Page:Walter Matthew Gallichan - Women under Polygamy (1914).djvu/192

 shaped like a bishop's mitre. A beautiful green carpet, studded with groups of raised moss-roses, covers the floor of the dining-room. Mitre-shaped panels are on the walls.

A chandelier, with a hundred coloured wax candles, hangs from the splendid stained-glass roof. Besides this chandelier, there are branching candlesticks on the walls. The drapery of the doors and windows is green velvet and satin, looped up with gold tassels.

Such are the comforts and luxuries of the harems owned by the influential pashas of Egypt. Every device of art is used in the decoration of these palaces, which reflect faintly the joys that await the true believer in the Seventh Heaven. Beautiful women of other lands come gladly to share the luxuries of this indolent life, hoping to win the costly gifts that the lords of the harem bestow upon their favourites. There is no lack of candidates for the honour of consorting with a wealthy pasha or bey. In Syria, Circassia, Armenia, Italy, and Austria there are girls whose greatest ambition is to enter the harem.

Men of coloured races generally admire greatly the women of white races. Circassian women, who are perhaps the most beautiful and graceful of their sex, are highly valued in the harems of the East. Rarely an English woman resolves to become the bride of a