ople, and the girl's father was
urged by his friends to engage this skilled man to operate upon his
son-in-law, but he replied: "I will take care to do nothing of the kind;
for if this doctor should restore my son-in-law's eyesight, _he_ would
very soon restore my daughter to me!"

But occasionally ladies are represented as giving witty retorts, as in
the story of the Persian lady who, walking in the street, observed a man
following her, and turning round enquired of him: "Why do you follow me,
sir?" He answered: "Because I am in love with you." "Why are you in love
with me?" said the lady. "My sister is much handsomer than I; she is
coming after me--go and make love to her." The fellow went back and saw
a woman with an exceedingly ugly face, upon which he at once went after
the lady, and said to her: "Why did you tell me what was not true?"
"Neither did you speak the truth," answered she; "for if you were really
in love with me, you would not have turned to see another woman." And
the Persian poet Jami, in his _Baharistan_, relates that a man with a
very long nose asked a woman in marriage, saying: "I am no way given to
sloth, or long sleeping, and I am very patient in bearing vexations." To
which she replied: "Yes, truly: hadst thou not been patient in bearing
vexations thou hadst not carried that nose of thine these forty years."

The low estimation in which women are so unjustly held among Muhammedans
is perhaps to be ascribed partly to the teachings of the Kuran in one or
two passages, and to the traditional sayings of the Apostle Muhammad,
who has been credited (or rather _discredited_) with many things which
he probably never said. But this is not peculiar to the followers of the
Prophet of Mecca: a very considerable proportion of the Indian fictions
represent women in an unfavourable light--fictions, too, which were
composed long before the Hindus came in contact with the Muhammedans.
Even in Europe, during mediaeval times, _maugre_ the "lady fair" of
chivalric romance, it was quite as much the custom to decry women, and
to relate stories of their profligacy, levity, and perversity, as ever
it has been in the East. But we have changed all that in modern times:
it is only to be hoped that we have not gone to the other
extreme!--According to an Arabian writer, cited by Lane, "it is
desirable, before a man enters upon any important undertaking, to
consult ten intelligent persons among his particular friends; or if