We do sometimes find happy family parties in Persia, the husbands treating their wives with consideration, and the wives being very fond of their husbands. One old lady told me, with tears in her eyes, how good her husband always was to her, and how he always got up and made a cup of tea for her in the morning if she was not well. But this is the exception and not the rule. There does not generally seem to be any great affection between husband and wife. The husband expects implicit obedience from his wife, and is prepared to enforce it. On the other hand she has certain privileges. She generally has the best courtyard in the house, to which no men are admitted but near relations, and the smaller courtyard is given up to her husband to receive his guests in. Except in the highest classes Persian women go about a good deal, but always have to wear a veil in the street or draw the _chādar_ over their faces. The man is absolute master in his own house, and unless his wife has powerful relations he may do what he likes to her and her children, and no one will take any notice. I knew one woman whose husband treated her like a slave. He forced her not only to do all the work of the house, but the work of the stable too, for he was well enough off to keep a horse. He killed one child in her arms, and twice stole another away from her, sending it once to a town a week’s journey off, and once to another part of the town. Finally he divorced her, without giving any reason, and left her ill and destitute. And she had at no time any redress. Certainly Muhammadanism does not tend to make good husbands, nor perhaps good wives either. The Persians are many of them kindly people, however, and treat their wives better than Muhammad taught them to do. Otherwise the lot of women in Persia would be harder than it is. One great evil they are spared, for the widows are not despised and ill-treated as the Hindu widows are, but are allowed to marry again, and generally do so if they are of a suitable age. Still the condition of girls in Persia is not a happy one, and I think that all of you who have Christian mothers, and know what the love of such a mother can be, will have something to pray about, when you think of mothers and their children in Persia. CHAPTER XV SICK CHILDREN Measles, scarlet fever, whooping cough, mumps, chickenpox, Persian children have them all. Typhoid fever, diphtheria, rheumatic fever are all common. But almost the commonest illness of all is smallpox. A woman brought a child into the dispensary waiting-room one day covered with a smallpox rash. The doctor, new to the country, ordered her out, condemning her reckless disregard for infection. “Is there anyone who has not had smallpox?” she asked, looking round at the thirty or forty other people in the room. As she expected, all had had it, and she came in.