They also wear a profusion of jewels, and ears, nose, arms, wrists, ankles, toes, and fingers are often bedecked with them. In some instances all their wealth is thus preserved. The hair, which is often very luxuriant, is combed back in the ordinary European style, and is tied in a knot behind. Rich women often fasten it with a band of gold bound around the entire head and very expensive ornamental gold pins. The Hindoo women possess in a far greater degree than Europeans an eye for color. The most ignorant of them have the peculiar art of selecting strong and brilliant contrasts in color, and so disposing them on their persons as to make a perfect harmony. There is a marked difference between the moral and social character of the Hindoo and the Mohammedan women of India. The Hindoo woman does not occupy that position in society which she is so eminently fitted to grace, and which is accorded to women in Europe and America; but she is by no means as degraded as is so frequently represented by travellers, who are apt to mistake the common street-women with whom they are brought into contact for the wife and mother of an ordinary Hindoo home. It is difficult for a stranger to find out what an Indian woman is at home, though he may have encountered many a bedizened female in the streets which he takes for her. The influence of the Hindoo woman is seen and felt all through the history of India, and is very marked in the annals of British rule. Though the political changes, the invasion, and despotism of Mohammedan rule may have forced upon them the seclusion now so general, it is evident that they once occupied a very different position in society, from the testimony of their earliest writers and the dramatic representations of domestic life and manners still extant.