s dancer waltzed up to dad and
wiggled in a foreign language, dad sashayed up to her and I couldn't
hold him back.

[Illustration: He was just getting warmed up 293]

He was just getting warmed up to "balance to partners," when a frown
came over the sultan's face and he looked cross at dad, and then the
hewgag sounded, and the girls scattered out of a side door and dad
wanted to follow, but I held him by the coat, and it was over. I
think those girls were the only ones in the whole harem that were good
looking.

Dad breathed hard a little from his exercise, and said he was ready to
inspect the stock, and the sultan detailed a tall negro, with a face
dried up like a mummy, and we started out through the harem, dad pulling
the long hair on the side of his head over his bald spot, and throwing
his shoulders back and drawing in his stomach to make him look young.

Well, say, there is nothing about a harem, much different from keeping
house at home, except that there is more of it. The idea people get of
harems is that the women are all young and beautiful, and that they sit
around a swimming tank and play guitars and keep the flies off the man
who owns the place, while he smokes the vile Turkish tobacco burning in
a jardiniere, through a section of rubber hose, and goes to sleep like
a Chinaman smoking opium, and that they drink rare wines and dance with
bangles on their legs and ropes of pearls on their necks and arms.

I have seen alleged imitations of a Turkish harem on the stage, with
American girls doing the acting, and it would make you feel as though
you would invest in a harem when you got old enough, but, gee, when you
see a regular harem, run by an up-to-date Turk, you think of the Mormon
apostle who has 40 wives of all ages, from 70 down to a 16-year-old
hired girl, with a hair-lip and warts on her thumbs. This harem was like
a big stock barn in the states, with a big room to exercise the colts,
and box stalls for the different wives and their families to live in and
do their own cooking and washing.

Instead of sitting by a bath playing a harp, the poor old wives stand by
a washtub and play tunes on the washboard, and scrub, and take care
of children. I thought the custom of spanking children was an American
institution, but it is as old as the ages, for I saw a Turkish mother
grab up a child that had lifted a kitten by the tail, and take it across
her knee and give it a few with a red hand covered with so