Page:Christian Greece and Living Greek.djvu/295

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EPILOGUE. 273 the blood boils ; everybody, at least of the coun- try people, constantly carries arms ; the knife or the pistol is drawn — there is a victim. Thiev- ing is extremely rare. Dishonesty among the Greek post-office employees, for instance, is almost unknown. Money is exposed in glass cases in large amounts on the sidewalks of Ath- ens by the money-changers, sometimes almost with as much confidence as the newspapers on a newstand in New York. But we have some illustration right in New York. Here these many years have been and are living between two and three thousand Greeks — mostly young — of the poorest class. I am sure none of them has ever been accused of stealing; at least I never heard of such a case. It is true the po- lice, after having made them pay a license for peddling fruit, continually arrest these innocent people under all sorts of pretexts, because they sell fruit. From official statistics we learn that in the year 1885, when Greece had a little over two millions of inhabitants, there were in the whole kingdom 1,503 blind, 1,084 deaf, and 1,088 in- sane. This small number of insane, especially, is attributable to the absence of alcoholism. I studied the statistics of all the lunatic asylums in 18