WOMEN UNDER POLYGAMY
advice to wives on the subject of retaining authority over husbands. No militant emancipator of women could be more precise and more vehement. This writer proposes a ceremony which symbolises the subjugation of husbands to wives. A large brass basin is set on the floor inverted, and a lighted lamp placed beneath. On the basin is a saddle and a pillow. While the bride sits in the saddle astride the bowl, the attendants sing:—
"The husband is saddled, the journey begun,
And the beautiful bride her own race has to run."
It will be assumed that Persian husbands are bound to give all and to accept little. But this is not quite the case. A woman must know how to please and humour a man. She should be trained by her mother from childhood in the art of love and endearment. A girl must "store, enrich, and dignify the mind." She is instructed to maintain her beauty, her charm of disposition, and to preserve good sense.
Women are seldom punished in Persia, and there is no part of the prisons reserved for female offenders.
In the preceding chapter I have shown the women of Persia in the light of the experience of Mr. W. S. Landor and Dr. Wills, two modern authorities, and from that of other travellers. It is perhaps a rosy picture. At any rate, Mrs. M. E. Hume Griffith, the writer of "Behind the Veil in Persia and Turkish
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