Rensselaer Republican, Volume 16, Number 46, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 24 July 1884 — Dogs in Turkey. [ARTICLE]

Dogs in Turkey.

They are a blessing to the Turks, these dogs, i hey are not only useful to them as scavengers for their cities, but afford them their greatest amusement and supply by their presence a constant object of religious veneration, for they do venerate them. If a Mohammedan gets very drunk and wants to run amuck, and is afraid to go otn» and kill a man for fear of the after consequence, when he gets to feeling real nice and murderous he takes his knife and goes into the streets and sticks it recklessly into the first dog he meets. If he is real murderous he kills two, and so great is the respect for the canines that he gets more reputation as a “badman” out of his proceedings than if he had killed four or five mere Mohammedans. A Pasha ranks nearly up to a dog in point of secular respect, but the dog. holds- over him in religious sanctity. The dog has the right of way in- the public streets, and I have seen a heavy pack-train turn aside for one lying asleep on the cobbibs. So fully assured are they of their social position that they have lost the sensitiveness one expects from the race in civilization. One day in the fish market a greasy, yellow fellow walked into a stall and selecting a good sized fish, while the vender’s back was turned, hauled it down and commenced licking it preparatory to making a meal. A Turk never allows his religion to drop into matters of loss and gain, and the owner of the fish sacriligously interfered with a club. A civilized dog would have taken the hint and departed, but this canine saint had“too much respect for his cloth. Belying on his sanctity, at the first blow he sat down on the pavement by the fish and lilted up his head to heaven in a howl. He shivered and squirmed and wrinkled his skin as the blows grew more persuasive, but it was some minutes before he was convinced that the affair was not a joke and that he really was not wanted. It is the foreigners that abuse them most. It is hard for a Christian not to kick a dog when it takes up the road and makes’no effort to give room. But they return good for evil and at the most do little more than howL They never move, certainly. I kicked one that was sitting on the'pavement so hard behind that he tilted clear over and struck on his nose. He did not pay any attention dr make a sound. He just tilted back into his old position and went on sunning himself without even looking around. They are even more impassive than the ulemas, or Koran readers, their brothers in the church.— Cor. San Franeisco Chronicle.