the indignant doctor,
"Your mode of life is beastly," replied, "I know it; compared with me
the beasts are decent."

If the wives are in the same house, it is filled with bitterness and
jealousy; if they are in separate houses or even in different towns, the
case is not much better. If the women were not taught by their religious
leaders that their sufferings are the will of God, and that it is very
meritorious to accept them, and if they believed any other fate
possible, I do not think they would endure it. They say "Christian women
have their heaven now, but afterwards they will inherit endless
suffering; we have hell in this life, but hereafter shall come eternal
bliss."

"Do we love our husbands?" said one in answer to a question, "Yes, as
much as a sieve holds water." One of our friends, the third of three
wives in one house, was found by us at her mother's. "Oh, yes," she
said, "I have come home to stay; I simply could not bear it any longer;
so I hired a woman to take my place with my husband and came here."

These are regularly married wives, with dowry rights and the protection
of law. What of the poor temporary hired ones, who come for a longer or
shorter period, and a specified wage? This is the peculiar shame and
blot of the Shiah sect of Islam, which not only tolerates the vile
institution of _muti_, but takes it under the sanction of law and
custom, and even permits the ministers of religion to be the chief
promoters of it, many of them accumulating wealth by this base means.

You will sometimes hear it stated that there are no houses of
prostitution in Moslem lands. In Persia, at least, the institution may
not exist in precisely the same form as in other countries, where it is
under the ban of the law, and in defiance of public opinion, but it is
here, in a form which utterly depraves the mind of the people, and
obliterates for them all moral distinctions, poisoning family life at
the very fountain. It is impossible to go fully into this subject: the
details are too revolting, but one or two instances may suffice.

We know of a girl who was sold for five dollars by her family, and taken
by her brother to a city where a Khan wished for her during his
temporary sojourn; on his return he discarded her, and she came back to
her family, her social standing in no wise affected by the transaction,
which was merely a matter of business. An old roue, who had already had
over thirty wives, sitting like a spid