Coffee is the drink of God’s people; in it is health. Let this be the answer to those who doubt its qualities. In it we will drown our adversities and in its fire consume our sorrows. Whoever has once seen the blissful chalice will scorn the wine-cup. Glorious drink! Thy color is the seal of purity and reason proclaims it genuine. Drink with confidence and regard not the prattle of fools who condemn without foundation.[187] So much for the oriental coffeehouse and the pleasure and surcease of care and sorrow which it offers its listless, dream-loving habitués. What are the amusements of the women of the Orient? Let the distinguished English writer, Julia Pardoe, whose knowledge of Turkish life and manners was not surpassed even by that of the well-informed Lady Mary Wortley Montague, give a reply to this interesting but ill-understood question. In the quotation given she is writing about the women of Constantinople, but what she says of them can, _ceteris paribus_, be asserted of their sisters in other parts of the Ottoman Empire: It is a great fallacy [she declares] to imagine that Turkish females are like birds in a cage or captives in a cell;--far from it; there is not a public festival, be it Turk, Frank, Armenian or Greek, where they are not to be seen in numbers sitting upon their carpets or in their carriages, surrounded by slaves and attendants, eager and delighted spectators of the revel. Then they have their gilded and glittering caiques on the Bosphorus, where, protected by their veils, their ample mantles and their negro guard, they spend long hours in passing from house to house, visiting their acquaintances and gathering and dispensing the gossip of the city. All this may and indeed must appear startling to persons who have accustomed themselves to believe that Turkish wives were morally manacled slaves. There are, probably, no women so little trammelled in the world; so free to come and go unquestioned, provided that they are suitably attended, while it is equally certain that they enjoy this privilege like innocent and happy children, making their pleasures of the flowers and the sunshine and revelling, like the birds and bees in the summer brightness, profiting by the enjoyment of the passing hour and reckless or thoughtless of the future.[188] Since these lines were written, the liberty of the Turkish woman has been greatly extended, as have also her opportunities of obtaining a higher education, which were so long denied her. From the foregoing it seems that the peoples of the Orient--both men and women--get quite as much pleasure out of life--in their own way, of course--as do our luxury-loving people of the Occident at the expenditure of far greater effort and wealth. But in this, as in other things--every one to his taste. _De gustibus non est disputandum._