was regarded as an infringement of female modesty and propriety.

It is a little curious, and shows how we adapt ourselves to our
situation, that the women were as unwilling to receive attention
from their husbands as they were to render it. Several years after
the arrival of Miss Fiske in Oroomiah, the wife of one of her
assistants visited the Seminary, and on leaving to return to her
village, the teacher, in the kindness of her heart, proposed to the
husband to go and assist her to carry the child. She seemed as if
she had been insulted in being thought unable to carry it, and sent
her husband back from the door in any thing but a gracious mood,
leaving the good teacher half bewildered and half amused at this
reception of her intended kindness.

Indeed, until some of them were converted, all that was lovely and
of good report in woman was entirely wanting. They were trodden
down, but at the same time exceedingly defiant and imperious. If
they were not the "head," it was not because they did not "strive
for the mastery." They seemed to have no idea of self-control; their
bursts of passion were awful. The number of women who reverenced
their husbands was as small as the list of husbands who did not beat
their wives. Says Miss Fiske, in writing to a friend, "I felt pity
for my poor sisters before going among them, but anguish when, from
actual contact with them, I realized how very low they were. I did
not want to leave them, but I did ask, Can the image of Christ ever
be reflected from such hearts? They would come and tell me their
troubles, and fall down at my feet, begging me to deliver them from
their husbands. They would say, 'You are sent by our holy mother,
Mary, to help us;' and do not think me hard-hearted when I tell you
that I often said to them, 'Loose your hold of my feet; I did not