WOMEN UNDER POLYGAMY
lock Ellis suggests that this may have been the source of the practice of veiling amongst women.
As clothing is frequently employed more as an erotic lure than as a protection against cold, or from reasons of modesty, it is likely that the Arab veil was adopted by women as an attraction. The domino and the veil arouse curiosity concerning the features that they conceal, just as clothing excites interest in the charms that it hides. This is proved by the fact that savage courtesans, among tribes wherein the women are nude, put on garments as a token of their calling and a lure to the eye. Undoubtedly, the Eastern veil focusses interest and curiosity upon the face.
An Eastern song sets forth the loveliness of women in these lines:—
"The complexion of my love is like the freshness of the velvet-looking jessamine; her face is as resplendent as the bright, bright moon; her lips are as rosy as the choicest wine, and her lily-white bosom the fairest and softest-looking that an amorous youth ever beheld."
"Oh! beauteous creature, the perfume of whose breath is like the grateful odour of the musk rose, allow me to sip sweets from thy ruby lips, and pour forth into thy ear the passion that consumes my heart."
The Circassian women who recruit the harems of Turkey and Egypt are the flowers of their race. Many
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