The Moslem population of the city of Tunis is sixty thousand. Setting aside men and children there remain, roughly speaking, about twenty-five thousand women, and comparing my own experience with that of other lady missionaries we are agreed in affirming that the majority of these women in the middle and lower classes have been divorced at least once in their lives, many of them two or three times, while some few have had a number of husbands. In the upper class and wealthy families divorce is not nearly so common, and for obvious reasons. I have never known a man to have thirty or forty wives in succession as one hears of in some Mohammedan lands. A man once told my brother-in-law that he had been married eighteen times, and I heard of another who had taken (the Arab expression) twelve wives, one after another; but this last was related with bated breath as being an unusual and opprobrious act. When a woman is divorced she returns to her father's house and remains dependent on him until he finds her another husband, her monetary value being now greatly reduced. The quarrel which led to the separation is sometimes adjusted and she returns to her husband, but _never_ if he has pronounced the words, "Tulka be thaléthe" (Divorce by three, or threefold). This, even though uttered in a moment of anger, may never be recalled, and if he really care for his wife and wish to take her back again, she must be married to another man and divorced by him before she can return to her first husband. But the laws relating to marriage, divorce, and the guardianship of the children, would require a volume to themselves and cannot be entered upon here. One is led to ask, what is the cause of this dark cloud of evil which casts its terrible shadow over so many homes? No doubt it chiefly arises from the low standard of Moslem morality and is intensified by the whole basis of the marriage relationship. Among the upper classes a girl does not often marry till about seventeen years old, but a poorer man is glad to get his daughters off his hands at a much earlier age, especially if he can obtain a good dowry in payment. The girl goes through a form of acceptance, relying on the representations of her relatives, which are often far from truthful. She never sees her husband until the wedding day and then, no matter how old, ugly, or repulsive the man may be, it is too late to refuse; no wonder that mutual disappointment often ensues, deepening into strong dislike, which produces constant friction, culminating in a violent quarrel; as in the case of a young girl whom I knew, married to an old man, and divorced a few years later through a quarrel over a pound of meat. [Illustration: DOROTHY AND FATIMAH]