The Number Of Murders Committed
During Lent Is Greater, I Am Told, Than At Any Other Time Of The
Year.
A man under the influence of a bean dietary (for this is the
principal food of the Greeks during their fasts) will be in an apt
humour for enriching the shrine of his saint, and passing a knife
through his next-door neighbour.
The moneys deposited upon the
shrines are appropriated by priests; the priests are married men,
and have families to provide for; they "take the good with the
bad," and continue to recommend fasts.
Then, too, the Greek Church enjoins her followers to keep holy such
a vast number of saints' days as practically to shorten the lives
of the people very materially. I believe that one-third out of the
number of days in the year are "kept holy," or rather, KEPT STUPID,
in honour of the saints; no great portion of the time thus set
apart is spent in religious exercises, and the people don't betake
themselves to any such animating pastimes as might serve to
strengthen the frame, or invigorate the mind, or exalt the taste.
On the contrary, the saints' days of the Greeks in Smyrna are
passed in the same manner as the Sabbaths of well-behaved
Protestant housemaids in London - that is to say, in a steady and
serious contemplation of street scenery. The men perform this duty
AT THE DOORS of their houses, the women AT THE WINDOWS, which the
custom of Greek towns has so decidedly appropriated to them as the
proper station of their sex, that a man would be looked upon as
utterly effeminate if he ventured to choose that situation for the
keeping of the saints' days.
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