ayfulness of the children, the
chaste singing of the domenies fill up the animated picture. I have
sometimes passed an hour or two in witnessing their innocent amusements,
without any feeling of regret for the brief sacrifice of time I had made. I
am free to confess, however, that I have returned to my tranquil home with
increased delight after having witnessed the bustle of a zeenahnah
assembly. At first I pitied the apparent monotony of their lives; but this
feeling has worn away by intimacy with the people, who are thus precluded
from mixing generally with the world. They are happy in their confinement;
and never having felt the sweets of liberty, would not know how to use the
boon if it were to be granted them. As the bird from the nest immured in a
cage is both cheerful and contented, so are these females. They have not,
it is true, many intellectual resources, but they have naturally good
understandings, and having learned their duty they strive to fulfil it. So
far as I have had any opportunity of making personal observations on their
general character they appear to me obedient wives, dutiful daughters,
affectionate mothers, kind mistresses, sincere friends, and liberal
benefactresses to the distressed poor. These are their moral
qualifications, and in their religious duties they are zealous in
performing the several ordinances which they have been instructed by their
parents or husbands to observe. If there be any merit in obeying the
injunctions of their Lawgiver, those whom I have known most intimately
deserve praise, since 'they are faithful in that they profess'.

To ladies accustomed from infancy to confinement this is by no means
irksome; they have their employments and their amusements, and though
these are not exactly to our taste, nor suited to our mode of education,
they are not the less relished by those for whom they were invented. They
perhaps wonder equally at some of our modes of dissipating time, and fancy
we might spend it more profitably. Be that as it may, the Mussulmaun
ladies, with whom I have been long intimate, appear to me always happy,
contented, and satisfied with the seclusion to which they were born; they
desire no other, and I have ceased to regret they cannot be made partakers
of that freedom of intercourse with the world we deem so essential to our
happiness, since their health suffers nothing from that confinement, by
which they are preserved from a variety of snares and temptation