A SOCIAL CHAT WITH YUSEF. 
231 
General (smiling).—“ No, Yusef; he can’t sell her, but he 
can get a divorce. If he be rich, he can buy it without much 
trouble; and if he be poor, he can get drunk and maltreat her, 
and then swear she is not a good and true wife ; so that the 
law, which is very sagacious in these matters, perceiving that 
there are faults on both sides, and that the parties can never 
live happily together, grants a divorce.” 
Yusef.— “ A most admirable law ! But, yet, it seems to 
me, it would be better to have several wives. Woman is an 
evil at best—indeed, I may say, the root of all evil. Now, 
your excellency knows that by mixing two or more poisons 
together, a very harmless beverage may be produced. We 
consider that if a man be afflicted with a quarrelsome wife, 
who poisons his happiness, the best thing he can do is to get 
some more poison, and mix the two together ; if two poisons 
won’t answer, he should mix an additional, number in the 
same way. The remedy is certain to effect a cure. When a 
woman has two or three fellow-wives to quarrel with, she can’t 
spare much time to quarrel with her husband. Let a man act 
discreetly, and profess to love one a little better than another 
whom he originally professed to love best, and there will soon 
be a very lively state of hostility between the ladies of his 
household. While they are fighting, he can take it easy, and 
smoke the pipe of peace. That, sir, is the philosophy of com¬ 
bining evils : curing a wound by making another ; the true 
principle of counter-irritation.” 
Somehow, it was useless to argue with Yusef. He always 
got the better of me ; and this naturally excited my indigna¬ 
tion. I, therefore, decided the matter by telling him it was 
useless to talk such nonsense to me; that the Arabs were a 
very wicked and ignorant race at best, and he was the more 
to blame for entertaining such monstrous doctrines, as he had 
enjoyed the advantages of intercourse with a more enlight¬ 
ened people. 
