The Turkish ladies with perfect indifference present their unslippered and even unhosed feet to any shop-boy, at the same time carefully concealing their shalvar, or full trowsers, which are fastened below the knee, and tucked up whenever they sally forth for a promenade à pied ou en voiture.
As to the intrinsic merit or real modesty of these different styles, peculiar tastes and prevailing modes can only decide; for habit is strong in its sway, and imitation is a kindred principle. Therefore, there is neither vice nor virtue in walking in the footsteps of our predecessors, or each man or woman adopting the peculiar modes and customs of their own people. As fertile a brain may throb beneath a turban as a hat, as pure a form enshroud itself in a modest veil as lurks beneath the shadow of a Parisian bonnet. What are externals but whims and caprices; it is the virtue of domestic institutions and daily habitudes that stamps the character of a people.
European or American ladies may grace their boudoirs, models of beauty and excellence, and Turkish Hanums may, by the exercise of domestic virtues, equally adorn and ennoble the precincts of their Harems.
The word Harem is familiar to most persons, but how grossly misunderstood. Some have considered it as unmentionable to ears polite; while the votaries of pleasure, ever ready to indulge their longing fancies, have pictured it to themselves as the earthly realization of the Paradise of Mohammed. Indeed many European authors in describing the licentious and corrupted courts of their own monarchs, have seemed to consider this term as the most distinguishing compendium of immorality.
Strange perversion, that the very word which inspires every Oriental, whether Mohammedan or Christian, with the greatest respect, should suggest to the mind of a European only a system of concubinage and licentiousness.
One peculiarity in the construction of society in its primitive condition was that might makes right. This not only affected personal property, but even the more domestic relations. If an enemy strong enough felt the inclination, he might rob his neighbor of his wife or family, of which there are instances on Biblical record.
To avoid any occasions of such unjust appropriation, it became a policy to seclude the women from general observation.