Bob has caught
him in the act of addressing the English members of the Balkan
Committee, and left him only a pair of shoulders and one leg. Of the
Sultan driving to the Selamlik every Friday there is visible now only
one of the carriage horses and the fragments of a cavalryman. Nor is the
physical presentment of Abdul Hamid the only thing that has gone to
pieces under Bob's unrelenting hostility. The Sultan's character has
been growing worse and worse as night after night the boy insists upon
new examples of what bad Sultans do.
To satisfy that inexhaustible demand, Harrington has shouldered Abdul
Hamid with all the sins of all the epochs in history. He has made him
steep unhappy Christian prisoners in pitch and burn them for torches,
and send innocent Frenchmen to the guillotine, and tomahawk the Puritan
settlers as they worked in the fields. He has made him responsible for
St. Bartholomew's Day, and Andersonville prison. He has robbed the Czar
of his just credit by making Abdul Hamid the hero of Bloody Sunday in
St. Petersburg. I am not sure but that Harrington has not laid the
abnormally high price of meat and eggs at the Sultan's door.
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