ssion on them.

At a recent wedding in Druze high life in a Lebanon village almost every
woman present had been divorced, and one woman was exactly like the
Samaritan woman who came to the well to draw water: she had had five
husbands, and the one she had now was not her husband. The hostess
herself, the bridegroom's mother, a woman of fine presence, had been
divorced, but was brought back to preside over this important function,
as there was no one else to do it, but her former husband was not
present, as Druze law forbids a man ever looking again on the face of
his divorced wife. Their women are cast off in a most heartless way, but
they cannot be taken back again. The ceremony of marriage consists in
fastening up over a door a sword wreathed with flowers and with candles
tied on it, and then passing under it.

The form of divorce is very simple. It is illustrated in the life of a
Druze prince who married a girl of high family, beautiful and of a
strong character and fine mind. They were devoted to each other, but she
had no children. She had suspicions of what was in store for her, which
were realized one day when she had been on a visit to her native
village with her husband. They were riding together towards home, when
they came to a fork in the road.

The prince turned and said: "Here is the parting of the way." She
understood, and turned, weeping, back to her father's house. The prince
afterwards sent and bought a beautiful Circassian slave, and married
her, but she had no children, and so she in turn was divorced. The
prince had, contrary to custom, been in the habit of paying visits to
the house of his first wife who had been married to another man, and now
he obliged her second husband to divorce her. He turned Mohammedan in
order to be able to take his wife back again.

Among the Druzes, the ladies of good family are secluded even more
rigorously than in Mohammedan families. Even in the villages they rarely
leave their homes, going out only at night to pay visits to women of
equal station. Some of them have never been outside of their own doors
since they were little girls. One girl, the daughter of an Emir, was
sent away to spend a year in a Protestant boarding-school. There she was
allowed to go for walks with the girls, attended the church services,
and had a glimpse into a life very different from the dull seclusion
which would naturally be her lot among her own people. But she failed to
take home the