se to all
sorts of lewdness. It is difficult for people reared in Christian lands
to have any conception of the laxity of morals in Mohammedan lands and
it is a thing to be wondered at and excused only on the grounds of
ignorance of existing conditions that English parents will allow their
young daughters to become resident teachers or governesses in rich
Mohammedan houses.

The whole system of Islam, in so far as it concerns family life and the
treatment of women, is vile and revolting. The veil and lattice of the
Harem, even though established to guard her modesty and purity, have
degraded and debased her by making her a prisoner.

As a child, she has before her only a few short years in which she has
an opportunity to go to school and the effort to improve those few years
is very often fruitless, because just as she shows any signs of budding
womanhood (as early as at the age of ten years and not later than
thirteen years) she must lay aside her books and "be hidden," as they
say in Arabic; then it is considered improper and immodest for a girl to
be seen in the streets. Her education stops just at the point when her
mind is beginning to open up, and she is learning to love her books.
Thrown back into the seclusion of the Harem she soon forgets all she
has learned. Should she be energetic enough to try to keep up her
lessons and try to get reading matter, she is met with the taunt, "Are
you a scribe or a lawyer, that you should read and write every day?"

The girls who have an opportunity of going to school at all are in the
minority, but for those who do, as in Christian lands, there is a
peculiar fascination and joy connected with the first day of school
after a month or two of vacation. Girls, new pupils and old, come
trooping into the schoolroom enthusiastic, eager, and bright, rejoicing
with all the ardor of childhood that they are allowed to come back to
their beloved school and that they are not yet old enough to be
"hidden." But there is a strain of sadness in all this joy, for in their
interchange of confidences and family bits of news it comes out that a
certain Fatima and a certain Zeinab, their big sisters, are sitting at
home very sad and even shedding bitter and rebellious tears because,
poor things! they have been "hidden" and their schooldays are over.

A day or two after our school began, the teachers and girls were all
startled by a rustle of long garments sailing in at the door. On closer
obser