House Garden 
faithful as is vouchsafed to humans. She 
visits other women, and is visited by 
them ; she comes and goes, with or with¬ 
out servants. H er costume, which en¬ 
velops her from head to foot, is her 
protection, and every Persian respects it. 
So does she. The coquetry of the veil 
is a fiction. On the streets, in the bazaars, 
the demeanor and carriage of the Persian 
woman, wife, maid or widow, is ideally 
decorus and circumspect. At home she is 
serviceable, almost servile. She embroiders, 
as no other woman in the world can, makes 
candy and takes care of her children. With 
the management of the house at large she 
has nothing to do. The eunuchs and other 
servants attend to all that and, part of the 
time, to the care of the children besides. In 
the rare cases where a woman is proven 
unfaithful, she may be, and sometimes is, 
taken out and dropped from a high tower 
or building, down upon a stone heap or a 
pavement, which, as an example, is perhaps 
deterrent. 
The Persian as a husband is masterful. It 
is his privilege to eat alone at the first table 
—or floor—and be waited on by his women 
folk. What is left is theirs. But he is liberal 
in the matter of adornments and creature 
comforts. He rejoices in his children, and 
by them his regard for the mother is often 
measured. He beats his wives if he wants 
to. Usually he doesn’t want to. Nowadays, 
indeed, the most progressive Persians are dis¬ 
covering that their wives have intelligences 
and immortal souls which merit some con¬ 
sideration. Woman’s sphere is enlarging, 
even here. There are pianos in the anderuns 
of many Persian homes now, and teachers 
come to instruct the occupants to play upon 
them. 'I'he harem of the stage, with its score 
of wives, is dramatic license. Phe Koran 
allows only four, though it is liberal in the 
matter of concubines. These are, in effect, 
serving-women. Plenty of the best men in 
Persia have only one wife, and treat her with 
signal kindness and devotion ; the man who 
embraces the limit permitted by Moslem law 
is set down by his fellows for just the variety 
of biped that he is, and is scorned accord¬ 
ing 1 ^ 
I he anderun is apart; it is secret; it is 
an almost undiscussable subject. But the 
dwelling-place of license and extravagant 
sensuality it is not. In Persia one cannot 
help thinking that to open the doors between 
the women’s apartments,—which are the 
home,—and the rest of the house, to widen 
the woman’s range of mental and social 
vision, to endow her with a greater measure 
of equality and of self-respect, would be the 
salvation of the race. I'he world to-day is 
not led, in thought or action, by the sons of 
women who are numbered and herded like 
sheep. 
John Kimberly Mumford. 
To be continued 
373 
