Sultan Abdul-Hamid II.

Gisborne Standard and Cook County Gazette, Volume I, Issue 65, 10 November 1887, Page 3

Sultan Abdul-Hamid II.

His Majesty the Sultan of the Ottoman Empire is a most high and puissant monarch. His will is law and' his nod is death. He has many palaces; he rules despotically over a vast empire; he makes quantities of Pashas cross their fawning hands whenever he looks at them; he has the power to do anything to any one of his faithful subjects—except recall him to life after te has killed him. But social powers he has none. His life is passed in an endless round of official drudgery, nay, positive servitude. Each minute <fetail of business from the highest visions of diplomacy down to the opening of a new coffee house on the shores of the Bosphorus, passes through his august hands, and each incident of every transaction forms a focus of intrigue which, in their conglomerate mass it would take twenty Sultans with a hundred times Abd-ul.Hamid’s power to disarm and defeat. What time, therefore, can he ■ have to spare for society ? The Commander of the Faithful may be seen any week as he goes to his Friday’s prayer. Then, before the gaze of an adoring populace, through lines of splendid troops, crowds of brilliant aides-de-camp and Pashas, fair veiled ladies, braying brass bands, and screaming dogs, there passes a thinfaced, long-nosed, grizzled-bearded, pale man in a half-closed carriage, nervously fluttering his hand before his face by way of salute, and receiving the low salaams of all in return. He hurries into the mosque, scarce giving himself time to throw a half-frightened glance round, and so is lost to view before be can well be seen. When one considers why that face is so worn and pale, why those bands are so nervous, how the heart behind that blue military coat must be beating like a roll of drums, one feels grateful that one is but a private individual, and not his Imperial Majesty the Sultan Abd-ul-Hamid 11.. living as he does in perpetual fear of assassination.