Show WOMEN IN PERSIA Married at Fourteen and Becoming Be-coming Failed at Thirty THE PECULIAR ATTRACTION Some Popular Illusions as to the Habits of the fair Sex In Pastern Countries Dispelled Eastern women are pitied as unhappy beings on the theory that they are imprisoned im-prisoned in a gilded cage closely guarded by very ugly eunuchs and reduced re-duced to spend their time in attempting to catch the smiles of a jealous lord as they sprawl in graceful attitudes on silken cushions Their only other occupation oc-cupation is understood to be devouring immense quantities of sweetmeats in order to become corpulent their only amusement the pleasure of poisoning rival wives and hearing interminable stories of the Arabian lights pattern pat-tern It is true that with the Turk beauty must be fat It is not so however with the Persian he has the appreciation of a connoisseur for the juste millieu A stout woman in Persia is spoken of as an elephant while the leaner ones are generally called camels Though they deal largely in hyperbole the Persians Per-sians do not mince matters in speaking of the fair sox The veil which is habitually worn out of doors even by the very poor in all great towns in Persia though its use is unknown among the tribes who form at least a third of the whole population is clung to by the women as a privilege it is i in fact a domino The Persian woman out doors is unrecognizable even by her husband She sees without with-out being seen and in the veil it is impossible im-possible to detect the age of the wearer As the Persian lady is nearly always married at 14 she begins to fade at 27 at latest at 30 she appears 50 and there are only two dentists in the whole of Persia POLYGAMY IS THE LUXURY OF THE RICH J with the upper and middle classes bigamy is the rule A mans first alliance al-liance 1 is a marriage de conveyance the second either a marriage for love or for the gratification of vanity When your Persian brings home a second wife there is usually scene which lasts for a week or two there is a struggle for supremacy but it is soon over Both wives do their best to please the master of the house but they do not attempt to jjion each other unless in very exception ex-ception circumstances But Persian lauie > still believe in the efficacy 01 lore philters and many an abominatipn is secretly administered to unfortunate husbands Happily the love philter though usually composed of horrible ingredients is quite harmless Tell bath take > up a g od deal of the time of all Persian women Even the poorest will attend the Hammam atleast once a week For the lady the bath is one of the serious affairs of life and takes up daily from two to four Hours of her time It is something more than our idea of a bath The victim vic-tim is scraped and parboiled The soles of the feel are pumiced until they areas are-as soft and tender as those of a little child The hair is thoroughly washed by means of hot water and the saponaceous sapona-ceous clay for which Shiraz is celebrated cele-brated Then the attendants mix in a brazen bowl the aromatic henna with the requisite amount of lemon juice till a brown paste the consistency of gruel is produced and several handfuls of the repulsivelooking compound are smeared over the ladys head ThAn the hair collected into a mass is bound up in cabbage leaves 8m ill quantities ol the dye are smeared over the eyebrows eye-brows the soles of the feet the toes the palms of the hands and the fingertips finger-tips are also covered with it And now the lady has to sit perfectly still from one to three hours till like a meerschaum meer-schaum she colors and it is exactly the color obtained on the best specimens speci-mens of the pipes that is most fashionable fashion-able among the Persian ladies l Day after day the bath is thronged with women each sitting perfectly still tor the color to take But they nave their reward for the henna dyes the hair a beautiful deep warm chestnut tenet gray hair is UNKNOWX HONG PERSIAN LADIKS While the coloring process has been 0iux on tongues have been running and a good deal af scandal has been exchanged ex-changed The female barber with a pair of tweezers has removed every outlying out-lying hair from the region of the ladys eyebrows It is the ambition of every Persian woman that her eyebrows shall meet or at least appear to do so So nttractive are eyebrows that they are called the bridge of love It The first care then of the Persian beauty is with a little pencil antimony to unite her eyebrows and then she proceeds to make them appear of unnatural thickness thick-ness Her eyelashes are penciled too in a manner not unknown to our own countrywomen By this time the lady will have smoked many kalians or water pipes she will have partaken of tea and and regaled herself with coffee iced sherbes too will not have been wanting Her finger tips nails and palms as well as the soles of her feet and toes have attained a bright chest hue which will last a week The hair is carefully washed once more It is seldom under a yard long often much more for the Persian woman never cuts her hair except in front perhaps I when two heavy lovelocks are left on either side of the face The ladies now return home to their noonday break fats After breakfast there is generally a siesta and this in a hot country is almost a necessity About 4 oclock tea and pipes appear and thin the lady receives callers or pays visits or perhaps per-haps does little shopping or take the a r mounted on her ambling mule r a d fi key of snowy whiteness v ERR PBB6IAK LADY is a good housewife She rises with the dawn she is liberal in her housekeeping housekeep-ing kind to her servantsa little profuse j pro-fuse perhaps but tben living is cheap in the east The keys of everything are I in the keeping of the mistress ot the house and she is usually PX rt in her account All the vast store cI onserTcs and sweetmeats sirups for the preparation I prepara-tion f she bets and pickles tri endless variety are either prepared by her own fingers or under her eyes Nordcea she I dis ain to be confectioner and maker of pastry I |