The scarcest thing with me just now is time. I might give you
a shilling at a pinch, but a half hour is an article which I
do not happen to have about me.... By the way, your rhapsody
over the East in "M.K." ["Meister Karl"] had something to do
with my acceptance of the Turkish Mission; and if you have
been lying, I shall find you out, old boy.

Boker's enthusiasm for Turkish scenery was unbounded, but his
difficulties as a diplomat were due to his ignorance of the tongue,
and his distrust of interpreters. But by the time his Government was
ready to transfer him to another post--that of Minister to Russia
(January 3, 1875)--he was heartily sick of his wrangling with the
Crescent, and glad, as he wrote Leland, "to shake the dust of this
dismal old city from my shoes, and prepare my toes for a freezing at
St. Petersburg." He echoed his distaste in later years by writing: "I
hate the East so profoundly that I should not return to it if there
were no other land in which I could live." This promotion to the
Russian court--it was a Russian, Ignatieff, who characterized him as
"of true diplomatic stuff"--was made in 1875, and he remained there
two years.

"While in Russia," we learn, "he was the only one of our
Ministers at foreign courts who was able to checkmate Spain in
her controversy with us about the _Virginius_. He baffled
the Spanish Ambassador at St. Petersburg, and influenced
Gortschakoff to send a despatch to Madrid, which caused Spain
to apologize to the United States; thus averting serious
complications."

Diplomatic life was not wholly distasteful to him; he possessed social