"Throw the babies out on the ground in the graveyards. Let the dogs eat the babies."
I heard the dogs howling in a cemetery one night about two o'clock in the morning as I was coming through the thousands of little conical mounds, with here and there an unburied coffin.
"The dogs are having a baby feast to-night," said an old missionary.
"Why?"
"My God man; you don't mean that they let the dogs eat their babies because they are afraid of the devil?" I cried.
"I mean just that," replied the missionary.
"Fear! Fear! Fear! Everywhere. Fear by night and fear by day. They never escape it. It is fear that makes them worship their ancestors. It is fear that makes them worship idols. It is fear that makes them kill their girl babies. It is fear that makes them build their little narrow winding streets, which after a while must become so filthy; fear that if they do not, the devils will find them; and if they do build their streets narrow and winding the devils will get lost searching for them. Oh, God, fear, fear, everywhere! The Orient is full of a terrible and a constant fear!"
I looked at my friend astonished. He seldom went into such emotional outbursts. He was judicial, calm, poised; some said, cold. But this constant sense of fear that was upon the people had finally broken down his reserve of poise.
"The chimneys are beautiful. See that beautiful upward dip in the architecture. They are like the roofs," I said.