George William Curtis. (Paperback)

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated.1856 Excerpt: ... Let the moralizing mind reflect here, that the pursuit of pleasure is an hereditary tenet, dear to the husband as to the wife, who can not be false, because there is no such thing as faithfulness. And let the Moral Eeform Society carefully avoid judging this frailty on principle; for in tribes, traditions of usage become principle, by the vice of enlightened lands, where it is a very sorrowful and shameful thing, bred in deceit and ending in despair. In Europe, society squeezes women into this vortex. Then it is a mere pis-aller for existence, and loathsome much more to the victims themselves than to others. In America, a fair preludes the foul. Seduction smoothes the slopes of the pit, although once in, society here, as there, seals inexorably the doom of the fallen. For the Ghazeeyah who turns from her ways, there is the equality with other wives, and no taunting for the past. For the woman who once falls in England or America, there is no resurrection to sympathy and regard. The world, being without sin, casts endless pavingstones, until hope, heart, and life are quite crushed out. Moralizing at Esne Although the Grhawazee, when they marry out of the tribe, do not dishonor their husbands in public estimation, they are by no means held honorable while they practice their profession. This is for many reasons. But let no moral reformer flatter himself upon the moral sense of the East. "No,5' said the G-olden-sleeve, "I wouldn't trust my own mother." The Grhawazee are not honorable, because being, as Mr. Lane says, the most beautiful of Egyptian women, they show to the sun, moon, stars, and all human eyes, their unveiled faces. Then they receive men into their own apartments--let us not desecrate the sacred name of hareem. And they dance unveiled in public, ...