MEHEMMED RESHAD.

Press, Volume LXV, Issue 13410, 30 April 1909, Page 7

MEHEMMED RESHAD.

A PEN PICTURE. The new Sultan is described as a delightful old gentleman of sixty-four, tall, blue-eyed, with red hair arvd red beard, which he will have to dye as black as ink should he ever ascend the Turkish throne. "No Sultan must show a grey hair in Turkey," notes the Paris ''Debats." "If he live to be a hundred his hair must remain without a sign of age."

"Reshad Effendi (writes 'Current Literature' last September) possesses that charm of manner and all the angelic affability which render personal intercourse princes of the Ottoman dynasty so delightful. Of European culture and learning, Reshad Effendi has always lived in the densest ignorance. Being only the third son of the Sultan Abd-til-Medjid, his education was neglected, and he received little in the shape of homage even in tho glorious days of his uncle, the late Sultan Abd-ul-Aziz. Having spent the past thirty years in practical imprisonment within tho walls of one palace after another, lloshad Effendi retains of the outside world only such ideas as may be afforded by intercourse with his gaolers, his slaves, and his wives. "He is forbidden to receive visits from anyone at all excepting only tho physician, the tsilor. and th«~trndesnien selected for him by his reigning broiher. On the comparatively few opportunities afforded the heir to the Turkish throne of escaping tho city's heats by a sojourn in the country, ho is thrust into a closed carriage and escorted by mounted troops armed to the teeth. ' It is dangerous even to loiter outside the residence of this prince. Some students at a military academy in Constantinople were gaoled for saluting Reshad when they mot his carriage in the streets. The three sisters of this close prisoner have seen him but once in fifteen years."