The Secrets of the Harem By One Who Has Been there

Excerpt: 'Many people have an idea that Turkish women absolutely do nothing that is either useful or ornamental aside from the decoration of their own persons, but that is not altogether true, as my residence of over a year in their country taught me, for they are really dextrous with the needle and do work which is as fine as that done by the sisters in the convents, or that of the wives of the feudal noblemen of olden times. The favourite pastime of the Turkish women is the bath, which brings together the wives and slaves of all the well-to-do Turks, and it is like a picnic of school children. These wives, most of them very young—some, indeed, not over twelve or fourteen years old—take their lunch along, and they eat and steam, plunge and splash, and play pranks upon each other in the wildest glee the whole day long. No fear of an angry husband haunts their minds, for they are not expected to do anything, and their husbands very rarely enter the harems before six o’clock. By this time they are all back, rosy and sweet from their bath.At the baths there is often an old woman who has the faculty of relating stories, and she is eagerly listened to by the grown-up children; the stories are generally of the Arabian nights order, full of genii, beautiful ladies, and charming youths and jealous husbands. Many[3] a lesson is given as how to outwit the most jealous of men through these stories—a lesson they are neither slow to learn nor practise.'