acrossasiaminoro00chiluoft

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42 ACROSS ASIA MINOR ON FOOT
door ever kept ready for sudden closing-. Enter
one of the shops and you find it a nest of low
dark rooms opening out of each other. Here you
may buy excellent towels by weight, and the Armenian
who sells them tells you in English that they were
hand - woven in the town, of yarn imported from
Manchester,— that being the process followed by some
cotton weavers in Asia Minor.
While he sells he speaks of his race and its woes
of what has befallen it in this town. Of a hundred
and fifty slain in an hour. Of the increasing dread
that the killing may break out again at any time.
Of the ever-listening ear and watchful eye for sounds
and signs —like waiting for the first tremors of another
earthquake after one that has just done damage.
He tells also that, during the last massacre, many
hundreds of his people reached this Tash Khan ; and
having closed and bolted the great door, found safety
within until the gust of fanatical Moslem rage subsided.
Hearing of these things you wonder that he,
who could go to America if he chose, should be satisfied
to remain here. That he has chosen to stay, it
seems, must be some measure of how he judges his
risks ; that, in fact, he has balanced these against his
profits.
The attitude of Armenians towards the Turk who
has so vilely used them can only be called a peculiarity
of the race. In Western Europe the Armenian
is regarded as a harmless, peaceable, mild - spoken
man, without warlike spirit, without power of resistance
to oppression. This idea does a great injustice
to the people. It is widely incorrect even of Armenian
town dwellers, and still more so of the j^easantry. For
all their greater than Jewish love of gain, the sedentary
classes — the- tax-farmers, usurers, and shopkeepers—live
among dangers requiring daily no little
physical courage to meet, and are a stubborn uncompromising
brood ; the peasantry are nothing less than
dour, and from some districts are fighting men second
to none in Asia Minor. The Armenian is a better