Wednesday the bridegroom’s women friends go to the house of the bride where they have a concert and dinner. The fingernails and toenails of the bride are stained red with henna and they begin to deck her out for the wedding. Thursday a great procession escorts the bride to the groom’s house where the two eat candy, exchanging mouthfuls or bites, the idea being that nothing but sweetness is hereafter to pass from the lips of one to the other. The bridegroom has not seen the bride until this time. He says a prayer in her presence, kneeling on her bridal veil as he does so. Among the Mohammedans of Palestine, says my guide Shammas, the wedding usually takes place at the mosque, and the bridegroom meets his bride when she is on the way thither. Dressed and veiled in white, she is carried under a canopy on the shoulders of four men. At the mosque the wedding sermon is preached, and at the end of this the bride goes to the house of her husband. As she steps over the threshold she bends down and passes under two crossed swords upheld by his friends. This means that if she is not true to her husband he will kill her. She is taken first to the women’s apartment or harem over the door of which has been placed a piece of leavened dough, thus signifying that the home into which she has come will flourish. In some cases the bride breaks a piece of leavened bread and gives it to the young people to eat. After she has entered her own apartment in the groom’s house there is a feast, the guests sitting on the floor and eating course after course of meats and vegetables interspersed with candies and sirups. In some cases the groom has to make the bride speak before the dinner will be served, and it is a virtue with her to keep silent just as long as she can. It is the general idea among Christians that Mohammedan wives have no rights which their husbands are bound to respect. I am told this is not so, and that the women here not infrequently rule their husbands. The cost of living has increased so much within recent years that it is only a rich Mohammedan who can afford several wives. Public sentiment as to the rights of women has risen, and the man who abuses his wives is not considered respectable. No man dares address a strange woman on the streets of any Turkish city, and in the best-regulated houses the husband does not enter the women’s apartments when he knows he is not wanted, although he has the legal right to go there at any time. The Mohammedan wife has the entire right and control of her own property, and if she brings money into the family she does not hesitate to say so. She has about as much power in the courts as our women have. She can sue and be sued and can even enter a suit against her husband in regard to her own property. She can make a will and leave her property as she pleases, and she can force him to pay the dowry agreed upon. When she marries he has to buy the wedding gown, and if he divorces her she gets back her trousseau.