“ Look once more at a girl, untroubled as yet. If you want to see what the women could be if but the social yoke of Islam were loosed from their shoulders, study the little maidens upon whom it has not yet come. Take one of them if you can get hold of her—even a stupid one, as this one may be with all her soft grace—let her expand for a few weeks in an atmosphere of love and purity. Watch the awakening: it is as lovely a thing as you could wish to see, outside the kingdom of God. ”

“ When she is over twenty, she in her turn becomes an elder woman and is to be seen, usually with a young baby in her arms, walking in the streets as she goes the round of seeing her friends, wailing with the mourners at the house of death, weekly visiting the graves of her own or her husband's relatives, and joining in the wedding festivities of those who are going to follow in her train.
What wonder that the Moslem man often cries despairingly: "Our women are all brutish," and has not an atom of respect for her in his heart. ”

“ One can never forget the first sight of a Moslem woman—that veiled figure, moving silently through the streets, so enshrouded that face and form are completely concealed. Men and women pass each other with no greeting or token of recognition, and if a wife accompanies her husband, she never walks beside him, but at a respectful distance behind, and neither gives a sign that they belong together. ”

“ Much can be said about the down-trodden condition of Egyptian women. "As a babe she is unwelcome; as a child untaught; as a wife unloved; as a mother, unhonored; in old age, uncared for; and when her miserable, dark, and dreary life is ended, she is unmourned by those she has served." Heaven is a forlorn hope, not because she is denied any of its privileges, but because of the incapability of providing her with enjoyments similar to those promised to the other sex. ”

“ If they fall, you fall with them. Wealth is a poison if it becomes an instrument of evil; a life-giving antidote when devoted to a noble purpose. Regard it therefore as a divine gift and a sacred trust.' Tell the people who live the life of animals and are led like dumb cattle: 'Awake, and realize the true significance of life. Fill the earth and adorn it with the result of your labors.' Gentlemen, you alone can make them understand the full meaning of life. O physicians! the patient is in a critical state, and delay spells death. ”

“ They travel from afar, where ocean, river, and lake can breathe their vapors upward, swept unseen by the wind that bloweth where it listeth, to the parched places. We need you, in the far-off, Spirit-watered lands to store the showers. You may be but a roadside pool, but your prayer-breath may go up to be gathered in God's clouds and break in His "plentiful rain." When the clouds are full He will still the sirocco blast of evil that fights it back, and it will come down with the sudden swift ease that marks the setting in of the rains here, year by year. ”

“ How can it be otherwise when woman, the heart and life of the family circle, was in his mind because of inherited ideas relegated to the position of prisoner and slave rather than to that of companion and helpmeet? "It was Islam that forever withdrew from Oriental society the bright, refining, elevating influence of woman by burying her alive behind the veil and lattice of the Harem." ”

“ Right into the enclosure drove the carriage, and then the ladies, carefully shrouded in sheets, were conducted through a narrow gateway into a second enclosure, and there were thousands of women and children. Not a man was to be seen anywhere. It was so strange to see them wandering about freely in their bright-colored garments and to remember the streets of the great city they had come from, where hardly a woman is ever seen. These women never crossed the threshold of their houses before perhaps, so it was like fairyland to them. ”

“ In the interior, even, non-Moslem women are veiled almost as closely as the Mohammedans, when upon the street. Such is the power of prejudice that it is not thought proper for any woman to be seen in public.
They live behind their lattices, and woe to any Christian house whose windows command a view into a Moslem neighbor's premises, no matter how distant. Such juxtaposition is the reason for the unsightly walls and lofty screens which disfigure many an otherwise beautiful view, in any part of Turkey. No strange man may look upon any Moslem woman. ”

“ If you were out here in Algiers and could see and know the people, you would say so too. The next best thing is to bring you some of their faces to look at that you may judge whether the possibilities have gone out of them yet or not: women faces and girl faces, for it is of these that I write. Will you spend five minutes of your hours to-day in looking—just looking—at them, till they have sunk down into your heart? Are they the faces of a dead people? Do you see no material for Christ if they had a chance of the Water of Life? These are real living women, living to-day, unmet by Him. ”

“ But then, after a few short months, sometimes weeks, the fatal wedding day arrives, when the child-bride is taken away from her mother and becomes the absolute possession of a man she has often never seen, and knows nothing about. Her woman's life is begun in earnest, and in very stern reality she learns what it is to be in subjection, she learns by bitter experience that she has no power now to do what she likes, and that she is subservient to another. ”

“ So we look round on our Moslem field, and triumph in the dryness that is so like death, for it shows that we need not have long to wait.
But a great fight is fought overhead in the natural world out here before the rains are set free: the poor dry lands seem to wrestle against the one thing that they need. Before the clouds burst there will come days—weeks, perhaps, off and on—of fierce sirocco, hurling them back as they try to gather. Sometimes they seem on the point of breaking, and a few drops may get through the heavy air, then back go the clouds, leaving the brassy glare undimmed. ”

“ It would be interesting to bring in here everything that Mohammedan law says about divorce, but the rules are many and complicated and almost too revolting to put into words. It is enough to say that the husband may divorce his wife without any misbehavior on her part or without assigning any reason. It is all left to the will and caprice of the man, and he has only to say, "Woman, thou art divorced," or he can even use metaphorical language which must be understood by the ever-on-the-alert wife to mean divorce, as when he says, "Thou art free!" ”

“ Conquer with the force of knowledge and history the strong fortresses of prejudice and bigotry, and open wide the gates of your heart for the reception of Truth and Light. For a conquered people there is no cure better than a passionate devotion to Truth. Be ye, therefore, messengers of Light and Truth, the missionaries of brilliant and triumphant Truth, the army of physicians prescribing the bitter pills of Truth. ”

“ What is the legal and social position of woman? A girl comes into the world unwelcome; while the birth of a boy is announced and celebrated with great rejoicings, that of his sister is regarded as a misfortune. Said a mother, "Why should I not weep over my baby girl, who must endure the same sorrows I have known? She is of little value; a father of passionate temper, annoyed by the crying of the sickly infant daughter, flung her out of the window, effectually and forever stilling the pitiful wail. ”

“ Instead of a home full of love and peace, there is dissension and distrust. The heart of the husband does not trust his wife and she seeks to do him evil, not good. For example, a woman is thought very clever if she can cheat her husband out of his money or capital, and lay it up for herself in case she is divorced. There is nothing to bind them in sweet communion and interchange of confidences. As a rule, when a man and a woman marry they do not look for mutual consideration and respect and courtesy; marriage is rather looked upon as a good or a bad bargain. ”

“ Married at ten or eleven, untrained and untaught, many of them not knowing how to hold a needle, or make the simplest garment; still in their teens with two or three children to burden them, whom they long to see big enough to turn out into the streets and play as they did before them. Their only interest in life, each other's family brawls and scandals; their health undermined by close confinement and want of exercise, is it a wonder that they sink into a state of callousness and indifference about everything? ”

“ Yet the fact remains: these women and girls cannot be educated and emancipated, without bringing to bear on the social fabric influences which would result in its disintegration and destruction, with nothing better to replace it. Galling as are the curtain and the veil, they cannot be dispensed with, for fear of worse evils. Ignorance and seclusion are better than education and liberty without moral restraint.
While polygamy and divorce exist, and there is no standard of purity equally applicable to both sexes, more freedom than woman now possesses cannot with safety be granted her. ”

“ But more than all to lead them to accept for themselves their only Saviour, the Son of God, who died for them, who only is the true "Prophet of the Highest," whose mission is "to give light to them that sit in darkness and in the shadow of death." We claim for these dear women and girls the liberty which their own sacred Koran inculcates: "Let there be no compulsion in religion." ”

“ The veil that shrouds the Moslem home life in Tunis has been raised and my readers have had a peep at its sadder side, but it is only a peep! The farther one penetrates the more intolerable its noisome atmosphere becomes. Deceit and lying are so prevalent that a mother questions the simplest statements of her own son, and I have seen a mistress insist on a servant swearing on the Koran before she would accept his word. ”

“ No Christian woman has to contend with the fact that if her husband wearies of her, or some carelessness displeases him, he is perfectly at liberty to cast her off as he would toss aside an old shoe. In fact he would use the same expression in speaking of his shoe, of a dog, some loathsome object, the birth of a daughter or of his wife,—an expression of apology for referring to such contaminating subjects. Nor does a Christian woman fear that as the years pass and her beauty fades, or her husband prospers, that one day he will cause preparations to be made and bring a new wife home. ”

“ Most of her time, even if she be the daughter of quite well-to-do people, is often spent playing in the streets, where she learns much that is evil and little that is good. The one great reason which many parents give who wish to put their children to school is, "to keep her out of the street, where she plays in the dirt and learns bad language." But whether she goes to school or not the life of a little girl except in school hours is a perfectly free, untrained life in which she learns no morality, not even obedience to her parents. ”

“ Or on the other hand, they may find men whom real love has saved and made to give forth warm affection and true domestic joy, just as the terraced ridges on their mountain slopes retain the God-given moisture and send forth a luxuriant crop of strengthening cereals, delicious coffee, and luscious grapes.
I have known young men of twenty-four who have been married and divorced half a dozen times, and also Arabs whose days are in the sere and yellow leaf who never had but one wife. ”

“ History repeats itself: in nine cases out of ten, she can add her tale of woe to the rest.
She bears her children and nurses them, thankful if they chance to be boys; she has no heart nor ability to teach or train them; or joy in keeping them clean and pretty;—she loses two, three, or more in infancy; those who are strong survive and until they are two or three years old, take her place in the streets, where the open-air life and exercise become their physical salvation. ”

“ The present help of a living Saviour and the wonderful hopes for the future have made life an entirely different thing. One such who had borne a heavy yoke in her youth, had suffered deeply, and with rancor and rebellion in her heart against him who had blighted her life, has learned to forgive and pray for the one who so deeply injured her; and her daily household life is a triumph of grace. ”

“ Many fruitless attempts have been made to defend polygamy and to defend the prophet of Islam for preserving it, but, as a careful student of social and moral ethics has said, "To an ideal love, polygamy is abhorrent and impossible," and when ideal love is impossible to the wife's heart she is degraded because the passions of hate and jealousy will quickly and surely take its place. ”

“ Egypt is the land of light, of glowing sunshine, of moonlight and starlight so brilliant that night is but a softer day. From the time that Israel's ancestors went down thither it has drawn men of every clime with a peculiar fascination.
On the opposite page we have before us a glimpse of the majestic Nile, stretching through one thousand miles of desert till it flows into the Mediterranean Sea. "Wherever the river cometh, there is life." Everywhere along its banks the desert has become fertile, and there are countless towns and villages. ”

“ If she does obey them it is from abject fear of punishment, when disobedience would inevitably mean a severe beating. Between the ages of ten to fifteen, usually about twelve and often earlier, the little girl is betrothed and then confinement to the house begins. In one hour her life is changed, no more playing about in the street and acting upon the impulse of her own sweet will, no more for her the child's delight of spending her millième or two at the costermonger's cart and then sitting in the gutter to eat her purchase with face and hands begrimed with dirt ”

“ We hear tales and stories in the dead of night then, when sitting with them, which we do not get a hint of at other times. I remember a woman once showing me her arm all covered with cuts which she said her husband had done to her because she had been fighting with the other wife. We, with our ideas of freedom and liberty, may think these women unhappy, but they do not seem to be more so than our own women. They are quite used to their own life and look down upon us poor things, who are so degraded that we allow men to see us freely with no shame! ”

“ How can mothers consent that their daughters shall be sold, while yet children, to any man, no matter how old, who will pay the price her father demands for her, when she has learned even a little of the loving honor given to his wife and daughter by the Christian husband and father? ”

“ Men and women who have given of their strength and service, their love and their life to ameliorate the lives of Moslem women and carry the torch of Truth into these lands of darkness write simply the truth in a straightforward way. ”

“ The hostess herself, the bridegroom's mother, a woman of fine presence, had been divorced, but was brought back to preside over this important function, as there was no one else to do it, but her former husband was not present, as Druze law forbids a man ever looking again on the face of his divorced wife. Their women are cast off in a most heartless way, but they cannot be taken back again. The ceremony of marriage consists in fastening up over a door a sword wreathed with flowers and with candles tied on it, and then passing under it. ”

“ The effect of polygamy and divorce on children is very bad. A son, particularly, seeing his mother treated with disrespect, feels contempt for her, and will in many cases tyrannize over and beat her. Another effect is that curiosity is stimulated, and a premature and unhallowed knowledge is gained of the most sacred relations of life, which is contaminating, and destroys for ever the innocence of childhood. As a matter of course, there is jealousy between the children of different wives, and estrangement and hatred destroy family affection. ”