girls pass their sad childhood in close rooms, kept to the wheel and
the loom by their mothers and those who have charge of them, and when
marriageable, are transferred to the quiet house of a husband they do
not know, and whose work in life and in the state allows him but seldom
to visit his wife's apartments. Only when the most intimate friends and
nearest relations are with her husband, does she venture to appear in
their midst, and then shyly and timidly, hoping to hear a little of what
is going on in the great world outside. Ah, indeed! we women thirst for
knowledge too, and there are certain branches of learning at least, which
it cannot be right to withhold from those who are to be the mothers and
educators of the next generation. What can an Attic mother, without
knowledge, without experience, give to her daughters? Naught but her
own ignorance. And so it is, that a Hellene, seldom satisfied with
the society of his lawful, but, mentally, inferior wife, turns for
satisfaction to those courtesans, who, from their constant intercourse
with men, have acquired knowledge, and well understand how to adorn it
with the flowers of feminine grace, and to season it with the salt of a
woman's more refined and delicate wit. In Egypt it is different. A
young girl is allowed to associate freely with the most enlightened men.
Youths and maidens meet constantly on festive occasions, learn to know
and love one another. The wife is not the slave, but the friend of her
husband; the one supplies the deficiencies of the other. In weighty
questions the stronger decides, but the lesser cares of life are left
to her who is the greater in small things. The daughters grow up under
careful guidance, for the mother is neither ignorant nor inexperienced.
To be virtuous and diligent in her affairs becomes easy to a woman, for
she sees that it increases his happiness whose dearest possession she
boasts of being, and who belongs to her alone. The women only do that
which pleases us! but the Egyptian men understand the art of making us
pleased with that which is really good, and with that alone. On the