Page:Black cat 1897 07 v2 n10.pdf/3

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The Black Cat

A Monthly Magazine of Original Short Stories.

Copyright, 1897, by The Shortstory Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

No. 22.
JULY, 1897.
5 cents a copy,
50 cents a year.

Entered at the Post-Office at Boston, Mass., as second-class matter.

IMPORTANT.—The entire contents of this magazine are covered by copyright and publishers everywhere are cautioned against reproducing any of the stories, either wholly or in part.



For Dear Old Yale.[1]

by James Langston.

I

N a hundred towns along the upper waters of the Euphrates was sounding the steady lu-lu-lu of fanatical hordes slaughtering Christians. The Kurds were abroad, with battle cries of Islam on their lips, and the mercy of tigers in their hearts. The Turkish soldiery looked on stolidly at the butchery, sometimes helping it, though vowing with much talk that they were out for the defense. The Armenians simply died, as is their way, sometimes by tens, sometimes by thousands.

At the mission station five miles from Harput some Christians of a different type were gathered,—fighting Christians, who knew the uses of soap and gunpowder, and had a flag worth talking about to protect them, a flag with stripes on it and stars, that has been heard of in the world. Still this flag was far away and the Kurds were near.

There were men here and women, sheltered in a stone house with a stone wall around it, built by Ohio Presbyterians to show people who wear turbans how people who wear pot hats do such

  1. This story received the third prize, of $300, in The Black Cat prize competition, which closed March 31, 1897.

1