lemonade, and sweetmeats, of empty laughter and tremendous yawns, until, the visitor having departed, the eunuch appears in the doorway, saying in a low voice, “The effendi.”--“At last! Really, Providence has sent him; I don’t care if he were the ugliest husband in Stambul.” * * * * * Such is the life in a harem where there is at least peace, if nothing more, but there are others in which the dulness is relieved, not to say annihilated, by the storms of passion which sweep across them, and there the life is something altogether different. All is peaceable enough in a harem where there is but one wife whose husband loves her, pays no attention to the slaves, and has no outside intrigues. There is also, if not happiness, quiet, in those where the several wives are equally cold or indifferent, none of them caring particularly for the husband, who on his part does not distinguish among them, but bestows upon each in turn a sufficient amount of attention--where no one is impelled by love or jealousy or ambition to try to supersede the others. These good-natured wives have for a common object the getting as much money as possible out of the effendi; they occupy the same house, never quarrel, call each other sister, and join in one another’s amusement. The boat is made after the devil’s pattern, but it goes ahead all the same, and there is peace or the semblance of it, in a harem where the wife, finding herself set aside to make room for another, accepts the situation in a spirit of resignation, and, while declining the shreds of love her husband is still willing to allow her, continues to live in his house on friendly terms with him and the other inmates, consoling herself in a sort of dignified retirement with the society of her children. But when, as is sometimes the case, it is a question of a woman of high spirit and fiery passions, it is an altogether different matter. She declines to submit quietly to her rival’s triumph or to the shame of desertion, and will not consent without a fight to see her children set aside to make room for those of a new-comer. Life in one of these harems is a fore-taste of the infernal regions. There are weeping and lamentation, breaking of crockery and glass; slaves die from having long pins driven into them; plots are hatched, crimes contemplated, and sometimes committed--stabbing, poisoning, or throwing vitriol in the face of the enemy. Existence is nothing but a series of persecutions, implacable hatreds, fierce and deadly acts of revenge. The man, in short, who has several wives must either, if he loves one, sacrifice his peace, or else care for them equally and purchase quiet at the expense of love; in either case he usually walks straight to his ruin. If his wives are not jealous by reason of their love for him, they are from motives of ambition and rivalry in luxury and dress. So, then, if he gives his favorite a piece of jewelry or a carriage or a villa on the Bosphorus,