Odd as it may seem, a _soup-kettle_ is the standard of the Janissaries,
an emblem rather more appropriate for a Court of Aldermen. Dr. Walsh
says that he saw in the streets of Constantinople, an extraordinary
greasy-looking fellow dressed in a leather jacket, covered over with
ornaments of tin, bearing in his hand a lash of several leather thongs;
he was followed by two men, also fantastically dressed, supporting a
pole on their shoulders, from which hung a large copper kettle. They
walked through the main streets with an air of great authority, and all
the people hastily got out of the way. This he found on inquiry was the
soup-kettle of a corps of Janissaries, and always held in high respect;
indeed, so distinguishing a characteristic of this body is their _soup_,
that their colonel is called Tchorbadgé, or the distributor of soup.
Their kettle, therefore, is in fact, their standard, and whenever that
is brought forward, it is the signal of some desperate enterprize, and
in a short time 20,000 men have been known to rally round their odd
insignia of war. Apropos, have they not something to do with
_kettle-drums_?
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