saying that this taking of passports was a regular "commerce," and that
for five francs he would have it back again.

There is a popular legend that the clerks in Bucarest hotels are
supposed to offer incoming guests all the choices of a Mohammedan
paradise, and the occasional misogynist, who prefers a room to himself,
is received with sympathy, and the wish politely expressed that monsieur
will soon be himself again. My own experience was less ornate, but
prices were absurdly high, the waiter's check frequently needed
revision, and one had a vague but more or less continual sense of
swimming among sharks.

These symptoms were absent in Bulgaria. The border officials seemed
sensible men who would "listen to reason"; the porters, coachmen,
waiters, and the like, crude rather than cleverly depraved, and the air
of Sofia clear and clean, in more senses than one.

Modern Bulgaria is only a couple of generations old, and though all this
part of the world has been invaded and reinvaded and fought over since
the beginning of things, the little kingdom (it seems more like a
republic) has the air of a new country.

The aristocracy had been wiped out before Bulgaria got her autonomy in
1878, and, unlike Rumania, where the greater portion of the land is in
the hand of large proprietors, Bulgaria is a country of small farmers,
of shepherds, peasants, each with his little piece of land. The men who
now direct its fortunes are the sons and grandsons of very simple
people. Possibly it is because we Americans are also a new people, with
still some of the prejudices of pioneers, that we are likely to feel
something in common with the people of this "peasant state." They seemed