e seen. Sometimes in the
gardens of a harem, I have seen them, sitting, lolling, gossiping life
away, only careful to guard their veiled faces from exposure, no matter
if the rest of the body were as destitute of covering as their souls
were of feeling, or their brains of thought. I saw more frequently
another class of women--those from whom poverty had rent the veil--some
still clinging to a filthy rag, or diverting a more filthy shred from
the tatters of their garments to cover their faces, because, as a sheik
explained to me, "cause she shame she's woman." Desiring to compare the
length of the life of woman, under such conditions, with that of life
which we have been wont to call civilized and enlightened, I often
inquired the age of women whom we saw, and was surprised at being as
often assured that women whose furrowed, wrinkled faces would indicate
that they were sixty, were not more than thirty-eight--at most, forty
years old. Most Eastern women that I saw, exemplified the "Oriental care
of woman's organization" by abandoning their own to a mere animal
vegetation. They had borne children innumerable. These swarmed upon us
from fissures in the rocks, from dens, caves, and old tombs in the
mountain sides--a scrofulous, leprous progeny of wretchedness, with a
few fairer types, to which some principle of "natural selection" had
imparted strength to rise above the common conditions of life.

I had also some opportunity to see the "Oriental organization of woman"
under process of mental culture, in schools something like our own.
Especially anxious to learn all that pertained to progress in education
in the old cities in the East, I sought every opportunity to visit
schools, Mahometan, Christian, and Jewish, under the old or under the
more modern _regime_, and at the risk of being set down as a true
American inquisitor, I pressed questions in every direction that would
be likely to be suggested to a practical teacher, studying the problem
we are here trying to solve: "What is the best education for our
American girls?"

The best schools that I visited are those established within twelve or
twenty years some, quite recently, by the Prussian Protestant Sisters or
Deaconesses, who have had a rare and severe training for their
work--physical, mental, and hygienic. In these schools, also, are to be
found pupils from the better classes of the people, though they often
have an orphan department attached, into which the negle