We have had of late years only too many instances of Christian ministers lending themselves to denunciation and depreciation of the Moslem. I have gleaned from the lips of missionaries, and their wives more rabid than themselves, both in Macedonia and in Asia, how ignorant prejudice can blind the understanding. A pathetic instance of this, verging on imbecility, is to be found in a book written by an Englishwoman which circulates in the Tauchnitz Collection of British authors, entitled “Diary of an Idle Woman in Constantinople.”[27] In relating that she had seen a eunuch at the Selamlik with the Sultan’s ladies, she exclaims: “He was a fat giant, a wretch.” Why a poor devil who has been deprived of manhood should be a “wretch” the ingenuous authoress does not explain. Yet, so far as my experience goes, a good deal of what has been written in disparagement of the Turks has no better logical foundation than this exclamation. For all that, there can be no doubt that this eunuch abomination is a feature of Turkish life which has always created a strong prejudice in the Christian world against the Mohammedans. Hence it is not without interest to emphasize once for all that this unnatural institution is not of Mohammedan origin at all, but, as well as every other kind of human mutilation, is strictly forbidden by the Koran. Eunuchs were a common feature in antiquity, and in spite of the efforts of both Constantine the Great and the Emperor Justinian to do away with them they were quite common among the “good” Christians of the Byzantine Empire. Even at the present day the eunuchs in Constantinople—who, by the way, are only to be found in the household of the Sultan and of a few wealthy pashas—are supplied from the Christian monasteries of the East, notably those of Abyssinia. Footnote 27: Vol. 2921, p. 320. Is it to be wondered at that people nurtured on misleading data can scarcely be brought to believe that there is less crime in Turkey than in almost any other country; that the punishment for crime is far more lenient than in most countries; that the deposed Sultan was never known to sign a death-warrant; and that the Mohammedan Turks, as distinct from the Christian inhabitants of the Levant, are so kind to animals of every variety, beast or bird, that a Society for the Protection of Animals, however vigilant, would find its occupation gone in Turkey? The Turk’s kindness to the dogs of the capital, since exterminated, is well known, as is also his kind treatment of horses. The beneficent results of this can be witnessed by the visitor to Constantinople when he sees saddled horses standing, free and unfettered, for hours by the kerbstone waiting to be hired, as docile as dogs, without anybody looking after or controlling them.