Now on his own account he was preparing an illustrated lecture on the East, adapted to churches and Sunday-schools.
Peter and he wrote it in collaboration, and in the evenings rehearsed it with lantern slides before an audience of the hotel clerk, the tutor, and the German soldier of fortune who was trying to sell the young Turks very old battleships.

Every other foreigner had fled the city, and the entire diplomatic corps had removed itself to the summer capital at Therapia.
There Stimson, the first secretary of the embassy and, in the absence of the ambassador, CHARGE D'AFFAIRES, invited Peter to become his guest.
Stimson was most anxious to be polite to Peter, for Hallowell senior was a power in the party then in office, and a word from him at Washington in favor of a rising young diplomat would do no harm.

But Peter was afraid his father would consider Therapia "out of bounds." "He sent me to Constantinople," explained Peter, "and if he thinks I'm not playing the game the Lord only knows where he might send me next-and he might cut off my allowance." In the matter of allowance Peter's father had been most generous.

This was fortunate, for poker, as the pashas and princes played it at he Cercle, was no game for cripples or children.

But, owing to his letter-of-credit and his illspent life, Peter was able to hold his own against men three times his age and of fortunes nearly equal to that of his father.