Before the war when he was ill in the hospital
Miss Cushman had nursed him with the help of her Armenian girls, and
had made him better; he was so thankful that he would just run to do
anything that she wished him to do.
_To Stay or not to Stay?_
But at last Miss Cushman--worn out with all this work--fell ill with
a terrible fever. For some time it was not certain that she would not
die of it; for a whole month she lay sick in great weakness. President
Wilson had at this time broken off relations between America and
Turkey. The Turk now thought of the American as an enemy; and Miss
Cushman was an American. She was in peril. What was she to do?
"It is not safe to stay," said her friends. "You will be practically a
prisoner of war. You will be at the mercy of the Turks. You know what
the Turk is--as treacherous as he is cruel. They can, if they wish,
rob you or deport you anywhere they like. Go now while the path is
open--before it is too late. You are in the very middle of Turkey,
hundreds of miles from any help. The dangers are terrible."
As soon as she was well enough Miss Cushman went to the Turkish
Governor of Konia, a bitter Mohammedan who had organised the massacre
of forty thousand Armenians, to say that she had been asked to go back
to America.
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