It was muster day in Maine, and little Cyrus Hamlin was about to start from the farm on which he lived with his mother and brother to town where he would see the regiment hold a sham battle. He had expected his brother to go with him, but he was ill. As Cyrus started away alone, his mother said:

"Here are seven cents to buy gingerbread with. Perhaps you will put a cent in the missionary box as you go by Mrs. Farrar's house."

Cyrus thought he had a great deal of money. Seven cents in those days were as much as fifty now, and they would buy a good deal for a small boy. He could easily spare a little for the missionary box.

As he went along he tried to decide whether he should put one cent or two into the box, and he wished his mother had said definitely either one cent or two and had not given him a choice. Finally he decided on two. Then a voice within him said,

"Well, Cyrus! Five cents for yourself and only two for the heathen!"

He decided that he would put in three cents. By this time he came to Mrs. Farrar's house and there was the box. Was it right to keep three cents for himself and give only four to the heathen? He stood staring and thinking, thinking, thinking. At last he grew tired trying to decide, and what do you suppose he did? Into the missionary box went every penny!

All day long he trotted round watching the soldiers, listening to the bands, and having a good time. But he didn't go near any refreshment tables. Late in the afternoon he made for home and burst into the house crying out:

"Mother! I'm as hungry as a bear! I haven't had a mouthful today."

His mother was astonished.

"Did you lose the money I gave you?"

"No," said Cyrus. "But you didn't give it to me right. It wouldn't divide equally, so I dropped it all in."

"You poor boy!" said Mrs. Hamlin, half laughing, half crying. "Just a minute and you shall have your supper!"

Several years later Cyrus thought earnestly about another problem. He and his brother had all they could do to keep the farm going. There was no money to buy new farm implements, no money even to keep them in order. Gradually they wore out, and after a while the yoke for the oxen went to pieces. The making of an ox-yoke is a very difficult matter for a grown man and almost impossible for two boys thirteen and fifteen years old. But Cyrus and his brother examined the old yoke and looked at each other and then back at the yoke.

"We can't buy one," said the brother.

"We'll make one!" said Cyrus.

They cut down a birch tree and set to work. They did not have the proper tools, but they borrowed them—and you may be sure they returned them in good shape,—and they put in all their spare time for days. By and by the yoke was hewn out, and they scraped it with glass and polished it with a dry stick. But alas, when they bored the holes for the bows to fit into, they put them in the wrong place!

Did this discourage them? Only for a minute. They knit their brows, they looked at each other and then at the ruined yoke, and they went and cut down another tree. This time they succeeded in making a perfect yoke, and when it was painted a bright red, they were the happiest boys in Maine.

Still another time Cyrus set his mind on an interesting problem. He was now almost a man; he had determined to be a missionary, and he was studying in the Academy six miles from home. Every other Saturday he walked home around Bear Pond and across Hawk Mountain. He carried his gun with him, and as he went along, he sometimes shot game to take to his mother. Once he met a bear, but the bear got away.

The view from the top of the mountain was wonderful, and Cyrus had an eye for beauty. One day as he turned from a look at the distant woods and fields, his eye fell upon an object near at hand. At his feet the precipice dropped suddenly a hundred feet and on the very edge hung a large boulder.

He looked at this boulder with interest. One Fourth of July the young men in the neighborhood had gathered to see whether they could push it over, but had failed. Cyrus suddenly forgot everything but this rock. Could anything in the world be more delightful than to shove the great thing off and hear it go crashing down? It couldn't do any harm, and it would be better than any Fourth of July celebration ever staged.

He not only stared at the rock, he examined it carefully, and then he thought again. The boulder rested on gravel, and if that could be cut out, down it would fly. He hurried home to tell his brother.

The next Saturday the two Hamlins and a friend met on the mountain and dug away at the sandy bed on which the rock lay, but it did not move. The next Saturday they came again. At supper time it seemed as though they would have to give up all hope of finishing that day, and they were dreadfully afraid that some one would come and complete the work and get the credit.

"Let supper wait!" said they.

Again they set to work, and presently one of them shouted, "It's moving!"

With a wild leap the boys got out of the way. The rock moved slowly at first, then faster and faster and in the end it plunged down, striking sheets of fire as it flew. Bang! it struck the granite cliff and burst into three great fragments. Swish! it rushed down on its way to an open field below.

Never were there three happier boys. They went home to supper in the twilight, hearing the echo of the terrific crash and knowing that the great boulder had had to yield to their strength and persistence.

But the time came when Cyrus Hamlin faced problems a thousand times more serious than making an ox-yoke or moving a boulder. He became a missionary as he had intended and was sent to Constantinople. There he taught Armenian boys in Bebek Seminary, and it became the dream of his life to build a college.

"Education is the way to peace and enlightenment," he would say. "If we could found Christian institutions where we could train young men in all professions, then they could go out to set an example to their fellow countrymen and be their leaders."

He never walked through the narrow streets or crossed the Golden Horn without looking all round for a suitable location, and he had already about twenty in mind. But his dream did not come true. In the first place, there was no money. In the second place, he had to fill with other work all the time he might have spent planning for a college. He had to be textbook as well as teacher, and he had to make all his own apparatus.

When he moved into a house, he had to repair it; when his poor Armenian students and their families were without clothes, he had to find a way to cover them. When they were refused work by the cruel Turks, he had to find work for them. He taught them how to make and sell stoves and stove-pipes and various useful articles.

One poor man became insane when he had no way of supporting himself and his family and believed that he was turned to stone. Just as soon as Dr. Hamlin gave him work, he was cured. Dr. Hamlin suggested to him that it was best to make an article for which there was a demand.

Robert College, Constantinople

This picture taken in Turkey in Asia looks across the Bosphorus, a mile wide at this point, to Turkey in Europe and the site chosen by Cyrus Hamlin for his college. The modern buildings "rub elbows" with towers six hundred years old."If there are thirteen hundred thousand inhabitants in Constantinople, there are thirteen hundred million rats," said he. "Make rat traps! I'll show you how!"

Soon the man had to have assistants to sell his traps.

Still more Armenians came for help, and Dr. Hamlin had to stop dreaming about his college and plan how he could feed them. An idea had occurred to him vaguely; now it grew into a well-developed scheme. He would teach them to make bread. Everybody needed bread, and in Constantinople the bread was not good and all the work was done by horse-power. He would bake by steam.

The fact that he had never made bread did not trouble him in the least. He had never made an ox-yoke, or rolled a boulder down a mountain until he tried.

His fellow-missionaries laughed at him, but they couldn't laugh him out of his plans, and he ordered his machinery from America. The difficulties were many, some were serious and some funny; but in the end the engine and the boiler were set up and everything was in order. The dough was mixed, the oven heated, the loaves were moulded; but alas, the bread was sour and could not be eaten. Dr. Hamlin experimented again and again until one morning he had delicious loaves of bread to sell.

Now he smoothed out his forehead. The bakery was successful, the poor Armenian Christians had work; again he could devote his time to his teaching and could think of his college.

But he was mistaken. England and Russia went to war, and to Scutari on the other side of the Bosphorus were brought the wounded English soldiers. Dr. Hamlin looked across the water and thought of the suffering boys and hated war. He did not think of any effect upon himself. But he was to be seriously affected.

One day an orderly came to the door of the Seminary and asked him to come to the hospital at the invitation of the chief physician, Dr. Mapleton.

"And what does he want with me?" asked Dr. Hamlin. "I'm very busy."

"He wants to see you about bread."

"About bread!" repeated Dr. Hamlin, and obeyed, wondering.

In the hospital he found himself in the presence of a busy man, so burdened by responsibilities that he hardly had time to look up."Are you Hamlin the baker?" he asked.

"I'm Hamlin the missionary."

Dr. Mapleton lifted his head. "That's just like everything in this country," he said irritably. "I send for a baker and get a missionary! Thank God, I'm not a heathen that I should want a missionary!"

Dr. Hamlin laughed. "But I'm the baker," he said.

"You, the baker!" repeated Dr. Mapleton.

Dr. Hamlin explained how he had been forced into the baking business.

"Then will you bake bread for our hospital? What we get is not fit to eat. Our poor invalids won't touch it; they can't. We're in a tight place."

Dr. Hamlin stood with knitted brows.

"You will, won't you?" said the physician, earnestly.

Dr. Hamlin uttered a fateful "yes." One couldn't refuse such a plea as this! In a few minutes the contract was signed. He promised to furnish two hundred and fifty loaves a day. But as he left the hospital he looked around. Two hundred and fifty loaves a day! They would not go far if all these beds were to be filled by patients. It looked as though the whole British army were expected.

Alas, the beds were all needed. First fifty a day, then a hundred a day, the soldiers were carried in from the hospital ships, sick, dying, with dreadful wounds. Dr. Hamlin could neither teach his Armenians nor dream about his college when he had six thousand, then twelve thousand loaves of bread to make each day. He thought of nothing but baking.

The poor patients had almost no nursing, and his heart ached. He offered to organize a corps of nurses for the night when there was no one to take care of the helpless invalids, but he was refused by the brutal officers.

Then one morning he went to the hospital and heard a strange piece of news. A soldier told him, his eyes almost popping from his head in his astonishment:

"Fancy, Mr. Hamlin! Some women have come to this hospital. Did you ever hear of such a dreadful and improper thing?"

"What women?" asked Dr. Hamlin.

"A Miss Florence Nightingale with a force of assistants."

"Good for her!" said Dr. Hamlin. "It's time that somebody should come here and do something."

That morning he kept his eyes wider open than ever. The Hamlin family were famous hero-worshipers; Cyrus's grandfather had named six of his boys for heroes. They were Africanus, for Scipio Africanus, Hannibal, Cyrus, Eleazer, Isaac, and Jacob, and the other three, one might mention incidentally, were Americus, Asiaticus, and Europus. Here, Dr. Hamlin saw, was a real live hero, in the bud at least.

He watched Florence Nightingale moving quietly about in the scene of misery and horror. The poor lads spent no more lonely nights. Every want was attended to. The death-rate went steadily down. It was one of the great achievements of history, and he had a part in it; he baked the only bread Florence Nightingale would let her sick boys have.

But still his dream had not come true, and in the confusion it seemed to grow more and more dim. The war went on, bread had to be baked every day, new ovens had to be built, thousands of pounds of flour had to be bargained for.

Presently he had a new occupation—he set up a laundry. The clothes of the wounded men were filthy, and he offered to have them washed. But they were so filthy that the women feared to handle them, badly as they needed work. The brain which had studied the making of an ox-yoke and the pushing off of a boulder and the making of bread worked quickly. Out of an empty cask Dr. Hamlin made a washing machine, and the vermin-filled clothes did not have to be touched by hand until they were clean—a new problem was solved! His friends had told him that he had sixteen professions, and now he had another,—that of laundryman!

He did not suspect that all the time he was baking bread and washing clothes there was coming nearer and nearer the fulfilment of his dream. He had prayed and hoped that some day a rich man would come and see the good that might be done by a Christian college. Now that good man was at hand, Christopher Robert, an American merchant.

Mr. Robert was traveling in the East, and one day as he was crossing the Bosphorus he saw a boat loaded with loaves of bread.

"What in the world does this mean?" he asked his friends. "That looks like American bread. Who bakes it?"

"A missionary named Hamlin," was the answer.

"A missionary who bakes bread!" repeated Mr. Robert.

"He baked it first to give work to his Armenian Christians, and when the hospital was opened he was persuaded to bake it for the patients. It's the best and also the cheapest bread ever seen in this part of the world."

"I should like to meet that man," said Mr. Robert."That will be an easy matter," said his friends.

But when Mr. Robert met Dr. Hamlin, he heard only a little about bread and a great deal about another matter. Though no record of their conversation has been kept, it must have been something like this:

"I'm very much interested in your bread-making, Dr. Hamlin."

"I had no idea what I was getting into," was Dr. Hamlin's probable reply. "But it had to be done. What I'm chiefly interested in is the founding of a Christian college here in Constantinople."

"It must have been a tremendous work to bake all this bread."

"It was, but oh, Mr. Robert, what wonderful work we could do if we could have a college to train young men!"

"And your laundry enterprise, Dr. Hamlin, that must have been the greatest blessing to the sick."

"It made them more comfortable. If we could have a Christian college here, it would leaven the whole empire."

"How did you learn so many trades, Dr. Hamlin?"

"Oh, I picked them up. You see, Mr. Robert," Dr. Hamlin repeated his favorite sentiment, "education is the way to peace and enlightenment. If we could found a large Christian institution where we could train young men in all professions, then they could go out to be the leaders of their people."

It is likely that at this point Mr. Robert gave up trying to get information about bread-making and laundering and said, with a twinkle in his eye, "Well, tell me about your college!"

Dr. Hamlin took a long breath and began. How long he had waited! But here, please God, was a hearer with a receptive heart and a large purse.

Mr. Robert listened earnestly and his heart was moved. What better use could one have for one's money than to bring enlightenment to this dark corner of the world? In a few minutes he was not only listening, but helping Dr. Hamlin to plan, and within a few years Robert College crowned the hill which Dr. Hamlin selected as the best site he had considered.

Mr. Robert was a generous man and he would undoubtedly have put his money to good use somewhere, but Robert College would not be shining like a star in a dark sky if he had not seen Dr. Hamlin's boat-load of bread crossing the Bosphorus on its way to Florence Nightingale's sick boys.