personal interview.

"But he never granted me the interview," said the King sadly. "In fact,
he never acknowledged my letter."

I attempted to bridge over the embarrassing pause by suggesting that
perhaps the letter had never been received, but he waved aside the
suggestion as unworthy of consideration. I gathered from what he said
that royal letters do not miscarry.

"I realize that I am an old man and that my country is a very small and
unimportant one," he continued, "while your President is the ruler of a
great country and a very busy man. Still, we in Montenegro had heard so
much of America's chivalrous attitude toward small, weak nations that I
was unduly disappointed, perhaps, when my letter was ignored. I felt
that my age, and the fact that I have occupied the throne of Montenegro
for sixty years, entitled me to the consideration of a reply."

But we have strayed far from the road which we were traveling. Let us
get back to the people of the mountains; I like them better than the
politicians. Antivari, which nestles in a hollow of the hills, three or
four miles inland from the port of the same name, is one of the most
fascinating little towns in all the Balkans. Its narrow, winding,
cobble-paved streets, shaded by canopies of grapevines and bordered by
rows of squat, red-tiled houses, their plastered walls tinted pale blue,
bright pink or yellow, and the amazingly picturesque costumes of its
inhabitants--slender, stately Montenegrin women in long coats of
turquoise-colored broad-cloth piped with crimson, Bosnians in skin-tight
breeches covered with arabesques of braid and jackets heavy with
embroidery, Albanians wearing the starched and pleated skirts of linen