"'That is the harem. You cannot gain entrance there.'
"'The harem? But I thought Loring was an American and a Christian,' was the astonished reply.
"'He was--but he is a pacha, now,' answered the dragoman with that air of mysterious reserve which is a part of his stock in trade. Then the rascal went on to tell the tourist that I now had forty wives--which would have been a shot with the long bow even if I had been a born Mohammedan of the highest rank and greatest wealth.
"When I heard of the affair I asked the dragoman why he had lied so outrageously and he calmly replied:
"'Oh, I thought it polite to give the gentleman what he wanted.'
[Sidenote: A Scribbling Tourist's Mischief-Making]
"I dismissed the matter and thought no more of it until a month or so later, when somebody sent me marked copies of the _Manchester Guardian_, or whatever the religious newspaper concerned was called. The tourist had told the story of my 'downfall' with all the horrifying particulars, setting forth in very complimentary phrases my simple, exemplary life as an American soldier and lamenting the ease with which I and other Western men, 'nurtured in the purity of Christian family life,' had fallen victims to the lustful luxury of the East. I didn't give the matter any attention. I was too busy to bother--too busy with plans and estimates and commissary problems, and the puzzles of transportation and all the rest of the things that required attention in preparation for a campaign in a difficult, inaccessible, and little known country. I wasn't thinking of myself or of what wandering scribes might be writing about me in English newspapers. But presently this thing assumed a new and very serious aspect. Some obscure American religious newspaper, published down South somewhere, copied the thing, and my good sisters, who live down that way, read it. It isn't much to say they were horrified; they were well-nigh killed by the revelation of my infamy and they suffered almost inconceivable tortures of the spirit on my account. For it never entered their trustful minds to doubt anything printed in a great English religious paper over the signature of a dissenting minister and copied into the American religious journal which to them seemed an authoritative weekly supplement to the holy scriptures.