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Show j LITE IX ASSYRIA. i QushiUy Described by a Native i of That Land. i.irl-i r.oucfht ami Sol.l rnr Cnuipl-i and ! Slieeii -ChprtpneH-i of tho I'i-oi(- Mcn lice on six cents a dav in Assy-rht. Assy-rht. As.vrian wv-nenr after one hundred hun-dred years of Christian labor, are bought and' sold; are made to work with oxen at the plow, and have as little liberty as in the days of e'a.him,. Men w ho pav six dollars a day to live and the ladies who ride to 'shops in ' ietorias thoue-ht' over these thines as tiliey left the Lincoln l'ark Conr-rega-1'vnal church the other night, sacs the i'hieago Herald. Amen liasi, bo'rn on Mount Lebanon, told ihes things in broken E;v-!hh. Amen P.a.vi ia a rail, haiidsome." Assyrian wi-h a skin as rich a-, the cinnamon silks made at tha foot of the mountain on which lie- waii born. He looked into tha curious bright eyes of giils and te.i .i them lha-:. had tii-y been born Assyrian-;, iu A's.:y .-ia, they conj.l not go u-.vrn the- streets unless "their' j'ac-es Trevonc;-a"lcd 4l.at.thay could neiiher receive-nor mako'a call among 'women without their husband's eou-s-Ttt. and lliat if at at'." time, even by accident, they wa re s-.-n by any man or in any way recognized one, na one .would marry them, lie said that once two concles, a tall man and a tall woman and'.a short man and a short woman, stood he tore a priest to be wed. The priest placed the tall man and the tall warean and t lie short man and the short woman t. aether anfl none, of the four knew w hei'iier it was right or not, neither of tbom knowing the other. Tint the parents hastily objected and placed the tali rnanby the short woman and th si; rt man by the tall woman, as thai w as the way of the contracts. Then Mr. Ka-.i -,how ed how these eon-traivu eon-traivu w,--.e made, tie left the pulpit and presently a man wrnpped up in rich Assyrian raiment went up and sat upon t!a floor. Mr. Rasi came back and squatted beside him. 'T would very much like,'; he said, t;for a frirl who is yours to be wife- to my son Isaac." - 'T would be honored." returned re-turned the man, with a veiy unmistakable unmis-takable American accent. i-How many have you?-' --Three.11 '"How much years have they'? ' "One is firtcen. one twentv'-and one twenty-five." "Don't talk to me about the twenty -five, nor the twenty; they are never fit to marry. mar-ry. How much do you ehaiyre for the little one?"' "Five camels, four horse?, three sheep and fifty dollars.'' "Uah! I buy one hundred women for so much." "But not little ones."- "Oh. I think so.'' "Weil, you can't have mine for a cent less." "1 pay." But even hen Isaac did not g-et the little one, because a few minutes iater Mr. Rail returned as another man, a-nd by doubling" the price secured the piri for his son Jacob. Then Amen Itasi looked at young men whose patent leathers cost them seven dollars and told them that people in Assyria paid fifty cents for a suit of clothes. The common people, he said, paid twenty-five cents a day for house rent, three cents for twenty-five pounds of eabbap-e and four cents for fifty pounds of turnips. Fifty loaves of bread were turned out at a baking and men sometimes ate four and five at a meal, fie waited for a moment, and then turn-iur turn-iur to a blackboard behind him said: "They are so hi:'," and he drew a circle cir-cle that would iiielo.e a Thanksgiving platter. Speaking of Assyrian citiea he said that when in the rsardens of Sidon the rain fell upon the oranre and lemon trees and knocked the fruit upon the ground a hundred could be purchased for live cents, lie said that in Damascus there are one hundred and thirty thousand thou-sand Mohammedans, one hundred and fifty thousand Christians and five thousand thou-sand Jews. In the city there js a building- haunted by John the Ilaptist's ghost. -The door of the room in which he is said to have been beheaded is never opened. The Mohammedans say that once long ago some one opened it and the Baptist's bload flowed out over the eify to a depth of five inches. It was the custom for worshipers worship-ers to leave their shoes outside the temple. There were f:ometinw-s thres or four hundred pairs standinsf in a row, and the poorer people hurried through their prayers first and then carefully selected the finest footwear in the row, thereby illustratinsr the great cleverness clever-ness of the i ssvrians. , |
