I was rather sorry that I had not adopted the
fashion of the Europeans, whose faces are clean shaven. I ordered that
in future a strong guard should be placed at the door of the Hum-hum."
Some of the ancient faiths regarded the beard as an appendage not to be
touched with the razor, and a modern instance bearing on the old belief
will be read with interest. Mr Edward Vizetelly, in his entertaining
volume "From Cyprus to Zanzibar" (London, 1901), tells some good stories
about the priests in Cyprus. Mr Vizetelly went to the island as soon as
it passed into the hands of the British Government, and remained there a
few years. "On one occasion," he says, "when I happened to be in the
bazaar at Larnaca in the early afternoon, I was amazed to witness all
the shopkeepers, apart from the Maltese, suddenly putting up their
shutters, as if panic-stricken, but without any apparent cause.
Inquiring the reason, it was only vouchsafed to me that someone had
shaved off a priest's beard." The priest had been imprisoned for felling
a tree in his own garden, which was against the laws of the land then in
force.
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