arrange for peace, on
the understanding that if peace-terms were not agreed upon he was
to return to prison. He took the oath and swore to return. Arriving at
Rome he urged his countrymen to continue in war and not agree to
the exchange of prisoners. This meant to him the return to Carthage.
The senators and priests held that as his oath had been forced from
him he ought not to return. Then came the answer from Regulus
which has made him imperishable: “Have you resolved to dishonor
me? I am not ignorant that death and tortures are preparing for
me. But what are those to the shame of infamous action, or the
wounds of a guilty mind? Slave as I am to Carthage, I have still the
spirit of a Roman. I have sworn to return. It is my duty to return.
Let the gods take care of the rest.”
“One should never lie,” said Crispi, the great Italian statesman. “I
will not stain speech with a lie,” said Pindar. “The genuine lie is
hated by all gods and men,” said Plato. “That man has no fair glory,”
said Theognis, “in whose heart dwells a lie, and from whose mouth it
has once issued.” A lie is never justifiable, and to lie a little, is, as
Victor Hugo remarked, “not possible.” The person who lies tells the
whole lie, lying in the face of the fiend, and “Satan has two names,
Satan and lying.” Therefore
“Let falsehood be a stranger to thy lips;
Shame on the policy that first began
To tamper with the heart to hide its thoughts!
And doubly shame on that inglorious tongue
That sold its honesty and told a lie.”

WHAT LYING DOES.

Nothing so corrupts early simplicity, quickly destroys the nobler

instincts, and depraves the heart as falsehood. If a boy will lie about
one thing, can he be trusted in anything? If he is branded as a liar,
what teacher will respect him, what business man will engage him,
and what court will accept his testimony? “I have seldom known
anyone,” said Paley, “who deserted truth in trifles, who could be
trusted in matters of importance.” Oliver Wendell Holmes said: “Sin
has many tools, but a lie is the handle which fits them all.” It destroys
confidence, establishes false relations among men, blights the bloom
of life, and saps the vital springs of existence. It is the progenitor of
all wrongs, oppressions, cruelties and crimes, and what boy is there
who dare do it when God prohibits it?

WHAT LYING BRINGS.

Like begets like, thus lies beget lies. Said Owen, “One lie must be
thatched over with another, or it will soon rain through.” Lying
brings misery. It troubles the conscience, destroys the peace of mind
and makes one suspicious of others. Because of this, Eugene Field,
when a young man, walked thirty miles to confess to his employer
and to ask forgiveness for an untruth he had told him. Lying brings
punishment, for “lying lips are an abomination unto the Lord.”
Because of this Elisha’s servant was struck with leprosy, Ananias and
Sapphira with death, and many others have had the seal of God’s
wrath placed upon them.
One day, as Archbishop Leighton was going from Glasgow to
Dumblane, a storm of lightning and thunder burst upon him. He was
observed, when at a considerable distance, by two men of bad
character. They had not the courage to rob him; but, wishing to
extort money from him, one said, “I will lie down by the wayside as if
I were dead, and you shall inform the archbishop that I was killed by
the lightning and beg money of him to bury me.” When the
Archbishop arrived, the wicked wretch told the fabricated story. The
Archbishop sympathized with the pretended survivor, gave him
money, and proceeded on his journey. But when the man returned to
his companion, he found him really lifeless. Immediately he began to
cry aloud: “Oh, Sir! he’s dead! Oh, Sir, he’s dead!” On this the
Archbishop discovered the fraud and turning to the living man said,
“It is a dangerous thing to trifle with the judgment of God.” How
much better and safer to speak the truth, for
“There is nothing so kingly as kindness,
And nothing so royal as truth.”

Truthfulness is the foundation of character. It is the basis of true

manhood. Its spirit pervades the closest relation and highest
intercourse, its law holds the planets in their course, and it is the
presiding principle of every true and noble life. A greater tribute
could not be paid to anyone than “his word is as good as his bond.”
No more worthy epitaph or eloquent remark could be uttered of
Colonel Huchurin, than when a friend, attesting the simplicity and
nobility of him, said: “He never professed the thing he intended not.”
No eulogy can surpass Xenocrates of Petrarch, who, standing before
an ecclesiastical tribunal where an oath had been required of others,
said, “As for you, Petrarch, your word is sufficient.”
An important conference was being held in the Executive Mansion
in Washington. A caller had sent in his card, but either the caller was
unwelcome or the time was quite unsuitable for his admission. One
of the persons turned to a servant and said, “Tell the person who sent
up the card that the President is not in.” “No,” said General Grant,
“tell him no such thing.” Then, turning to his friends, he remarked: “I
don’t lie myself, and I don’t want any of my servants to lie for me.”
A “Mental Photograph” book was once presented to Charles
Kingsley in which to write. One question was “What is your bête
noire?” “A lie,” he penned. In dedicating her delightful biography of
him his wife wrote:
“To the beloved memory
of
 A righteous man

Who loved God and truth above all things.

A man of untarnished honor—
Loyal and chivalrous—gentle and strong—
Modest and humble—tender and true—
Pitiful to the weak—yearning after the erring—
Stern to all forms of wrong and oppression,
Yet most stern toward himself—
Who being angry yet sinned not.”

TRUTHFULNESS IS THE MOST HONORABLE AND SAFE

COURSE.

Truthfulness underlies all honest and faithful work, all social

confidence, all right fulfillment of relations and self-respect. It
regulates lives and improves and elevates those it characterizes. It is
one great secret of success in business, a magnet that draws
confidence and wields a power second to none in the universe. A
poor Persian boy was about to leave his mother’s home, to engage in
business in the city. Within the lining of his coat she sewed forty
golden dinars which she had saved during years of labor. Before the
boy started she cautioned him to beware of robbers as he went across
the desert, and as he left the home, she said: “Fear God, and never
tell a lie.” The boy started, and toward evening saw in the distance
the glittering minarets of the great city, but between the city and
himself he saw a cloud of dust. It came nearer. Presently he saw that
it was caused by a band of robbers. One of them approached him,
and unceremoniously inquired what valuables he had. The boy
answered with candor: “Forty golden dinars are sewed up in my
garments.” Discrediting the boy’s story he wheeled his horse around
and rode back to his companions. Soon another robber came and
said: “Boy, what have you got?” “Forty dinars sewed in my
garments,” he answered. The robber laughed and rode away. At last
the chief came and asked him what he had. The boy replied, “I have
already told two of your men that I have forty dinars sewed up in my
clothes.” The chief ordered his clothes torn open, and the money was
found. He was then asked what induced him to make such a
revelation. “Because,” said the boy, “I would not be false to my
mother, whom I solemnly promised never to tell a lie.” The robber
leaned upon his spear and after reflecting said, “Wait a moment.” He
mounted his horse and rode back to his comrades, but soon returned
dressed as a merchant. “Boy,” said he, “art thou so mindful of thy
mother, while I am insensible at my age of that duty I owe God? Give
me thy hand, that I may swear repentance on it.” He did so, and his
followers were struck with the scene. Said he, “I am a merchant. I
have a large business house in the city. I want you to come and live
with me to teach me about your God, and you will be rich, and your
mother some day shall come and live with us.” Then one of the
robbers turned to the chief and said, “You have been our leader in
guilt, be the same in the path of virtue.” And taking the boy’s hand,
they all promised to lead new lives.
Boys, speak only that which is true. You may do much good by it,
although you may never lead a band of robbers to God and honesty.
But—
“Nothing good shall ever perish,
Only the corrupt shall die;
Truth, which men and angels cherish,
Flourishes eternally.”

TRUTHFULNESS IS THE WINNING SIDE.

Good old Matthew Henry used to say, “Truth is mighty and will
prevail.” “Falsehood,” as one of the kings of Prussia said, “sometimes
does good for twenty-four hours, but like a battle well fought, right
comes off more than conqueror.” Falsehood is always defeated. It
shrinks at detection and in due time is compelled to confess. Truth is
sure and has a firm foundation because it is an attribute of God. And
“God and truth,” said Theodore Parker, “are always on the same
side.” Therefore
“Seize upon truth, where’er ’tis found,
Amongst your friends, amongst your foes,
On Christian or on heathen ground;
The flower’s divine where’er it grows.”
 CHAPTER IV
Be Choice of Language

INTRODUCTION TO CHAPTER IV

By General O. O. Howard
“Maintain your rank, vulgarity despise,
To swear is neither brave, polite nor wise;
You would not swear upon a bed of death;
Reflect—your Maker now may stop your breath.”
Anonymous.

One moonlight night I was passing near a sentinel’s post. It was

during the winter of 1861–2, in front of Alexandria, Virginia, at
Camp California. The sentinel, in some trouble, used rough, coarse
language, closing with an oath. Approaching him, till I could see his
face, think of my astonishment to find him, instead of a burly man of
low life, a handsome boy of seventeen. I said to him pleasantly: “How
could your mother have taught you to swear?” Dropping his head
with a sudden shame, he answered, “She didn’t, General. I learned it
here.” And indeed, it came from the influence of his associates.
One’s language always gauges him.
 CHAPTER IV
Be Choice of Language

Few things are more important and far-reaching than the use of
words. If good, they
—“have power to ’suage
The tumults of a troubled mind
And are as balm to fester’d wounds.”

If bad, they corrupt and may flourish, as Carlyle said: “Like a

hemlock forest after a thousand years.”
“Immodest words admit of no defence,
For want of decency is want of sense.”

One of the most historic structures in the world was the

Campanile, or the bell-tower of St. Mark’s Cathedral in Venice. Not
long since it fell. One aged Lugui Vendrasco knew its danger. For ten
years he had not ceased to beg the government to allow him to put
the Campanile in better order. But his warnings were unheeded. One
Sunday morning he took his son to see it. As the young man looked
upon the crack he said, “That’s nothing. A small crack like that can
really do no harm to such a building.” Replying, the father said, “Son,
it is not the crack. It is that of which the crack is the effect and
symbol. Our Campanile is doomed.” The next morning it fell with an
awful crash. In like manner many a man has come tumbling down.
His character was not safe because of some flaw in it. Improper
words prove its great defect as the crack did the weakness of the
Campanile.
Stephen Price, once Mayor of New York, and a warm friend to
boys, lost his life in a steamboat disaster. When his body was
recovered, a scrap of paper was found in his pocket-book. It was so
worn with oft reading that the words were scarcely legible, but two
paragraphs were finally made out, one of which was: “Good company
and good conversation are the very sinews of virtue.” In fact, these
are inseparable. Conversation is a reflex of character, and no boy can
associate with another who delights in slangy, smutty talk without
being more or less contaminated.

IMPROPER WORDS.

A very common and bad habit of some boys is the attachment of

improper words to a sentence, as if it made it more binding. These in
no sense give grace or beauty to language. They do not round out a
period or enrich a metaphor. They define nothing, bound nothing,
measure nothing, mean nothing, accomplish nothing, and he who
uses them should be shunned. Vulgar expressions are never in order.
“They help,” as South says, “no one’s education or manners. They are
disgusting to the refined, abominable to the good, insulting to those
with whom one associates, degrading to the mind, unprofitable,
needless and injurious to society,” and beneath the dignity of any
self-respecting person. “Are there any ladies around?” said a young
officer to a group of others, “I’ve a splendid story to tell.” “There are
no ladies present,” said General Ulysses S. Grant, who overheard the
remark, “but there are gentlemen here, sir, and what is not fit for a
lady to hear, is unfit for a gentleman.”
When Coleridge Patterson, the martyred bishop of Melanesia, was
a boy at Eton, he was enthusiastically fond of cricket, at which he was
an unusually good player. At the cricket suppers at Eton, it was the
custom to give toasts followed by songs, and these songs were often
of a very questionable sort. Before one of these suppers, “Coley” told
the captain that he would protest against the introduction of
anything that was vulgar or indecent. His protest apparently had no
effect, for during the evening, one of the boys arose and began to sing
a song which “Coley” thought was not fit for decent boys to hear.
Whereupon, rising from his seat, he said, “If this sort of thing
continues, I shall leave the room.” It was continued and he left. The
next day he wrote to the captain of the eleven, saying unless he
received an apology, he should withdraw from the club. The apology
was sent and Patterson remained. By that stand he showed his
character, which won the admiration of the rest and brought about a
new state of affairs. No boy need answer another who addresses him
in unbecoming language. He might say as Stephen A. Douglas, when
denounced in the Senate in improper language, “What no gentleman
should say, no gentleman need answer.” And as to keeping the
company of anyone who is inclined to be vulgar, there is no law to
compel it. Far better be a Coleridge Patterson in shunning such
company.

AVOID PROFANITY.

The true gentlemanly boy has a sense of honor, scrupulously

avoiding profane words as he would profane actions. No habit is
more unbecoming, useless and contagious than swearing. It is the
fool’s impulse and the coward’s fortification. It neither helps one’s
manners nor education, and no boy with the least personal pride will
be guilty of indulging in it. Louis IX of France punished everyone
who was convicted of swearing by searing his lips with a hot iron.
George Washington made the following law August 3, 1776, which
he caused to be read to the men under his command: “The general is
sorry to be informed that the foolish and wicked practice of profane
cursing and swearing, a vice heretofore little known in an American
army, is growing into fashion; he hopes the officers will, by example
as well as influence, endeavor to check it, and that both they and the
men will reflect that we can have but little hope of the blessing of
Heaven on our armies if we insult Him by our impiety and folly;
added to this, it is a vice so mean and low, without any temptation,
that every man of sense and character detests and despises it.”
Years ago the Hon. John Finch visited an asylum in the East and
asked to see a certain professional gentleman committed there. He
had been a good and true man, but by overwork, physical and
mental, had wrecked himself and become a raving maniac. The
superintendent of the asylum said, “You will not want to see him
again, he swears so.” As they entered the room in which the man was
locked in a “straight jacket,” the most vulgar oaths came from his
lips. Touching the superintendent Mr. Finch said, “What can this
mean? When I knew that man he was one of the grandest Christians,
true, noble and good in every respect; and now to hear such vile
language coming from him surprises me.” The superintendent said,
“He learned to swear when a boy. The impressions made on his brain
at that period of life when the brain most readily receives
impressions now become the governing ones. In this asylum we can
almost uniformly tell what have been the habits, customs and abuses
of insane people when they were children. The brain at such times
receives impressions readily, the impressions are permanent, and if
they have indulged in vile practices, or used bad language, the
dethronement of reason and intelligent conscience will give to early
impressions and habits the control of the mind.” This being true,
how careful every boy should be, for who wants the bad habits of
youth noticeable in age?

AVOID BLASPHEMY.

There are many ways in which language may be improperly used,

but none more unbecoming and attended with more serious
consequences than blasphemy, or using the name of God or Christ
with disrespect. It is a presumptuous sin against which God has
declared: “Thou shalt not take the name of the Lord thy God in vain,”
declaring with emphasis, “for the Lord will not hold him guiltless
that taketh His name in vain.”
Sometimes, as Jacob Knapp said in his autobiography, “God steps
aside from His ordinary course and smites presumptuous sinners
dead, that they may stand as beacon lights to warn others to shun the
rocks on which they struck.” During the Black Hawk war, in Illinois,
at the time when God sent the cholera among the people, an officer
cursed God for sending the disease into their midst. With an awful
oath he opened his mouth, and God smote him down even as the
word trembled on his lips. Such cases are rare, yet the words, “will
not hold him guiltless,” show that He forgets not and that sometime
He will hold the blasphemer accountable.
Howard, the philanthropist, on hearing anyone use blasphemous
expressions, always buttoned up his coat. Being asked the reason, he
replied, “I always do this when I hear men swear, as I think that
anyone who can take God’s name in vain can also steal.” Nothing so
chills one’s blood as—
 —“to hear the blest Supreme
Rudely appealed to on each trifling theme;
Therefore maintain your rank, vulgarity despise,
To blaspheme is neither brave, polite nor wise.
You would not do so upon the bed of death;
Reflect! Your Maker now could stop your breath.”

“AMEN!”

Many years ago when the Duke of Gordon was spending the day in
a Scotch village a company of soldiers was drawn up under the
window of the room in which the duke and a party of friends were
enjoying themselves. The officer in command was inspecting his
men’s arms and clothes, and if anything displeased him he berated
the soldier with blasphemous oaths. The duke, who abhorred such
language, expressed a wish that the inspection might soon be over.
“If your Grace desires it,” said one of the company, “I will clear the
coast of this man of oaths without noise or bloodshed.” “Do so, and
I’ll be obliged to you,” said the duke. The gentleman stepped into the
street, took his station behind the officer and pulled off his hat. As
the officer swore, the gentleman, with the grave solemnity of a parish
clerk, said in a loud voice “Amen.” “What do you mean?” asked the
officer, hastily turning around. “I am joining with you in prayer,”
answered the gentleman with a grave face. “I thank you, sir,”
rejoined the officer, “but I have no further need for a clerk. Soldiers!
to the right-about, march!” And he and his soldiers departed, much
to the amusement and happiness of the duke, after teaching an
important lesson to the officer that it is wrong to call upon God to do
this or that, or to belittle others by vile epithets which never fail to
bring in due time just retribution.
My boy, the only language to use is the pure and refined. By-
words, slang phrases, profanity and blasphemy are only uttered by
lips whose heart is bad, for “out of the abundance of the heart the
mouth speaketh.” Let your tongue utter sound sentences, choice
words and pleasant expressions, then will they be musical to the ears
of the good, sweet to the soul of the pious, educational to those who
associate with you, and beneficial to all. From this day put into
practice the last words of the eloquent John B. Gough. He was
lecturing in the Presbyterian Church, Frankford, Pa., on the night of
February 19, 1886. In the course of that lecture he said: “I have seven
years in the record of my own life when I was held in the iron grasp
of intemperance. I would give the world to blot it out, but alas! I
cannot.” Then, stepping forward, with an impressive gesture, he
added, “Young man, keep your record—” but he was unable to finish
the sentence, for he sank insensible into a chair from which he was
never able to rise. Evidently he meant to say, “Young man, keep your
record clean.”
Do not forget that improper words have a reflex influence. A fable
is told how a bee took an offering of honey to Jupiter, which so
pleased him that he promised to grant the bee whatever it should
ask. The bee said, “O glorious Jove, give thy servant a sting, that
when anyone approaches my hive to take the honey, I may kill him
on the spot.” Jupiter answered, “Your prayer shall not be granted in
the way you wish, but the sting you ask for, you shall have; and when
anyone comes to take away your honey, and you sting him, the
wound shall be fatal, not to him, but to you, for your life shall go with
the sting.” So is it to this day. He that curseth others, curseth himself.
Therefore my boy, control your tongue, and keep the door of your
lips, remembering:
“’Tis reason’s part
To govern and to guard the heart,
To lull the wayward soul to rest,
When hopes and fears distract the breast;
Reason may calm this doubtful strife,
And steer thy bark through various life.”
 CHAPTER V
Be Ambitious

INTRODUCTION TO CHAPTER V

By Booker T. Washington
Our natures are like oil; compound us with anything,
Yet will we strive to swim to the top.

—Beaumont.

Writing of the gentleman who introduces this chapter—the

Washington of his people in industry, education and religion, Paul
Dunbar, the negro poet, says:
“A poor Virginia cabin gave the seed;
And from its dark and lowly door there came
A peer of princes in the world’s acclaim,
A master spirit for the nation’s need.
Strong, silent, purposeful beyond his kind,
The ark of rugged force on brow and lip,
Straight on he goes, nor turns to look behind,
With one idea foremost in his mind
Like the keen prow of some on-forging ship.”

I would say to every young man, no matter what his color, to choose
as early as possible a good, clean-cut business, something that will
help make the world better, and then strive in every worthy way to
make that business the most successful of its kind in the world. The
boy who lets obstacles overcome him will not succeed. The great
thing is to succeed in spite of discouragements.
 CHAPTER V
Be Ambitious

Many a pen has been used against this inward passion, declaring it a
“secret poison, a gallant madness and the mother of hypocrisy.” The
great Wolsey cried, “I charge thee, fling away ambition.” Bowes said,
“The most aspiring are frequently the most contemptible,” but there
are exceptions to the rule. Where there is no aspiration, there is no
endeavor. It is not wrong to strain mental and physical energies to
succeed, provided it is to be good and to do good. The ambition of
Napoleon to lay waste the town of Acre was wrong, that of
Wellington to intercept the “scourge of Europe,” right. “To be
ambitious of true honor, of the true glory and perfections of our
natures, is,” as Sir Philip Sidney said, “the very principle and
incentive of virtue.”
One of the customs of the Norsemen was that of wearing a pickaxe
crest with the motto, “Either I will find a way or make one.” An adage
of the day reads, “Where there’s a will there’s a way.” What one wills
to do can usually be done. George Stephenson determined to make
an engine to run between Liverpool and Manchester at the rate of
twelve miles an hour. The Quarterly Review ridiculed the idea,
saying, “As well trust one’s self to be fired off on a Congreve rocket.”
He did it, nevertheless. Prince Bismarck’s greatest ambition was to
snatch Germany from Austrian oppression and to gather round
Prussia, in a North German confederation, all the States whose tone
of thought, religion and interest, were in harmony with those of
Prussia. “To attain this end,” he once said, “I would brave all dangers
—exile, even the scaffold. What matters if they hang me, provided the
rope with which I am hung binds this new Germany firmly to the
Prussian throne?” And, he did it.
 ASPIRE HIGH.

There is nothing wrong in aspiring high. George Washington

proposed to carve his name higher than any other on the Natural
Bridge in Virginia, and did it. Alfred Harmsworth, “king of the penny
press,” said on entering journalism, “I will master the business of
editing and publishing.” At twenty-one he had a little capital, at
thirty he was a millionaire, and later became head of the largest
publishing house in the world.
Emerson once said, “Hitch your wagon to a star.” It is but a natural
condition of a healthful life when energies seek an outlet in some
lofty activity. Better endeavor if but to fail, than never try at all. “I
know,” says Morris, “how far high failure overleaps the bounds of
low successes.” The sense of such makes us capable of a grave and
holy sense of the real soberness and meaning of life. George Eliot in
writing the last words of her most powerful book, exclaims, “It is so
much less than what I hoped for.” A great artist was once highly
praised for a beautiful painting which he had just completed. “Ah, do
not praise me!” he sadly said, “it may be very beautiful, but I aimed
at perfection.” When Napoleon started on his campaign he was
ridiculed and nicknamed “The Little Corporal,” which cut him to the
quick, but it proved to be a goad which stirred him to become a great
general. In one of our courts a poor carpenter was once planing a
magistrate’s bench, when an onlooker inquired, “Why are you so
careful with such a rough piece of furniture?” “Because I wish to
make it for the time when I shall sit as judge upon it,” was the reply.
And that time came.

INSTANCES OF SUCCESSFUL AMBITION.

In 1805 there was born in London a boy of a hated and branded

people. When sixteen years of age he became a clerk in a solicitor’s
office, and, to the amusement of his companions, he was wont to say:
“I intend to be prime minister of England.” He had no liberal
education, yet he won honors of literary skill and scholarship. He
was ambitious, and eventually won his way to Parliament. When he
attempted to deliver his first speech, his highflown style and
extravagant gestures provoked laughter and hisses, so that he took
his seat with great mortification. In doing so, he uttered a
remarkable prophecy, “I shall sit down now, but the time will come
when you will hear me.” True to the utterance, that time came to
Benjamin Disraeli, when, in Shakespeare’s words he could have said,
“People and senators! be not affrighted; fly not; stand still;
ambition’s debt is paid.”
Years ago a poor German boy named Schliemann read of the siege
of Troy, and made up his mind to find the ruins of that ancient city.
He procured books and taught himself six or seven languages. He
persevered and prospered until as a merchant he made a fortune.
Every step of his study and money-making was taken with the aim of
fulfilling the vow of his boyhood. In due time he started eastward
with a company of laborers, and for long years pursued his search. At
last success crowned his efforts. Troy was discovered and the gold,
silver and bronze articles of the Trojan king were dug out of his
palace, and placed on exhibition at South Kensington, England.
One day while wandering about Cincinnati a young artist saw a
sign which read, “Peter Skinner, Chairmaker.” “Why can’t I make
chairs?” he asked himself. He straightway entered the establishment,
resolved to ask for a position. In order to get to the office, he had to
pass through the paint room, and the sight of several busy workers
prompted him to inwardly exclaim, “Anyway I can paint chairs.” The
firm wanted a hand, and he was engaged to come the next morning
to work in the paint shop. As he wended his way back he tarried a
moment to see how the painters did their work. That evening when
he reached his room in the boarding-house, he borrowed a brush and
an old chair, and began practising. Next morning he was on hand at
the chair factory and there continued to work for two months at nine
dollars per week. No one ever discovered that he was not an
experienced chair-painter. During his leisure time at the boarding-
house he made pencil drawings and dropped them carelessly on the
floor so that they would attract attention. The landlord, a colonel in
the militia, possessed a strong, characteristic face and the artist drew
him in uniform, and dropped this picture on the floor of his room.
His chief ambition was to return to portrait painting. He thought the
drawing would please the colonel, and it did; so much so, that it led
to his receiving a commission to paint the portraits of the colonel and
his family, consisting of five members, at five dollars each. With this
work to occupy him he left the chair factory, and soon the reputation
of James H. Beard, the celebrated portrait and animal painter, was
made.
History records thousands of those who have pressed their way
upward until they were crowned with success in spite of the
distressing, discouraging, circumstantial law of gravitation, in which
poverty and uncouth ancestry have played an important part. What
these have done, any other boy can do, providing he argues not
“Against heaven’s hand or will, not ’bate a jot
Of heart or hope, but still bear up and steer
Right onward.”

THE SPIRIT OF DISCONTENT.

There is, however, a spirit of discontent manifested by many who

envy those a few rounds higher on life’s social or business ladder,
and who are determined to surpass them at whatever cost. Such
ambition is justly foredoomed to disappointment, like Alexander’s,
who wept because there were no more worlds for him to conquer;
and like Pisistratus, to whom the Athenian law-giver said, “Were it
not for your ambition, you would be the best citizen of Athens.”
Ambition that rises from discontent or selfishness is false. It lacks
conscience to engineer it. A boy is only fit to go higher as he
demonstrates faithfulness where he is. A boy that simply wants to
climb without endeavoring to do well in the position he holds is, as
Beecher said, “Neither fit to be where he is, nor yet above it; he is
already too high, and should be put lower.” “Out of the frying-pan
into the fire,” though not his motto, will doubtless be his result.

MASTER OF HIS CRAFT.

Not long ago, at Ellis Island, a large number of immigrants were

awaiting examination. Among them was a tall Polish lad with a little
black bag under his arm. When his turn came to answer the
inevitable question, “How much money have you?” he smiled, and
frankly answered “None.” “But don’t you know you can’t come in
here if you have no money, and no friend to speak for you? Where
are you going?” asked the inspector. “To Fall River first. I have a
friend there. Then I shall see the whole country. You will hear of me,”
he answered. The inspector proceeded rather sharply, “How will you
get to Fall River? Where will you eat and sleep to-night?” “I shall be
all right,” replied the lad confidently. “With this,” tapping the black
bag, “I can go anywhere.” “What is it?” The Pole laughed, and
opening the bag, took out a cornet. It was a fine instrument, and gave
evidence of loving care. “Can you play it well?” asked the officer,
kindly. In answer the young man stepped out into an open space, and
lifting the horn to his lips, began the beautiful intermezzo from
“Cavalleria Rusticana.” At the very first note every one in the great
building stood still and listened. The long lines of immigrants
became motionless. The forlorn waiters in the pit looked up, and
their faces became tender. Even the meanest among them seemed to
feel the charm of the pleading notes. When the music ceased, there
was a burst of applause. Shouts of “Bravo,” “Good boy,” “Give us
some more,” came from every side. The physicians, who a few
moments before had made their hurried and not over-gentle
examination, joined in the applause. The officer who had questioned
him so sharply slapped him on the back. The commissioner himself
had come up from his office at the sound of the horn, and asked for
particulars. When he had heard them, he turned to the agent of the
Fall River boats, and said, “Give this lad a passage, including meals,
and charge it to me.” “I will charge it to myself,” said the agent, and
he took the young Pole by the arm and led him away. “With this I can
go anywhere,” showed not only his ambitious spirit, but
demonstrated faithfulness in the prosecution of his studies, which
now stood him in good stead and made him master of the situation.
How true, as Massinger sang,
“Man was marked
A friend in the creation, to himself,
And may, with fit ambition, conceive
The greatest blessings and the highest honors
Appointed for him, if he can achieve them
The right and noble way.”
 HINTS TO SUCCESSFUL AMBITION.

Ambition, to succeed, must seize opportunity by the forelock.

“Behind she is bald; if you seize her by the forelock, you may hold
her; if suffered to escape, not Jupiter himself can catch her again.”
“Do that which lies nearest you,” is an injunction worth obeying, and
though not the most satisfactory, may be the stepping-stone to
something higher. John D. Rockefeller, who is computed to be worth
three hundred million dollars, earned his first money hoeing
potatoes, and when thirty-five years of age owned but a thousand
dollars. When Edison was a very poor young man, walking the
streets in search of work, he happened to step into an office in Wall
street. The telegraph recording machine was out of order, and no one
could make it work. Instead of pleading his case in general
statements, he simply asked if he might try his hand on the balky
machine. He was permitted, and was successful. This was the turning
point in his career toward fortune. He not only had knowledge and
skill enough to make a machine go, but he had wit enough to
perceive the opportunity just at hand. Some things are difficult to
perceive because they are close to us. But this is all the more reason
why we should look for them and with the barest possibility seize
them.
Ambition which ennobles, must do well whatever there is to be
done. Gladstone’s advice to boys was, “Be thorough in what you do,
and remember that, though ignorance often may be innocence,
pretension is always despicable.” President Garfield tells of a
schoolmate who established a factory for the single purpose of
making hammers, which he had brought to great perfection, and in
which he took a great pride. The statesman said to his old friend, “By
this time you must be able to make a pretty good hammer.” The
hammer-maker, who was shipping his wares by the thousands to all
parts of the earth, replied: “No, we do not make any pretty good
hammers; we make the best hammers that can be made.” “I
commission thee, my son,” said an aged artist, whose eye was failing
and hand trembling, “do thy best.” The young man hesitated,
thinking the duty too vast to finish his master’s work, but the
injunction “do thy best” rang in his ears. With prayer for help and
high purpose in heart, the young man began. As he wrought, his
hand grew steady, his conception cleared, each stroke became a
master-stroke until with tearful exultation, the aged artist gave over
into the hand of Leonardo da Vinci the task from which his own
trembling hand was dropping, which task for da Vinci meant a
world-wide reputation.
“I was invited,” said the late D. W. Richardson, “to give an address
at St. Andrew’s University, and to listen in the evening to a lecture by
another man—like myself, an outsider. I was not personally
acquainted with this other man, but I knew that he filled an
important judicial office in Scotland, and was considered one of the
most able and learned, as well as one of the wittiest men in that
country. He chose for his subject ‘Self-Culture,’ and for an hour held
us in a perfect dream of pleasure. For my own part, I could not
realize that the hour had fled. The lecture ended at seven o’clock, and
at eight I found myself seated at dinner by the side of the lecturer, at
the house of one of the university professors. In the course of the
dinner I made some reference to the hall in which the exercises of the
day had been held, how good it was for sound, and what a fine
structure to look upon. ‘And did you like the way in which the stones
were laid inside?’ asked my new friend. ‘Immensely,’ I replied, ‘the
man who laid those stones was an artist who must have thought that
his work would live through the ages.’ ‘Well, that is pleasant to hear,’
he said, ‘for the walls are my ain daein’.’ He had the Scottish accent
when in earnest. ‘Fortunate man,’ I replied, ‘to have the means to
build so fine a place,’ for I thought, naturally enough, that, being a
rich man, he had built this hall at his own expense, and presented it
to the university. ‘Fortunate, truly,’ he answered, ‘but not in that
sense. What I mean is, that I laid every one of those stones with my
ain hand. I was a working mason, and the builder of the hall gave me
the job of laying the inside stone-work; and I never had a job in my
life in which I took so much pride and so much pleasure.’
“While this man was working with his hands he was working also
with his brain. He took his degree, went to the bar, and became a
man honored throughout the country. We applauded his brilliant
lecture; but those silent, beautiful stones before him, which echoed
our applause, must, I think, have been to him one cheer more, and a
big one.”
 Be ambitious, my boy. Embrace every opportunity, for such “is the
small end of a big thing.” The small end comes first and may be good
as a handle. “My chance has come,” said Commodore Dewey to a
naval captain with whom he dined just before leaving Washington to
assume command of the Asiatic squadron early in 1898. “You know,
Farragut did not get his chance till he was over sixty, but he took it,
and—” something interfered with the conversation and the sentence
was never finished in words, but the rest of it reverberated around
the world from the roar of Dewey’s guns at Manila. Keep your eyes
open. Hear, but say little. Count the cost before you bargain. Weigh
matters before you buy, and if there is a possibility of success, grasp
it. Spare no labor, nor shrink from danger, for in the words of
Montrose,
“He either fears his fate too much
Or his deserts are small,
That dares not put it to the touch
To gain or lose it all.”
 CHAPTER VI
Be Industrious

INTRODUCTION TO CHAPTER VI

By John T. Rich
Industry—
To meditate, to plan, resolve, perform,
Which in itself is good—as surely brings
Reward of good, no matter what be done.
—Pollock.

Industry stimulates honesty,—honesty for its own sake, not because it is the best
policy.
Such sweetened by courtesy, seasons our attainments with a delightful relish and
portends a rich reward.
—H. D. Wilson.

Industry means success in life. Without it, genius, ability, scholarship

and good intentions are of no avail. By industry, poverty, lack of
opportunity and the greatest obstacles in human life may be
overcome, and success in life assured.