Evening Republican, Volume 23, Number 305, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 22 December 1920 — LIKE WISDOM OF SOLOMON [ARTICLE]

LIKE WISDOM OF SOLOMON

Ibrahim Pasha Had a Method Entirely Hla Own, for the Detection of a Thief. The stories current of Ibrahim Pasha when he directed the affairs of Syria with Palestine, for his father, Mehemet Ali of Egypt, would alone fill a good-sized volume. The following may serve as a specimen: A goldsmith of Jerusalem complained that his shop had been entered and rifled during the night Since the plaintiff was unable to supply any clew to the thief’s identity, Ibrahim Pasha sent the town crier round to notify the people that at such and such an hour he himself intended to go to the scene of the trespass and do justice. When Ibrahim arrived, with the executioner, almost the whole population was assembled to see what would happen. They watched him advance to the door of the shop, upbraid it for negleqt of duty in letting the thief pass and commanded it to reveal the culprit’s name. There was of course no response, and so he ordered the executioner to administer twenty lashes to the contumacious piece of wood. Then he went through the performance a second time, stooping down as If listening to a whispered answer, which seemed to enrage him, for again he directed the executioner to use the whip and strike hard. After putting the question a thiiM time and again bending forward, his hand to his ear, he straightened up, exclaiming: “This foolish door wants to make me believe that It beholds the thief standing in the crowd with dust and cobwebs from the shop still sticking to his clothes.” No sooner had the words been said than one of the bystanders passed his hand over his vest and trousers. Ibrahim Pasha, on the alert .for such a manifestation of guilt, cried immediately : “Arrest that fellow!” So unexpectedly caught, the thief confessed and received in double measure the flogging at first tentatively inflicted on the tell-tale door. —J. F. Sheltema, In Asia.