The
awful haggardness that gave something of character to the faces of
the men was sheer ugliness in the poor women. It is a great shame,
but the truth is that, except when we refer to the beautiful
devotion of the mother to her child, all the fine things we say and
think about woman apply only to those who are tolerably good-
looking or graceful. These Arab women were so plain and clumsy,
that they seemed to me to be fit for nothing but another and a
better world. They may have been good women enough so far as
relates to the exercise of the minor virtues, but they had so
grossly neglected the prime duty of looking pretty in this
transitory life, that I could not at all forgive them. They seemed
to feel the weight of their guilt, and to be truly and humbly
penitent. I had the complete command of their affections, for at
any moment I could make their young hearts bound and their old
hearts jump by offering a handful of tobacco, and yet, believe me,
it was not in the first soiree that my store of Latakia was
exhausted.
The Bedouin women have no religion. This is partly the cause of
their clumsiness. Perhaps if from Christian girls they would learn
how to pray, their souls might become more gentle, and their limbs
be clothed with grace. You who are going into their country have a
direct personal interest in knowing something about "Arab
hospitality"; but the deuce of it is, that the poor fellows with
whom I have happened to pitch my tent were scarcely ever in a
condition to exercise that magnanimous virtue with much eclat.
Indeed, Mysseri's canteen generally enabled me to outdo my hosts in
the matter of entertainment.
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