1889.] PUBLIC DOCUMENT — No. 4. 209 



and thus call down upon themselves the persecution of their 

 neighbors, so the resting-places of their dead display the 

 same neglect and want of care. Nothing drearier or more 

 desolate can be imagined. Not a tree or shrub to relieve the 

 melancholy waste. Nothing but the barren hill-sides, strewn 

 for miles around with gray slabs, lying in the most ten'ible 

 confusion. 



Not so the Greeks and Armenians. Choosing some beau- 

 tiful site, as in the " Grand Champ desMorts" at Constanti- 

 nople, overlooking the Bosphorus and the Marmora, they 

 plant the stately palm or the graceful terebinthus [turpen- 

 tine], erect a coffee-house and make it the fashionable 

 resort. Its cool and airy situation, its agreeable shade and 

 the convenience of comfortable seats afforded by the tomb- 

 stones, make it a pleasant promenade. Here, on the flat 

 tablets, the elders mark out a rougli board and play games 

 of chance or checkers, or perchance discuss the merits of 

 their ancestors sleeping quietly beneath. Here lovers wan- 

 der arm in arm and whisper their fond nothings, undisturbed 

 by ghosts of former days. And here the gallants, as they 

 sip their Avine, order so many Roman candles burnt in honor 

 of their ladies. The occupation of the deceased is always 

 pro tray ed upon his tombstone, an adze or saw representing 

 a carpenter; a lancet, a barber; an anvil, a blacksmith; an 

 inkstand, a scribe or lawyer ; and if, perchance, his end has 

 been hastened by violence, the manner of his " taking off" 

 is faithfully portrayed. Here you may see a representation 

 of the deceased upon his knees, holding his head in his 

 hands, while jets of blood spout from his neck in stiff curves, 

 like those issuing from a beer bottle on a tavern sign. There 

 you may see the fatal bowstring adjusted about the neck 

 as he awaits the tightening of the cord. These representa- 

 tions carry with them no associations of infamy or crime. 

 They are but the heraldic quarterings to be found among the 

 aristocracy of other nations, and if they had a name would 

 be called the " scimetar pendant, or the bowstring displayed 

 in a field azure." Only, instead of being blazoned upon the 

 carriages of the living, they are placed upon the tombstones 

 of the dead, for they signify that the wealth of the deceased 

 was suflBcient to excite the avarice of the reigning power. 



