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Replagegos Omnifurian Directory 15
Page 05
The soldiers thus designated are not given rifles, nor are they trained for service, but are simply employed as servants to the regular soldiers. It is easy to understand that no one can endure such conditions of military life, the result being that each and every one of these non-Moslems sells whatever property he has in order to pay the ransom and get away from the army, and from Turkey as well. In ten days, since this peculiar recruiting began, fully ten thousand Greeks found a way of escaping from Constantinople, many of them finding a refuge in the free and hospitable United States. This getting away is not so easy, writes the same correspondent, because officials of the various ports are exacting heavy sums from the fugitives before letting them go. Graft and extortion in this case reign supreme, and it costs anywhere from three to fifteen pounds ($13 to $70) to "buy" a police or port official. This process, originating in Constantinople, is widespread in the provinces, and the sums paid in this way by the non-Moslems to escape military service amount to millions. "Let the infidels pay!" say the Turkish officials. "They have taken our ships, and they have to pay for it."
Nor ought we to be at all surprised at this. It was not Charles's object, in seeking a wife, to find some one whom he was to cherish and love, and who was to promote his happiness by making him the object of her affection in return. His love, so far as such a soul is capable of love, was to be gratified by other means. He had always some female favorite, chosen from among the ladies of his court, high in rank, though not high enough to be the wedded wife of the king. These attachments were not private in any sense, nor was any attempt made to conceal them, the king being in the habit of bestowing upon the objects of them all the public attentions, as well as the private intimacy which pertain to wedded life. The king's favorite at the present time was Lady Castlemaine. She was originally a Mrs. Palmer, but the king had made her husband Lord Castlemaine for the purpose of giving a title to the wife. Some years afterward he made her a duchess. She was a prominent lady in the court, being every where received and honored as the temporary wife of the king. He did not intend, in marrying the Princess Catharine, to disturb this state of things at all. She was to be in name his wife, but he was to place his affections where he pleased. She was to have her own palace, her own household, and her own pleasures, and he, on the other hand, was to continue to have his.
The awful penalty of success is the haunting dread of subsequent failure, and even sadder still is the fact that in striving eagerly to attain an end, we are apt to lose the sense of the purpose which inspired us. This is more drearily true of the pursuit of money than of anything else. I could name several friends of my own who started in business with the perfectly definite and avowed intention of making a competence in order that they might live as they desired to live; that they might travel, read, write, enjoy a secure leisure. But when they had done exactly what they meant to do, the desires were all atrophied. They could not give up their work; they felt it would be safer to have a larger margin, they feared they might be bored, they had made friends, and did not wish to sever the connection, they must provide a little more for their families: the whole programme had insensibly altered. Even so they were still planning to escape from something--from some boredom or anxiety or dread.
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