ept among the lowest class, it is scarcely possible that the
bridegroom and bride should get a glimpse of each other before their
espousals--and the betrothals are generally made at a ridiculously early
age. A lady gravely asked Mrs Poole whether one of her boys, thirteen
years of age, was married--and she witnessed a marriage procession in
which the almost infant bride, taking the whole affair as a good joke,
thought proper to walk backwards before the canopy fanning her friends,
instead of submitting to be fanned. The natural consequence of these early
marriages is, that "among the lower orders some husbands are sad tyrants;
they marry such little young creatures, that they are more like children
than wives, and their inexperience unjustly provokes their husbands." An
original sort of revenge was threatened in her hearing by a man irritated
by the abusive language of a little girl, whose tongue was the plague of
the neighbourhood--"When I have a little more money, I will marry you, and
punish you every day." Mrs Poole indeed expresses her conviction,
reluctantly forced upon her, that in the middle and lower classes,[25]
both wives and female slaves are often treated with the utmost brutality;
and she mentions two instances in her own neighbourhood, in which the
death of women of the latter class was caused by the cruelty of their
masters. In both these cases, however, the men were Copts--a people of
whom (in spite of the efforts of the English Missionary Society to make
them something more than nominal Christians) she was assured, by one who
knew them well, "that their moral state is far worse than that of the
Muslims, and that in the _conduct_ of the latter there is much more
Christianity than is exhibited in that of the former."[26] An anecdote,
casually introduced, enables us to judge of the education which children
receive on this point. On a visit to the wife of the keeper of the tombs
of Mohammed Ali's family, a boy just able to walk was brought in, when
"the chief lady called for a stick, that puss, who was quietly crossing
the carpet, might be beaten for his amusement. I interceded for the cat,
when she replied mysteriously, 'I like her very much--I will not hurt
her.' Accordingly she raised her arm with considerable effort, and let it
fall gently. She next desired one of her slaves to kneel, which the girl
did most gracefully, and bent her head with an air of mock submission to
receive the _kurbaj_, and the same