After a very pleasant day we returned to the City Hall and there we were tendered a splendid dinner and reception. The Governor then told me that the express train on which my wife was travelling was reported to be several hours late, and that I had as well make myself comfortable by going to bed and resting. He promised to have me aroused in plenty of time to meet the train on its arrival. Accordingly, I made my way to my improvised bedroom and was soon asleep. At three o’clock in the morning the Governor himself awakened me. He urged me to hurry, as he said the train had now made up most of its lost time and was due any minute. We were soon driving through the chilly streets of Adrianople to the railroad station. Arriving there, we found that the report was erroneous and that the train was still two hours late. The waiting room was small, very dirty, and unheated. It was useless, however, to return to the City Hall, so we waited for those two hours in the dimly lighted and evil-smelling waiting room, beguiling the time with conversation and cups of Persian tea. He was greatly interested to find out from me the practical workings of the American system of government. Most of our time was spent in questions and answers regarding our elections, with their, to him, almost incomprehensible peaceful transitions from one group of rulers to another.
At length the express drew into the station, the military guard was mounted, and the Governor with great ceremony escorted me to the train platform. I thanked him most heartily for a day unique in my experience. Having undertaken with reluctance to facilitate this meeting of my wife, Talaat had gone to the other extreme and had given it an almost royal setting. Through his kindness I was enabled to escort my wife properly to her new home in Constantinople.
Arriving there, she entered at once into the spirit of my mission and became of invaluable assistance to me. She had looked forward to it as a dreary exile from home and friends in a dull and uncivilized community. Instead, she soon found, as I had already, that the diplomatic circle was a group of charming people, intellectually stimulating, and engaged in the fascinating game of high politics. She shared as well my intense interest in the work of the missionaries, just as she had shared in New York my interest in the Bronx House and other works of social betterment. She enjoyed, besides, a most unusual opportunity that was denied to me, namely, the opportunity to study, under the most favourable circumstances, the strangely interesting life of the Oriental woman. This life was not only very different from the life of Western women but was also very different from our preconceived ideas of it. Mrs. Morgenthau found, to be sure, that the exclusion of Turkish women from masculine society was a reality, but she was astonished on the other hand to learn the extent to which the more ambitious ones among them had been able to achieve contact with Western thought. The plight of these intelligent women was really tragical. They were the pioneers of an epochal social change in Turkey, and they were suffering the usual martyrdom of pioneering. They had been allowed to acquire the education and ideas, which have so broadened the mental outlook of Western women, but the social barrier of custom still prevented them from enjoying in practice the advantage of its possession. Their husbands sought their intellectual companions entirely among other men, and continued to regard their women as playthings of the harem. They were thus denied the stimulation and enjoyment of contact with masculine thought and were cut off of course from all active participation in practical works, where the mind exercises its acquired talents. Doubtless in the course of time women in Turkey will be freed from these ancient restrictions of custom and will join their Western sisters in a full freedom to take an active part in the life of the world, but their position during the transition period is truly pathetic.