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 MERRY LITTLE MOUNTAIN MAIDS

enjoying greater apparent freedom, she is none the less her husband's slave. The marriage customs of the Kabyles are brutally mercenary. The father bargains with the prospective son-in-law as to the price at which the daughter shall be sold, the sum varying from fifty to a thousand francs, according to the beauty of the girl; then after certain feastings and festivities, in which the poor maiden does not participate, she is delivered at the house of her future lord, who, drawing his knife, presses its point upon her head, that she may know that he is to be the master, she the slave. Remembering these things, pity is mingled with our admiration for the girlish beauty of these mountain maidens, a beauty undoubt