F Scheherazade had told this tale, it would have seemed as incredible as any of the fancies that kept the sword from her own neck and later grew into "The Thousand and One Nights." All the essentials of romance are in it: a hero from a distant land of marvels, set down amid strange peoples; his elevation to such a post of honor and power as does not ordinarily come to the greatest of men; his daily diwan khana, or judgment seat, thronged by rich and poor; his bestowal of bounty and deliverance and life upon the lowly and the needy; his routing of mighty enemies by the use of an emblem more potent than the prophet's banner -the Stars and Stripes; and, finally, his heroic and tragic end. The narrative is one such as Orientals delight to rehearse in wayside khans and by caravan fires.

I am no Scheherazade, or weaver of beguiling fiction, so the story must be told in unadorned reality, prefacing it by the simple statement that the representative American about whom I write was the center

of the most typically "Arabian Nights" situation that I ever encountered in far wanderings over the realm of the califs, from Cairo and Constantinople to Bagdad and Borsa. This man from Ohio had become a cadi, or judge, administering the high, low, and middle justice to all sorts of people, from uniformed officials to beggars in rags; and his tribunal was famous among hundreds of villages, for he was a judge whom neither bribery nor guile could influence, and whose court was open to the lowliest man or woman.

The setting of this narrative, wherein Yankee shrewdness and Harun-al-Rashid methods were telescoped, is so far away from America that one must draw a long breath before trying to explain its location. In times of peace there are, broadly speaking, four ways of reaching it. The easiest is to cross the Atlantic to Scandinavia and Petrograd, and then go down through Russia to the Caspian Sea. Keeping Mount Ararat on the right, strike for the salt lake of Urumia,-so much saltier than the American Great Salt Lake that one won

ders why the school-books never make the comparison. Below the lake, on a plain where grow melons and grapes of a lusciousness past all telling, lies the City of Urumiah, the traditional birthplace of Zoroaster, and the seat of the djwan khana, or judgment hall, of the American cadi.

But whatever path one follows in going to the Yankee cadi of whom I write, the reward is both in the journey and in the journey's end. Urumiah is the East, with layered memories of ancient glories. The bazaars, vaulted, dark, and aromatic, are, or were, until the Russians, flying revolution's red rag, ruthlessly burned them, second in worth only to those of Tabriz. Here in their little booths sit, cross-legged, the rug-vender, the coppersmith, the shoemaker, the confectioner, the fruit-seller, and the food-purveyor, with his spitted chunks of liver or lamb sizzling over tiny charcoal fires.

Always there was time for talk and ceremony. When one walked through these thoroughfares, as I have done, with the Yankee cadi, one saw the honor that was paid him by high and low. The fat Moslem hadji, with his huge white turban, signifying that he has made the journey to Mecca, halted us for formal exchange of greetings; as did also the Persian official, in his little round black cap and his long frock-coat. The Persian governor himself sought counsel from this wise American, versed in statecraft, and possessed of the spirit of the East along with the wisdom of the West. Peasants from the plain and marvelously bepatched mountaineers, with their hair plaited down their backs, and their heads surmounted by queer little conical caps of home-made felt, sought to kiss the hand of the just judge. Ecclesiastics of a church that America knows not, though it maintained a chain of missions. clear from Peking to Constantinople long centuries before Columbus sailed, greeted the foreign brother with glowing faces and unconcealed deference. An Americantrained native, with an archæological bent, knowing the visitor's interest in the antiquities of this immemorial center of the cult of the Magi, promised me pottery

from the mountain-high heaps of ashes that remain from long-dead sacrificial fires; and two fine pieces are in my home as I write. The native Hakim, or physician, desired to show his respect for the city's best friend by calling upon his guest, as did others in all walks of life. Where in all the world was there another private American citizen in receipt of such spontaneous tokens of esteem as this unofficial and unassuming gentleman in earth's remotest corner?

As we came to the cadi's own gate, there was repeated a scene which daily made me wonder whether the American public would receive the description for cold and commonplace fact. It was more like the setting that Belasco would create, if he knew how, for an Oriental extravaganza. For here was the street lined and thronged by a rabble, waiting the return of the great one whom they called "our father and our mother," and upon whose head they poured rich and varied blessings. Whatever may be the material lot of the Orient, it has no poverty of language. Most of the waiting ones sat hunkering in the roadside, with the endless patience of the East, returning day after day until their turn for access to the presence came around.

Some were Moslem women in all-enveloping black, with veiled faces, holding their children near to them. Others were men in Western garb, standing in couples and groups. The greater number were peasants from the plain and the mountain. Only colored photography could convey any adequate conception of these. They were vivid hues and patches. Literally hundreds of patches, of the brightest obtainable shade, were often seen on a single person. One essential of housewifery is ability to patch; and it seems as if some patches are put on perfectly sound garments for purposes of adornment. parently, no clothes wear out among these peasants; they are simply a succession of patches upon patches, until all trace of the original garment is lost.

Ap

The young women of the mountains are the comeliest to be seen anywhere on earth.

The famed beauties of the Caucasus, the legendary loveliness of Turkish harems, the chic mademoiselles of the Paris boulevards, and the swart peasant lasses of Italy must yield the palm to these Assyrian girls, whose skin is olive-clear, whose features are regular and fine, whose eyes are snapping black, and who bear themselves with the poise and stateliness of the mountaineer. It is their husbands who run mostly to patches. Jaunty circular caps and beautifully embroidered blouses and skirts, all products of their own craftsmanship, are worn by the women of the mountains. Frequently their foreheads bear a tattooed cross, as if in unrecantable defiance of the Moslem oppressors. As they waited outside the gate it was with simple dignity that looked one in the face unabashed.

Sometimes the waiting groups represented entire villages-men, women, and children. Often, alas! they were only surviving remnants of Kurdish raids. Upon their faces rested the famine pallor that is the same the world around. As a last resort, these miserable ones had come from their distant mountains to the far-famed American gate where both justice and mercy had their abode.

That gate has a story which all Americans should know, and would be the better for knowing. Its day-by-day aspect, when thronged by seekers after bread and protection and counsel and justice, was an epic in itself; for it embodied America. Away off here, in a region so remote that ninety-nine out of every hundred Americans have not even a hazy idea of its existence or location, the spirit of America, which is the spirit of altruism and service. and righteousness and progress, had come to be a light to lighten an ancient people sitting in darkness, amid woe and beneath oppression. Into the remotest fastnesses of the mountains, far off on the plains, where little villages cluster amid the ruins of forgotten civilizations, through the barred gate of every miserable compound in the great city, there had run the glad message that America is the helper of the poor, the protector of the weak, and the adviser of the ignorant.

The lure of that light of liberty has called thousands of these Assyrians overseas; so that there is scarcely a community in what would be modern Assyria, if this people had a land of their own, that has not its representatives in different parts of America. Last winter, while I was a guest in the home of the American cadi, I saw a sight that made me understand the American immigrant from a new angle; for through the office of the cadi literally poured into the hands of scores and hundreds of mothers and wives and brothers and children the silver sent to them by their men-folk in America. Proud mothers tried to tell me, as I watched, of their generous sons in my land. More than a million dollars has been transmitted through this American channel, without a penny of carrying charges, to families who otherwise would have suffered sore deprivation. It is such unheralded adjuncts as this that have helped give American diplomacy its fair repute among the ancient peoples of earth.

But it was of the American gate that I started to write when I digressed. It is a real "sublime porte," worthier of that name than the old office building in Stamboul, for behind it were sheltered, three years ago, no fewer than fifteen thousand hunted, harried Assyrians, fleeing like sheep from Germany's wolves, the Kurds and the Turks. Over that gate hung an American flag. Beneath it stood an American civilian, embodying all the prestige and principles and power that have become attached to the flag in this corner of the world. That was all. There were no mounted cannon, no armed men. Outside, the enemy blustered and threatened and cursed; but the American flag flew between him and his prey. He spat at it and made impotent boasts of what he would do if that flag were once out of the way. Sometimes the foe were Germandrilled Turkish regulars; again they were wild Turkish tribesmen, brandishing their weapons, and filling the air with their shrill cries.

Inside the American compound, to which this gate was the only entrance,

cowered, in a congestion beyond belief, fifteen thousand Assyrian men, women, and children. The people of Sennacherib have lost most of their martial virtues under centuries of oppression. So they abandoned themselves wholly to the protection of the little company of American men and women, about a score in all, whose leader was the cadi of whom I would write. This was no episode of hours or days. For five months the fifteen thousand refugees were herded into that space, enlarged for the occasion, and comprising altogether fewer than six acres, nearly all covered with buildings. Epidemics broke out, and four thousand died. Babies were born, with never a rag to wrap them in or a place to cradle them. Into a church that seats several hundred, thousands were crowded for these months, sleeping both on and under the pews. In a school-room that I visited the people lived in three layers, on the floor, on the seats, on the desks. Four lucky boys found a cozy home in a closet that was just as wide as my walking stick, and half as deep, for I measured it. The problems of sanitation were overpowering in more ways than one. Trench vermin were negligible, as compared with conditions in this congested, unwashed multitude. Every ounce of food, every drop of medicine, had to come from the Americans. During those five horror-filled months, when at any moment fanaticism might brush aside the American flag, which alone interposed between them and death, that little band of American heroes, their circle repeatedly broken by disease and death, met every problem that rose, and carried the besieged through to life and liberty.

But first I must tell about the cadi, who was diplomatic agent and adviser and gobetween throughout all those perilous months. He it was who had oftenest to brave the city streets alone and front the enemy officers. Technically, it was not the Americans who were besieged, but only the Assyrian Christians whom they sheltered. What a gigantic bluff the flag and the cadi maintained in those perilous days! There was no force to support his repre

sentations. Communication with the outside world was down. Washington did not even know of the sublime drama that was being enacted behind the folds of the Stars and Stripes. Only nerve and resourcefulness kept the wolves from the sheep and the colors inviolate.

Not of Homeric sieges, such as the foregoing, have I undertaken here to tell, but of the every-day work of my Yankee cadi and of the court he held.. His American associates as naturally and freely spoke of the diwan khana as if they were using English words about another man's hospital or school-room or work-bench. Yet this judgment seat had no legal status whatever. Nobody was compelled to obey the decisions of the cadi, but nearly everybody did. He was accepted as a higher authority than the Persian tribunal or the community courts. Most judges have weight only because of official position, because they represent authority, or because they are supported by force somewhere in the background. In this case, however, anybody, even a street beggar, was free to flout the American diwan khana if he desired.

The very fact of its existence was a sample of Yankee audacity. Nobody decreed it; it naturally developed out of Oriental conditions, where one honest, sensible, judicial Occidental, with a disposition to be helpful to his native neighbors, came to be regarded as a supreme court, fairer and wiser than native official tribunals and more disinterested than the village elders. By no design or desire of his own the cadi had to set apart his mornings from his own affairs to sit in judgment upon the cases brought to him in ever-increasing number. So numerous were the supplicants for counsel and justice that a separate chamber had to be built for them, and certain days asssigned for women and for special classes of appeals.

Day after day, while visiting Urumia as a war correspondent on my way to the Caucasus front, I used to slip off for a visit to the diwan khana, where I observed the processes of what was doubtless the

most remarkable court of justice in the world. There was almost no ceremony or formality. The visitor sat in a better chair than that on which the cadi himself was hunched up like a college professor behind a plain, small table. Back of him on the wall hung an elaborate Persian scroll, a firman from the shah himself, in official testimonial to some bit of good work or other for flaccid Persian officialdom. It is a fact of comic-opera proportions that Persian officials themselves came openly to this room for counsel and support. Recently, when the Germans and Turks were supposed to be approaching, the Persian governor of the province asked the Americans to shelter him!

The cadi himself was a man just turned fifty, with wrinkled face and black beard and snappy eyes. He was of Ohio stock, though born in Persia, and educated in an Ohio college, and the wearer of a Phi Beta Kappa key. There was the shrewdness and reticence of a Maine man in his conduct. His court-room was never noisy, and he himself rarely blustered. Once, in the courtyard, I heard him drive out a crowd of villagers who were trying, with Oriental guile, to outwit their friends, and he was the personification of blazing wrath; but when the last tatterdemalion was out of the gate, the cadi turned to me with a chuckle, and a comment upon the necessity for sometimes simulating fierceness to impress these grown-up children.

On another occasion the soft and reasoning tones gave way to quick imperatives. One day in the line of people sitting along the wall, awaiting their turn, was a rather well-dressed and grandmotherly appearing old woman. As soon as the case ahead of her was disposed of, her demureness dropped from her like a garment, and with anguished cries and sobbings she fell on her knees at the judge's feet, trying the while to kiss his hand. "This is the real thing, 'local color' to the limit," I murmured to myself, busy with my note-book the while. As sharp as the bark of a revolver came two or three words from the cadi, and the woman, startled, rose to her feet, heard a few sentences, and de

parted crestfallen. Then his honor explained:

"The people of her village have been selling wine to the Russian soldiers," he said. "The case comes up next week. This old woman is trying to cut in ahead of the rest to make her plea, and by the 'lugs' she puts on, I guess she 's guilty." What a disillusionment concerning the importunate widow!

Who was the cadi who presumed to impose prohibition laws upon villages in Persia? With a grin, he confessed that he had no right at all except the right of righteousness. When villagers turn their grapes into wine and sell to Russian soldiers, the men get drunk and rob and rape and ravage. It was in the interest of public safety that the cadi put the lid down on the drinking on the Urumia plain. The penalty? Simply the withdrawal of the friendship of the Americans! That punishment was more dreaded than Persian laws; for from the Americans come counsel and protection and food in famine and intercession when the Moslems grow unusually oppressive. The most potent political "boss" in the States has no such influence in his ward as this quizzical-eyed Yankee had in this remote land of the Magi and of the great king.

Practical and tangible reasons appeared for the strange power of this American. There were not only ties of gratitude to him and his associates as benefactors in the past as teachers, physicians, advisers, helpers, and protectors, but there was also the fact that he represented those vastly rich and benevolent Americans, with a world-embracing charity, who had sent food to the villages ravaged by the Kurds, and seed corn and cattle to the farmers who were able to start in again. They knew nothing about the American Committee for Armenian and Syrian Relief except as they knew the cadi and his few American associates. True, the recipient must give a bond for the restocking of his farm, and villages get seed only on the proof of need and the pledge of repayment. This cadi, who forever speaks the truth, and could not be beguiled, like the