They had removed their turbans, as no head-dress could stand this wild motion, unless glued or nailed on. Many of them wore their hair long, and the masses of _chevelure_ swung in the air like { 174}so many dirty mops, from which a kitchen-maid is endeavoring to shake the superfluous water.
The noise became frightful, and several ladies of the visiting party, as well as some of the gentlemen, had their money’s worth in a very little while.
Every minute or two some of the dervishes fell exhausted to the floor; two foamed at the mouth and became wildly insane, so that it was necessary for others to hold them, or carry them out of the room.
There were several negroes in the room, and I observed that they howled the worst and were first to become frenzied. They raved like mad men, and indeed they were for a time furiously mad. I am sure Bedlam would be considered a quiet and well-behaved place, in comparison with the mosque of the “Howling Dervishes.”
There were fifty or more Moslem spectators, and some of those on-lookers became so excited that they joined in the service and soon were as frenzied as the rest. Among them was a soldier--a negro--who had not been five minutes in the charmed circle before he fell writhing to the floor, and foamed at the mouth, as though he had swallowed an entire soda fountain.
The spectacle is far more disagreeable than that of the whirling dervishes. You want to go away, and you are held there by a strange fascination; you cannot imagine how things can be any worse than they are five minutes after the howling has begun, and yet you know perfectly well that it will be much worse before the end. You feel that you have had enough and you want to go, and then you feel that you ought to stay, as you will miss some of the fun by leaving.
I don’t know a place where one is more swayed by conflicting emotions than while assisting at the devotional exercises of these gentlemen. I think an American or Englishman feels very much as did the tender-hearted Romans (if there were any), at the gladiatorial combats in the Coliseum, or at the _matinees_, where the Christians “on the half-shell” were served up to tigers that had been on short rations for a fortnight.