Many people who know only the outside of Egyptian life, when they hear that the women have jewelry and beautiful dresses and servants to look after every want, say they are happy and contented in their seclusion, but those who visit them in their homes and talk with them in their own language know how they writhe under it, how they weary of the idleness and monotony forced upon them. One little woman, forced to spend her life behind closed shutters, would feign illness so as to get an opportunity to call in her friend, the lady missionary doctor, and, when rebuked, would laughingly say, "What am I to do! I must see somebody to pass away the time and I like to have you come to see me, but you won't come unless I send you word I am ill." It seems part of the nature of the Egyptian to distrust his womenfolk and to believe them capable of any misdemeanor. Therefore they must be carefully watched and kept in check. This distrust reacts upon the nature and character of the women, often making them truly unworthy of trust, but many of them are very sensitive on the subject and feel keenly this unfair position into which they are thrown. What has been said about the strict seclusion of Egyptian women refers chiefly to the middle and upper classes, for the poorest women, those of the peasant class, have the greatest freedom. They go about unveiled and manifest a character of marked independence and self-reliance, but they are ignorant beyond description, such a thing as books and schoolroom being unknown quantities to them, and their lot is a life of drudgery. Many of the village women labor in the fields from early morning to late at night, especially during the cotton season, seven or eight months of the year. During the cotton-ginning season many women and girls work from 4 o'clock A.M. to 9 o'clock P.M. in the cotton-ginning mills. Those in the vicinities of larger towns are vendors of fruit, vegetables, milk, cheese, and butter. On market days great troops of village women can be seen on the country roads, their wares in big baskets on their heads, their babies perched astride their shoulders, wending their way to town. Those who live in the larger towns are often employed as hodcarriers for masons. Their powers of endurance are marvellous. It is a common occurrence for a woman to go out to pick cotton as usual in the morning and to come back in the evening, carrying her basket on her head and in it her new-born babe, and it has been known for a woman to start to town with her marketing on her head, be detained an hour or two by the roadside till she gives birth to her child, then with it continue her journey.