f severe simplicity, in respect to
her house and its furnishings, to the other wives; each of whom would
make life a burden to her lord, were marked discrimination shown in such
things. He, therefore, contents himself with reserving the best of
everything for the _beroon_, or outer apartments, where he receives his
own guests. Here are fountains, spacious courts, shady walks, and
profusion of flowers without, while within are large, high-ceiled and
stuccoed rooms, elaborate windows, delicately wrought frescoes, the
finest rugs and divans, showy chandeliers and candelabra, stately pier
glasses brought on camels' backs from distant Trebizond or Bushire,
inlaid tables from Shiraz, and portieres from Reshd.

The _andaroon_ presents a marked contrast. The rooms are usually small
and low without ventilation, the courts confined, sunless, and bare; the
garden ill-kept, and the general air of a backyard pervading the entire
establishment. This order is reversed by many ecclesiastics, who in
deference to the popular idea, that to be very holy, one must be very
dirty, reserve all their luxuries for the _andaroon_, and make a show of
beggarly plainness in the part of the house to which their pupils and
the public have access.

The Persian wife seldom ventures into the _beroon_, and when she does,
it is as an outsider only, who is tolerated as long as no other visitor
is present. All its belongings are in charge of men-servants, and the
dainty touches of the feminine hand are nowhere seen in their
arrangement, and her presence is lacking there, to greet its guests, or
grace its entertainments.

When the Khanum suffers from any of the ailments, for which in America
or Europe outdoor exercise, travel, a visit to the seaside, to the
mountains, or to the baths is required, the physician feels his
helplessness. He sees that the patient cannot recover her nervous tone
in her present environment. But there is no seaside except at impossible
distances and in impossible climates. A visit to the mountains would
mean being shut up in a little dirty village, whose houses are mud
hovels, the chief industry of whose women is the milking of goats and
sheep, and working up beds of manure with bare feet, and moulding it by
hand into cakes for fuel. Or, if the husband have both the means and the
inclination, for her sake to make an encampment upon the mountains large
enough to afford security from robbers and wandering tribes, she would
be confin