Glimpses of Modern Persia 
In the houses of the eminently well-to-do, 
heat is got from sheet-iron stoves, and the 
warm months are one long hauling of such 
wood as may he had from the hills. But the 
dung blocks are the true Persian fuel. In 
the humbler quarters the women may be seen 
hard at work, day after day, manufacturing 
these squares and piling them up to dry, in 
the manner of card houses. All this explains 
in a great measure the unproductiveness of 
Persian farms. Deprived thus, for a few 
centuries, of its natural means of enrichment, 
the best land in the world would become 
sterile. For a small degree of heat, and for 
all light cooking, in fact for some very sub¬ 
stantial cooking, the brazier is used, with 
charcoal, the selfsame affair that is seen in all 
Spanish countries. Irons, laid across the 
basin, serve at once for grills and as supports 
for the pots and small ovens in which boiling 
and roasting are done. 
Before leaving the nominal topic of Persian 
homes, something should be said about the 
actuality of the anderun or harem, which, 
as must be the case under whatever set 
of customs, is the real core and center 
of the home. It has been the habit to 
accept the Byronic view of this institu¬ 
tion, which may be a truthful one so far 
as Turkey is concerned, but it is absurd 
as applied to Persia. There is nothing 
about it to titillate the imagination; it 
is a very practical affair altogether. The 
Persian wife, under the old code, is about as 
near to a social nonentity as a woman can 
very well be. She is an instrumentality for 
her husband’s delectation and comfort, a 
mechanism for the propagation of the race. 
In general, her need of an intellectual equip¬ 
ment is not recognized. If she displeases, 
from whatsoever cause, she can be divorced 
with a word. Maternity and presentability, 
coupled with some small household duties, 
constitute her mission in life. She welcomes 
them. She is the best mother that an ignorant 
woman can be, and collectively, she is as 
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