The evening telegraph. [volume] (Philadelphia [Pa.]) 1864-1918, 1869-01-11
The ('yetau BOrPs.

will echo this sentiment when he peruses the
oratorical illusions of Mr.. Beecher and Mr.. |
Bellows and the rest over the woes OF the |
Cretans, the wickedness OF the Turks, and the |
great obligation laid upon the American
neonle TO electrify Europe into justice to |
Eraeca. There is a class of men in all civil |
Tzed countries to whom IL seems to be posi- |
five torture to be compelled to forego med |
ding in other peoples affairs. In semicivi- |
lied regions men of this stamp commonly |
take to being BARRIERS. The barber of Turkey |
or Egypt has advantages for the sporadic
pursuit of foreign politics and for general
intermittent supervision of mankind which
are peculiar to his own country and calling
The tonsorial methods OF those picturesque |
but obfuseated peoples are singularly print |
tive: and the barber OF Cairo or CONSTANT |
nople, having once fairly wedged his victims |
head into brass basin such as Don Quixote
took for Mambrino's helmet, and having
firmly seized his victims nose between his
thumb and forefnger, can thereupon proceed,
perfectly at his ease, to expatiate upon all
things sub and supra-lunar. The nearest APP
proach to so commanding an opportunity for
the born bores of Christendom is to be found
in the pulpit The custom of ages and certain
innate instincts of decorum have erected it
into sort of social crime for man to get up
and walk out of his pew while preacher is.
preaching to him. No matter how detestable
may seem to him the doctrine with which he
is getting drenched or pelted, there he feels
himt elf obliged to sit. He is button-holed, so
to speak, by universal Christendom. The
Ages of Faith have him by the nose in the in
terest of the Rev. Mr. Stggins, and his only
hope is in quaint George Herbert's faith that
in such case
"God takes the text, and preacheth patience"
This divine preaching, however, only the
nearer hears, and never the preacher.
Whereby the preacher, getting constantly
more and more accustomed to belabor an un-
resisting patient and to shear dumb sheep,
grows constantly worse and worse. How very
ii dreadful bore may thus be developed out of
81 average dull man, the general public hap
ly never knows till some great political ex-
tement, or some casual public event, sum-
3, ons him from his pulpit to the platform.
hen quiet people, hearing, stand aghast and
emole, as the good folks at the Cooper Insti-
tie did Friday night, at the awful picture of
lmeIican responsibilities and the American
hortcomings in the matter of Crete held up
. them hour after hour by the indefatigable
.dr. Beecher and the ex-sufflicate DR.. Bellows.
OF course we have all heard great deal
about the sufferings OF the Cretans, and it is
an article of the household, ay, of the nursery
creed of all Christian born men and women,
that the Turk is monster of such hideous
mien as to be hated needs but to be seen. Our
ancestors, through many generations, hated
this Turk with all their hearts, not the less
bitterly that they were also good deal afraid
of him. DR.. Bellows himself who has just
been following in the footsteps of the Crusa-
ders and the Apostles with boiled peas in his
shoes, a pilgrim on a picnic, with his pass
ports all in order, and dragoman at ten dol
lars day, assures us that when he first came
in sight Of the Turkish empire he was quite
frightened at the 'terrible power" of that
abomin able des espotism. We can easily believe,
therefore, that the Sphakiotes, who are fight
ing 1t at long odds on the white hills of Crete
and who get considerably more doctrine than
draohmas from their 'Helenic brethren" of
the mainland, are having a very bad time of
it indeed. There are not so many OF them, to
be sure, as there were OF our own Southern
rebels; and we may well doubt whether their
privations and their trials, in defense OF their
right to throw over their legitimate rulers, are
at all more sharp and sore than those which
were undergone for four long years by the
veterans of Johnston and Beauregard and Lee.
But human suffering is human suffering after
all, and the hymn book teaches us that
"Our neighbor is the suffering man.
Though at The furthest pole"
Starving Sphakiote men are not pleasant to
think Of any more than starving Southern
women. And if any body asks us to weep q
few tears over the heroes of Candia and to
subscribe funds for feeding their wives and
children, it ought not to affect our response
to the appeal that the same people make nc
effort to move our hearts IN behall OF otneI
"rebels'' and wretches nearer home. But as
we never invited the Osmanli into Europe, MOI
helped him to wrest Crete from the Venetians
(who did nice little business there them
selves in the way of tyranny, Christians
though they were), nor guaranteed eithel
Hellas or the Sublime Porte, we really think
it is little hard that we should be all herded
into large hall every three or four months
there to be first bullied for negligence in no
attending to other peoples business, and ther
to be told that the only way in which we car
repair this gross sin of omission is by
making terrible faces at the Sultan. Will
the exception of Wendell Phillips anC
Charles Sumner, and few other Boston peace
men of the kind, nobody has yet attempted Il
egg us on into taking up arms and pushing
the Turks over the BosphOrus Mr.. Beecher
it is true, did intimate that in GER
tain contingency, it might be necessary for III
either to fight or to snake threats" which
that reverend gentleman oddly enough regard
as "the equivalent of fighting" " in behalf o
Crete and humanity and the gods OF Greece
But even Mr. Beecher declines to insist upoI
our doing this just at this moment. He onl.
entreats us to make ourselves as dlsagreeabl
as we can about Greece and Turkey to France
and England and the Paris Conference. On
cannot help suspecting, indeed, that Mr.
Beecher's chief interest in the Cretans arise
out of the fact that they may afford us sucl
a capital chance for saying unpleasant thing
about the French or the English, if it will a
all ease his mind to do so. There are grea
many unpleasant things which may be saiC
about them, not oDly with qualification Il
ourselves, but perhaps also with profit t.
them, But why make Greece and Cret