-called love of a perfidious husband. Women, whether rich or
poor, naturally prefer to be the only wife. Divorce is fearfully common;
I think perhaps it is the case in nine out of every ten marriages. Many
women have been divorced several times. They marry again, but this early
and frequent divorce causes much immorality. Some divorced women return
to the house of their parents, while the homeless ones are most
miserable and find escape from misery only in death.

All these horrible social conditions complicate matters and it is
difficult to find out who is who in these mixed houses. It is far more
pathetic to go through some Moslem homes than to visit a home for
foundlings. When a woman is divorced, the father may keep the children
if he wishes, and no matter how much a heart-broken mother may plead for
them, she is not allowed to have them. If the man does not wish to keep
them he sends the children with the mother, and if she marries again the
new husband does not expect to contribute to the support of the children
of the former marriage.

There can be no pure home-life, as the children are wise above their
years in the knowledge of sin. Nothing is kept from them and they are
perfectly conversant with the personal history of their parents, past
and present.

A man may have a new wife every few months if he so desires, and in some
parts of Arabia this is a common state of affairs among the rich chiefs.
The result of all this looseness of morals is indescribable. Unnatural
vice abounds, and so do contagious diseases which are the inheritance of
poor little children.

There is a very large per cent. of infant mortality partly on this
account, and partly on account of gross ignorance in the treatment of
the diseases of childhood.

Instead of a home full of love and peace, there is dissension and
distrust. The heart of the husband does not trust his wife and she seeks
to do him evil, not good. For example, a woman is thought very clever if
she can cheat her husband out of his money or capital, and lay it up for
herself in case she is divorced. There is nothing to bind them in sweet
communion and interchange of confidences. As a rule, when a man and a
woman marry they do not look for mutual consideration and respect and
courtesy; marriage is rather looked upon as a good or a bad bargain.
That marriage has anything to do with the affections does not often
occur to them. If only a man's passions can be satisfied and his