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"THE TRIBUTE OF CHILDREN."

BY HELEN P. JENKINS.

I am going to tell you, Young People, something about a once famous body of men called the Janissaries. You may pronounce the word as if spelled Yanissaries.

A few hundred years ago, when the nations of Europe were more given to fighting than they are now , the most celebrated soldiers in the world were the Janissaries. At that time armies were not drilled as thoroughly as they are to-day, but so well disciplined, so fierce, and so successful were the Janissaries that their name became a terror throughout Europe.

Who these soldiers were is a curious and a sad story. They were Turkish troops, but they were not Turks by birth, and that is why the story is a sad one. The Turks came from Asia into Europe about six hundred years ago. They conquered the southeastern part of Europe, which is called Turkey, and little by little, by dreadful fighting, they got possession of Greece, and several states north of it. Finally they took the beautiful city of Constantinople, which the Christians so long and so gallantly defended. The Turks brought with them a religion, a costume, and a government different from any the people in Europe had been accustomed to. They were Mohammedans, while the people of the conquered countries were Christians. You can easily believe that the Christian people did not love the race that had robbed them of their country and their freedom, nor did they submit very willingly to their fate.

Now the Turkish government took a very cunning and cruel way to increase the strength of its own army, and weaken the people they were conquering. It took from the Christian people every year one thousand of their brightest boys to train them for the Turkish army. This is called in history "the tribute of children." Some historians say that all the boys over seven years of age "who promised any excellence in mind or body" were captured by the Turks; but probably the "annual tax of one thousand children" is a more reliable statement. As this "tribute of children" was kept up for over three hundred years, not less than 300,000 noble Christian children were torn from their homes, and their strength turned against their own people. The delicate and deformed and dull were not taken, for the Turkish government wanted to make a body of soldiers the finest in size and strength and courage the world had ever seen; and, besides, the puny and dull boys would never be of much service to the Christians; so it was very safe to leave them with their own people.

Can you think of a meaner way of gaining victories than to kidnap the finest children of a conquered race, so there should be no grand, strong men among them, and then to make these boys, when grown to men, fight against their own flesh and blood? I do not think history records anything more base.

How glad a Christian mother must have been if her boy was pale and puny, or her children were all girls! Do you not believe that parents sometimes hid their boys in the mountains when the Turkish officers were about, or taught them to look sick or silly? I have never read in any books that they did do so, but I do not doubt it myself. Yet it is said that so much care was given to the training of these bright boys, and such honors sometimes conferred upon them by the government, that the very poor people were sometimes willing their sons should go away from them forever to enter the service of the Turks. It seems to me it must have been a dreadful poverty and ignorance that could have made Christian mothers willing to give up their sons to the enemy of their country and their religion.

These boys were taken from their homes so young they soon forgot kindred and country, the religion, and even the language of their fathers. They were usually carried to some portion of Asia Minor, where they were trained severely to abstinence and endurance of all kinds, to fit them for service. Those who proved greatly superior in mind were fitted for places of trust in the government--some were made pages in the Sultan's palace--but those who were strong and large of stature were trained for war. And it was these Christian boys who constituted the celebrated Janissaries, and won such great victories for the Turkish nation for three hundred years, that its influence and power was felt and dreaded throughout the civilized world.

The Janissaries fought in many important battles and sieges in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. They figured in the sieges of the islands of Rhodes and Crete and Malta, and at the famous battle of Lepanto, which you will read about when you are older. They wore, even in fighting, flowing robes and white caps with black plumes, and fought with cimeters. We can believe their flowing robes were somewhat inconvenient in battle, especially at the siege of Malta, where they had to scale high parapets of rocks.

The Janissaries were in the height of their splendid fame during the reign of the Sultan Solyman the Magnificent, in the seventeenth century. After a time this celebrated corps lost its superiority. The "tribute of children" had, after three hundred years, gradually ceased, and the force was kept up by volunteers of any kind. The Janissaries became corrupt and insubordinate, and instead of making conquests for Turkey, they often turned upon their masters, and became more terrible to the Sultans than to the nations around. They deposed Sultans, and murdered Sultans, and made new ones, and Turkey was cursed by the very troops of which she had once been so proud.

THE REPRIMAND.

BY MRS. MARGARET E. SANGSTER.

I'm s'prised at you, Rover! Pray what does this mean? You're the naughtiest dog, sir, that ever I've seen, To be teasing poor Kitty, and vexing her so; Such conduct won't do, sir, I'd have you to know.

TOBY TYLER;

OR, TEN WEEKS WITH A CIRCUS.

BY JAMES OTIS.

HOME AND UNCLE DANIEL.

Meanwhile the author of all this misery had come upon the scene. He was a young man, whose rifle and well-filled game bag showed that he had been hunting, and his face expressed the liveliest sorrow for what he had so unwittingly done.

"I didn't know I was firing at your pet," he said to Toby, as he laid his hand on his shoulder, and endeavored to make him look up. "I only saw a little patch of fur through the trees, and thinking it was some wild animal, I fired. Forgive me, won't you, and let me put the poor brute out of his misery?"

Toby looked up fiercely at the murderer of his pet, and asked, savagely: "Why don't you go away? Don't you see that you have killed Mr. Stubbs, an' you'll be hung for murder?"

"I wouldn't have done it under any circumstances," said the young man, pitying Toby's grief most sincerely. "Come away, and let me put the poor thing out of its agony."

"How can you do it?" asked Toby, bitterly; "he's dying already."

"I know it, and it will be a favor to him to put a bullet through his head."

If Toby had been large enough, perhaps there might really have been a murder committed; for he looked up at the man who so coolly proposed to kill the poor monkey after he had already received his death-wound that the young man stepped back quickly, as if really afraid that in his desperation the boy might do him some injury.

"Go 'way off," said Toby, passionately, "an' don't ever come here again. You've killed all I ever had in this world of my own to love me, an' I hate you--I hate you."

Then turning again to the monkey, he put his hands each side of his head, and leaning down, kissed the little brown lips as tenderly as a mother would kiss her child.

The monkey was growing more and more feeble, and when Toby had shown this act of affection, he reached up his tiny paws, grasped Toby's finger, raised himself half from the ground, and then, as a more convulsive struggle came, fell back dead, while the tiny fingers slowly relaxed their hold of the boy's hand.

Toby feared that it was death, and yet hoped that he had been mistaken; he looked into the half-open, fast-glazing eyes, put his hand over his heart to see if it was not still beating, and getting no responsive look from the dead eyes, feeling no heart-throbs from under that bloody breast, he knew that his pet was really dead, and he flung himself by his side in all the childish abandon of grief.

He called the monkey by name, implored him to look at him, and finally bewailed that he had ever left the circus, where at least his pet's life was safe, even if his own back received its daily flogging.

The young man, who stood a silent spectator of this painful scene, understood everything from Toby's mourning. He knew that a boy had run away from the circus, for Messrs. Lord and Castle had staid behind one day in the hope of capturing the fugitive, and they had told their own version of Toby's flight.

It was nearly an hour that Toby lay by the dead monkey's side, crying as if his heart would break, and the young man waited until his grief should have somewhat exhausted itself, and then he approached the boy again.

"Won't you believe that I didn't mean to do this cruel thing?" he asked, in a kindly voice; "and won't you believe that I would do anything in my power to bring your pet back to life?"

Toby looked at him a moment earnestly, and then he said, slowly, "Yes, I'll try to."

"Now will you come with me, and let me talk to you, for I know who you are, and why you are here?"

"How do you know that?"

"Two men staid behind after the circus had left, and they hunted everywhere for you."

"I wish they had caught me," moaned Toby; "I wish they had caught me, for then Mr. Stubbs wouldn't be here dead."

And Toby's grief broke out afresh as he again looked at the poor little stiff form of him who had been a source of so much comfort and joy to him.

"Try not to think of that now, but think of yourself, and of what you will do," said the man, soothingly, anxious to divert Toby's mind from the monkey's death as much as possible.

"I don't want to think of myself, and I don't care what I'll do," sobbed the boy, passionately.

"But you must; you can't stay here always, and I will try to help you to get home, or wherever it is you want to go, if you will tell me all about it."

It was some time before Toby could be persuaded to speak or think of anything but the death of his pet; but the young man finally succeeded in drawing his story from him, and then he tried to induce him to leave that place, and accompany him to the town.

"I can't leave Mr. Stubbs," said the boy, firmly; "he never left me the night I got thrown out of the wagon, an' he thought I was hurt."

Then came another struggle to induce him to bury his pet, and finally Toby, after realizing the fact that he could not carry a dead monkey anywhere with him, agreed to it; but he would not allow the young man to help him in any way, or even to touch the monkey's body.

He dug a grave under a little fir-tree near by, and lined it with wild flowers and leaves, and even then hesitated to cover the body with the earth. At last he bethought himself of the fanciful costume which the skeleton and his wife had given him, and in this he carefully wrapped his dead pet. Not one regret at leaving the bespangled suit, for it was the best he could command, and surely nothing could be too good for Mr. Stubbs.

Tenderly he laid him in the little grave, and covering the body with flowers, he said, pausing a moment before he covered it over with earth, and while his voice was choked with emotion: "Good-by, Mr. Stubbs, good-by. I wish it had been me instead of you that died, for I'm an awful sorry little boy now that you're dead."

Even after the grave had been filled, and a little mound made over it, the young man had the greatest difficulty to persuade Toby to go with him, and when the boy did consent to go at last, he walked very slowly away, and kept turning his head to look back just so long as the little grave could be seen.

Then, when the trees shut it completely out from sight, the tears commenced to roll again down Toby's cheeks, and he sobbed: "I wish I hadn't left him; oh, why didn't I make him lie down by me, an' then he'd be alive now, an' how glad he'd be to know that we was getting out of the woods at last!"

But the man who had worked Toby this sorrow talked to him about other matters, thus taking his mind from the monkey's death as much as possible, and by the time the boy reached the village, he had told his story exactly as it was, without casting any reproaches on Mr. Lord, and giving himself the full share of censure for leaving his home as he did.

Mr. Lord and Mr. Castle had remained in the town but one day, for they were told that a boy had taken the night train that passed through the town about two hours after Toby had escaped, and they had set off at once to act on that information.

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