Transcriber’s Note:
The Table of Contents was created by the transcriber and placedin the public domain.
CONTENTS
In the Harem.
Secrets of the Harem.
The Sultan’s Seraglio.
Dervishes.
The Life of Popular Songs.
Opportunity.
What He Did.
Multum in Parvo
Library.
Entered at Post Office as Second-Class matter.
Vol. I. September, 1894. No. 9.
Published Monthly.
The Secrets of
The Harem.
By one who has been there.
Smallest Magazine in the World. Subscriptionprice, 50 cts. per year. Single copies, 5 cents each.
PUBLISHED BY
A. B. COURTNEY, Boston.
In the Harem.
Many people have an idea that Turkishwomen absolutely do nothing that is eitheruseful or ornamental aside from the decorationof their own persons, but that is not altogethertrue, as my residence of over a year in theircountry taught me, for they are really dextrouswith the needle and do work which is as fine asthat done by the sisters in the convents, or thatof the wives of the feudal noblemen of oldentimes.
The favorite pastime of the Turkish womenis the bath, which brings together the wivesand slaves of all the well-to-do Turks, and it islike a picnic of school children.
These wives, most of them very young—some,indeed, not over twelve or fourteen yearsold—take their lunch along, and they eat andsteam, plunge and splash, and play pranksupon each other in the wildest glee the wholeday long. No fear of an angry husbandhaunts their minds, for they are not expectedto do anything, and their husbands very rarelyenter the harems before six o’clock. By thistime they are all back, rosy and sweet fromtheir bath.
At the baths there is often an old womanwho has the faculty of relating stories, and sheis eagerly listened to by the grown-up children;the stories are generally of the Arabian nightsorder, full of genii, beautiful ladies, andcharming youths and jealous husbands. Many[3]a lesson is given as how to outwit the mostjealous of men through these stories—a lessonthey are neither slow to learn nor practise.
The way they are watched and confined alwaysmade me think of the woman who cautionedher innocent children not to put bluebeans in their noses while