The laws of Cos discountenance in a very singular manner any cruelty on the part of females towards their admirers. An instance occurred while Dr. Clarke and his companions were on the island, in which the unhappy termination of a love-affair occasioned a trial for what the Mohammedan lawyers casuistically describe as “homicide by an intermediate cause.” The following was the case: a young man desperately in love with a girl of Stanchis eagerly sought to marry her, but his proposals were rejected. In consequence, he destroyed himself by poison. The Turkish police arrested the father of the obdurate fair, and tried him for culpable homicide. “If the accused,” argued they, with much gravity, “had not had a daughter, the deceased would not have fallen in love; consequently he would not have been disappointed; consequently he would not have swallowed poison; consequently he would not have died;—but the accused had a daughter, the deceased had fallen in love,” &c. Upon all these counts he was called upon to pay the price of the young man’s life; and this, being fixed at the sum of eighty piastres, was accordingly exacted.
THE ALEXANDRIAN LIBRARY.
Said Omar, “Either these books are in conformity with the Koran, or they are not. If they are, they are useless, and if not, they are evil: in either event, therefore, let them be destroyed.”
Such was the logic that led to the destruction of seven hundred thousand manuscript volumes.
TURKISH EXPEDIENTS.
A Turkish testator left to his eldest son one-half of his seventeen horses, to his second son one-third, to his third son one-ninth of his horses. The executor did not know what to do, as seventeen will neither divide by two, nor by three, nor by nine. A dervise came up on horseback, and the executor consulted him. The dervise said, “Take my horse, and add him to the others.” There were then eighteen horses. The executor then gave to the eldest son one-half,—nine; to the second son one-third,—six; to the third son one-ninth,—two: total, seventeen. The dervise then said, “You don’t want my horse now; I will take him back again.”
Excerpta from Persian Poetry.
EARTH AN ILLUSION.
From the mists of the Ocean of Truth in the skies
A Mirage in deluding reflections doth rise,