Page:Memoirs of the Lady Hester Stanhope.djvu/148

 One day, in walking through the back yard, I observed two stakes, about six feet high and sharply pointed, stuck deep and firmly into the ground, which had before escaped my notice. I inquired what they were for, but got no satisfactory answer, the dairy-man, to whom I addressed myself, using the reply so common throughout the East, Ma aref (I don't know); for no people in the world have so quick a scent of the danger of being brought into trouble by professing to know what is inquired about as the Orientals. A Jew, in a street in Turkey, and a Christian likewise, is sure to answer the most simple question by an "I don't know"—"I have not heard"—"I have not seen;" for he fears what that question may lead to, and that, if he knows a little, a bastinadoing may be resorted to to make him know more: so I afterwards asked Lady Hester. "Oh!" replied she, "I'll tell you how those stakes came there: I had forgotten all about them. One day, at the time they were robbing me right and left, I ordered the carpenter to make two stakes, such as people are impaled upon, and to erect them in the back yard. I spoke not to any one why or wherefore I had given the order; but if you had seen the fright that pervaded the house, and for weeks how well the maids behaved, you would then have known, as I do, that it is only by such terrible means that these abominable jades can be kept under. From