The guards chained up poor Ramadan to the tree where the dog had been fastened, and his appearance was very disconsolate. The dog became the favourite of the Prince, whom he recognized by his natural instinct, and for ever afterwards the Sultan swore by his dog.
The Mussulman delights in comparing the wisdom of this decision with the judgment of Solomon.
The recent remarks of one high in clerical authority, which came to light but too lately to have a more honourable position assigned them, must accordingly be scattered among the fragments. “Heaven forbid,” writes the reverend gentleman, “that I should ever see in England what I have more than once seen in France—a fine and gorgeously arrayed lady, with lavender coloured kid gloves, and a delicate little cigarette between her lips, expectorating in the most refined manner into a polished spittoon, and accompanying her male friends in inhaling the fumes of this noxious weed! No, our ladies have not countenanced the custom by example, but they have fostered it, cherished it, promoted it by their too much good nature, and allowed their husbands, brothers, and sons, and perhaps, their intended husbands, to enjoy their cigars in their presence, and even in their houses.”
“Oh horrible, most horrible!”
Hearken still further. “I don’t scruple to confess that I sat down to the consideration of this subject strongly prejudiced, personally and socially, against this evil practice; but I rise from the examination of the facts of the case surprised at the magnitude of the abomination to which it gives rise. I cordially throw any influence I possess into the scale of those who are labouring to promote the total abolition of the custom among us, and I earnestly entreat all who think with me to exert their utmost efforts to stay the plague.”
King James is dead, poor man, otherwise this worthy Dean, most assuredly, would soon have become a Bishop. How unfortunate a circumstance it is that wise men will be born at a time when the generation who would have appreciated them most, is either extinct or in embryo.
We remember to have once heard an equally estimable clerical gentleman declare that he thought those words of Longfellow’s very descriptive of the effects of his customary “whiff:”——
“And the night shall be filled with music,
And the cares that infest the day,
Shall fold their tents like the Arabs,