The Autobiography of a Journalist, Volume II | Page 5

the kaimakam withdrew the
charge.
I knew perfectly well that the servant was guilty, but I knew, too, that
for accidental wounding he would have been punished by indefinite
confinement in a Turkish prison, as if he had shot the boy intentionally.
The refusal of the pasha to permit me to judge the case, as I had a right
to do, he being my protégé, left me only the responsibility of the
counsel for the prisoner, and I determined to acquit him if possible. The
bullet had, fortunately, gone through the boy and could not be found;
and, as the wound, though through the lungs, was healing in a most
satisfactory manner, and would leave no effects, I had no scruples in
preventing a conviction that would have punished an involuntary
offense by a terrible penalty, which all who know anything of a Turkish
prison can anticipate. The governor-general was very angry, and the
kaimakam was severely reprimanded, but they could not help
themselves. My position under the capitulations was secure, but it made
the hostility between the pasha and myself the more bitter.
The accumulated oppressions of Ismael Pasha had finally the usual

effect on the Cretans, and they began to agitate for a petition to the
Sultan, a procedure which time had shown to be absolutely useless as
an appeal against the governor; and, while the agitation was in this
embryonic condition, I decided to go back to Rome and get my wife
and children. We were still in the state of siege by the cholera, and
there was still no communication with the Greek islands, so that I
accepted the offer made by my English colleague, the amiable and
gratefully remembered Charles H. Dickson, of whose qualities I shall
have to say more in the pages to come, of a passage on a Brixham
schooner to Zante. Sailing with a clean bill of health, we had to make a
fortnight's quarantine in the roadstead, and, taking passage on the
Italian postal steamer to Ancona, I was obliged, on landing, to make
another term of two weeks in the lazaretto, though we had again a clean
bill; and, on arriving on the Papal frontier by the diligence, we had to
undergo a suffocating fumigation, and all this in spite of the fact that no
one of the company I had traveled with had been at a city where
cholera had existed at any time within three months, or on a steamer
which had touched where the cholera was prevalent. At that time there
was no railway northward from Rome, and traveling was conducted on
the system of the sixteenth century, except for sea travel.
I was not long cutting all the ties that bound me to Rome, though I left
a few sincere friends there, and, drawing a bill on my brother for my
indebtedness to the kind and helpful banker, an Englishman named
Freeborn, to whose friendship I owed the solution of most of the
difficulties and all the indulgences I had enjoyed while in Rome, I
started on my return to Crete in the problematical condition of one who
emigrates to a foreign land through an unknown way. I had money
enough to get through if nothing occurred to delay me, and no more,
for, with the high rate of exchange on America, I felt distressed at the
burthen I was laying on my brother, though I had always been told to
consider myself as to be provided for while he had the means, and by
his will when he died. His death took place at this juncture, and,
curiously enough, the draft reached him in time to be accepted, but he
died before it was paid. His will made no mention whatever of me, but
left all his property to his wife during her lifetime, and to three
Seventh-day Baptist churches after her death.

In our consular service there was no allowance for traveling expenses,
or provision of any kind for the extraordinary expenses which might
fall on the consul from contingencies like mine. The salary at Crete,
which had been $1500 during the war, was reduced to $1000 at its
close, and in future I had only that and what my pen might bring me.
Arrived at Florence on our way to Ancona, we found the Italian
government being installed there; and our minister to Italy, Mr. Marsh,
knowing my circumstances, insisted on my taking a thousand francs,
though his own salary, which was, as in my case, his only income, was
always insufficient for his official and social position at the capital. I
accepted it, and it was ten years before I paid it all back.
Looking back on this period of my life from a later and relatively
assured, though never prosperous condition, I