The newspaper business has its inconveniences in Constantinople. Two
Greek papers and one French one were suppressed here within a few days
of each other. No victories of the Cretans are allowed to be printed.
From time to time the Grand Vizier sends a notice to the various editors
that the Cretan insurrection is entirely suppressed, and although that
editor knows better, he still has to print the notice. The Levant Herald
is too fond of speaking praisefully of Americans to be popular with the
Sultan, who does not relish our sympathy with the Cretans, and therefore
that paper has to be particularly circumspect in order to keep out of
trouble. Once the editor, forgetting the official notice in his paper
that the Cretans were crushed out, printed a letter of a very different
tenor, from the American Consul in Crete, and was fined two hundred and
fifty dollars for it. Shortly he printed another from the same source
and was imprisoned three months for his pains. I think I could get the
assistant editorship of the Levant Herald, but I am going to try to
worry along without it.