Transcriber’s Note: Text enclosed by underscores is in italics (_italics_), and text enclosed by equal signs is in bold (=bold=). * * * * * Multum in Parvo Library. _Entered at Post Office as Second-Class matter._ Vol. I. SEPTEMBER, 1894. No. 9. _Published Monthly._ The Secrets of The Harem. By one who has been there. _Smallest Magazine in the World. Subscription price, 50 cts. per year. Single copies, 5 cents each._ PUBLISHED BY A. B. COURTNEY, Boston. In the Harem. Many people have an idea that Turkish women absolutely do nothing that is either useful or ornamental aside from the decoration of their own persons, but that is not altogether true, as my residence of over a year in their country taught me, for they are really dextrous with the needle and do work which is as fine as that done by the sisters in the convents, or that of the wives of the feudal noblemen of olden times. The favorite pastime of the Turkish women is the bath, which brings together the wives and slaves of all the well-to-do Turks, and it is like a picnic of school children. These wives, most of them very young--some, indeed, not over twelve or fourteen years old--take their lunch along, and they eat and steam, plunge and splash, and play pranks upon each other in the wildest glee the whole day long. No fear of an angry husband haunts their minds, for they are not expected to do anything, and their husbands very rarely enter the harems before six o’clock. By this time they are all back, rosy and sweet from their bath. At the baths there is often an old woman who has the faculty of relating stories, and she is eagerly listened to by the grown-up children; the stories are generally of the Arabian nights order, full of genii, beautiful ladies, and charming youths and jealous husbands. Many a lesson is given as how to outwit the most jealous of men through these stories--a lesson they are neither slow to learn nor practise. The way they are watched and confined always made me think of the woman who cautioned her innocent children not to put blue beans in their noses while she was out. The magic lantern entertainments amuse these ignorant caged birds. Dancing girls, singing and playing the lute, playing with the babies and occasionally quarrelling with each other take up some of their time; a weekly tour of the bazaars and once in a while a visit to the harem of some other Turk, still leave much time on their hands that the rare calls of their husbands, the eating of sweetmeats or smoking of cigarettes cannot fill, and so they give their poor little minds to fancy work. They very seldom learn how to read, or perhaps books would help them through, and they never make their own clothes, though they do sometimes decorate them very elaborately after others have made them.