Hence how erroneous the impression, that the harem is a species of female prison, established by the tyranny of men, where the weaker sex are forcibly shut up against their will. If the Osmanli ladies were under no other restrictions, their own sense of self-respect, based upon time-hallowed usage, and inculcated by the precepts of their religion, would compel them to the same seclusion. I one day happened to be in the dressing room of a pasha, adjoining the harem; when he left the room for a moment. In the interval, his daughter, supposing her father quite alone, suddenly entered the apartment; but on seeing me there, instinctively covering her face with the drapery of her sleeve, as suddenly disappeared. While I myself as instinctively displayed my sense of the courtesy due to a lady, by looking as far as I could in an opposite direction. I heard her remarking to the slaves in the next room, that she was so mortified, for, instead of seeing her father there stood ---- as large as life. Her feeling at being seen without the precincts of the harem unveiled, was the same as would be experienced by a lady of this country, who should be surprised by the sight of a gentleman, when she was en toilette de nuit! Nor is this seclusion entirely Mohammedan, but being an ancient custom of the East, it is practised by all who dwell in that clime. The families of the rayas, or non-mussulman subjects of the Porte, consisting of the Armenians, Greeks, and Jews, are also under the same social laws as their Mohammedan compatriots. It is true, that in proportion as European customs have found their way into these countries, the rigidity of the Christians has relaxed in this respect; because the observance in question has never been incorporated with their religion; whereas Mohammed, on the contrary, took special pains to enforce the practice upon his followers. The word harem being by courtesy applied also to its inmates, has now become a general term to designate the female portion of the family, and is by no means synonymous with polygamy, otherwise the same expression would not be used by the Christian subjects in speaking of their domestic relations. It would be said that a certain pasha or an Armenian banker had gone to a distant place without his harem, or family. An Osmanli lady, on being informed of the arrival of an American minister in Constantinople, would naturally inquire whether he was accompanied by his harem, or family. CHAPTER XXIII CONDITION OF WOMEN. It is fortunate that the less enlightened members of the human family are unconscious of their comparative inferiority--and are ignorant of the bliss to which the more sublimated specimens of humanity are constantly aspiring, and even rendering themselves discontented with real life, as destiny has accorded it to them.