The Arabs are proverbially a hospitable people. Let a stranger once eat with an Arab family and he is a friend; certainly so long as the food is thought to remain a part of his body. But since the patriarchal idea survives, man is absolutely lord of his own house. Hence, in the house, the inequality of the sexes is most noticeable. The Moslem wife never sits down to a meal with her husband if any male guest be present; and should the husband be very strict and formal in his habits, she is not permitted to eat with her lord, even when there is no guest. It is her pleasure to serve. When the master of the house has finished his repast, he allows what remains to go to the rest of the family. By this the husband does not mean to be selfish at all; but customs which have prevailed for time out of mind give to woman an inferior place as a matter of course. But the guest is never turned away empty. Even in the poorest houses, the Moslems will offer the visitor a cup of black coffee, and it may be cigarettes. Polygamy was common in ancient Arabia. In earlier days every man might marry as many wives as he could take care of, and the length of the wifehood was solely in the husband's hand. The family possessions were his property, and should he die, his widow was looked upon as a part of the estate. Unions between mothers and step-sons were not infrequent. Mohammed numbered this, however, among the "shameful marriages." Sir William Muir, in his _Annals of the Early Caliphate_, says: "Polygamy and secret concubinage are still the privilege, or the curse of Islam, the worm at its root, the secret of its fall. By these the unity of the household is fatally broken, and the purity and virtue weakened of the family tie; the vigor of the dominant classes is sapped; the body politic becomes weak and languid excepting for intrigue; and the throne itself liable to fall a prey to doubtful or contested successors." "Hardly less injurious," says he, "is the power of divorce, which can be exercised without the assignment of any reason whatever, at the mere word and will of the husband. It not only hangs over each individual household like the sword of Damocles, but affects the tone of society at large; for even if not put in force, it cannot fail as a potential influence, existing everywhere, to weaken the marriage bond, and detract from the dignity and self-respect of the sex at large." Mohammed's complete misunderstanding of the true relation of the sexes has had much to do with the degraded position of woman in Moslem lands, and the complete failure of Islamic social life. It is woman that makes or unmakes society. She is the keystone of the arch, not the mudsill.