Evening star., 1901-02-23
and wide blue waters that stretches before
him.
Wasted Industry.

diiu Wiuc Uiuc waters SlrSlCueS
him.
Wasted Industry.
In this room he works long and hard.
Despite the prevalent belief, he Is not
lazy man. He is very Industrious, inde-
fatigably handling state papers and reading
reports and petitions of all kinds. Industri-
ous but useless. For all his work practi-
cally comes to nothing. He does not under
stand the exceedingly complex condition OF
the vast and many-tongued empire he is
supposed to rule. The instructions he marks
so carefully on the papers he has pored over
for hours are generally contradictory or
so impossible that his ministers are practi-
cally forced to ignore them. They do 1t
with fear and trembling, but they are rarely
detected. The sultan appears not to re-
member one day the systems and orders of
governments which he elaborately framed
the day before. In this respect, as in others,
he has the air of man who lives perpetu-
ally in misty, muddled dream-much like
the yellow, somber-eyed celestials that one
sees sucking abstractedly at their long
pipes in our own Chinatowns.
'Caliph of all the Faithful Islam though
he is, Abdul Hamid allows himself one
qualification that must shock the orthodox
Mahometan. He has established a picture
gallery at the private palace, and may often
be seen strolling up and down there, with
his hands behind his back. the perpetual
cigarette between his lips. internationally
studying the works of art he has gathered
around him. 1 asked my Greek friend how
the Shadow of God reconciled his taste
with the express prohibition of the pictorial
art solemnly laid down in the Koran
He does not reconcile it, he commits it,"
was the answer. He probably thinks ii a
greater crime than all his bloodshed. But
he has one excuse-the pictures are nearly
all worthless.
A Poor Judge of Pictures.
1t appears that the sultan has only a love
of pictures. knowledge and connoisseur-
ship are not in him. He is at the mercy Of
any smooth-tongued seller of faxed" old
masters that happens by His gallery is full
of Raphaels,' "Murillos' and "Salvator
Rosas' fabricated in our day at Amster-
dam and Vienna. The only genuine pictures
of any value in his collection have passed
to him through dishonest hands Without
knowing it. he has been a recipient of stolen
goods. Missing Gainsboroughs and va
moosed Van Dycks ripped out of their
frames in the famous European private gall
ler1es are said to be the main ornaments of
his collection. And certainly picture thieves
wise in their generation when they have
made a felonious maui could hardly do bet
ter than hasten off to ConstantinopIe and
accept big price in money or Jewels for
the safe burial of the stolen work in this
most inaccessible of galleries
A Rank Coward.
one minor grief Abdul has always In his
heart. He loves mlitarism. the sheen OF
spears and the gorgeous passing of finely
equipped soldiers. But fear prevents him
from as much as seeing a soldier when he
can help it. 1t is not exactly that he is
afraid that his fighting men will do him
narm, but they suggest ideas of violent
death, and the lord of that military people
turns a CHASTITY green and trembles like
jelly when he is close to armed men, If ia
perhaps, phase of his insanity, unconquer-
able as it IS pitiable Even on the visit to
the mosque every Friday-the Moslem hory
day-When the sultan whirls along for the
br1ef five minutes drive from the palace
escorted by a small army to secure him
from MS people, his carriage keeps the
mathematical center of the broad road to
be as far from the troops as possible And
the sultan shrinks to nothing in his closely
covered carriage lest perhaps a gleam of
the sun on a drawn sword should flash IN
on him and drag from him the yell of terror
he knows he could not keep back Yet he
is 1ond or his soldiers-at a distance-and
proud of them. The present excellent con-
dition of the Turkish army is due to him.
to his Initiative and to the knowledge and
skill Of the German military experts whom
he hired to carry out his plans They have
worked well together.
Grave and Courteous.
The Turkish people were called by Prince
Won Bismarck 1.-The gentlemen of the east"
Their bitterest enemies recognized the
charm of their grave, finished courtesy. In
these qualities the sultan resembles his
subjects. No one has ever had audience
with him and not gone away deeply i'm
pressed by a feeling that in any other role
than the dfsmally exalted one he plays he
would have been the most amiable of men
GraVe, sad, very courteous, winningIy
kind, that Is the impression of him given
me the other day by NJ. Georges Berri, the
socialist deputy of Paris. who was pre-
sented to the sultan last year.
That Is the impression the sultan always
makes, 1t seems. People forget his crimes
when they meet him. His sad brooding
eyes are perhaps the sign that he cannot
forget them himself.