Page:Islam, Turkey, and Armenia, and How They Happened.djvu/160

154 hands of the meanest of servants (a nurse) to take them where they please, to teach them what they know, to make of them what they may. When they come down from the shoulders of these first teachers they are sent either to schools as corrupt as Sodom, or let loose in the streets to loaf and learn the accumulated corruption of the community, and to harm the Christian children they meet in the streets. If they do not see any giaour to insult and beat, they fight with each other and curse against each other's "faith and religion" and the ancestral graves, etc., most horribly. When several Turks, even the most noted ones, come together and have a little child among them their chief amusement will be, without exception, to make that child utter vulgar words in his broken language. The father of the child, most probably the host of the party, would say to him: "Now, my boy, swear to this uncle's beard," at the same time helping him to speak the necessary words; then says, "Swear to the other uncle's turban," "to that yonder uncle's daughter," "to this young uncle's sweetheart," etc., etc. All will laugh in concert at his each attempt, and praise him for his smartness, and seriously beg long life for him from Allah.