"Harem" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... stuffs for me, goldsmiths who make jewels for me, women whose duty it is to select head-dresses for me, and attentive house-painters pouring over my panellings boiling resin, which they cool with fans. I have attendants for my harem, eunuchs enough to make an army. And then I have armies, subjects! I have in my vestibule a guard of dwarfs, carrying on their backs ...
— The Temptation of St. Antony - or A Revelation of the Soul • Gustave Flaubert
... the coffee; and the head officer among them, or he who has the inspection over all the rest, has an apartment allowed him near the hall which is destined for the reception of visitors. The Turks call this officer Kavveghi, that is, Overseer or Steward of the Coffee. In the harem or ladies' apartment in the seraglio, there are a great many such officers, each having forty or fifty Baltagis under them, who, after they have served a certain time in these coffee-houses, are sure to be well provided for, either ...
— All About Coffee • William H. Ukers
... king with many wives dreamt that he saw a monkey among them; his face fell, and his spirit was troubled. "This is none other," said he, "than a foreign king, who will invade my realm, and take my harem for his spoil." One of his officers told the king of a clever interpreter of dreams, and the king despatched him to find out the meaning of his ominous vision. He set forth on his mule, and met a countryman riding. "Carry me," said the officer, "or I will carry thee." ...
— The Book of Delight and Other Papers • Israel Abrahams
... unsocial in his pleasures as in his graver pursuits, and brooking neither superior nor equal, he admitted few to his companionship, save the willing slaves of his profligacy. He was the solitary lord of a crowded harem; but, with all, he felt condemned to that satiety which is the constant curse of men whose intellect is above their pursuits, and that which once had been the impulse of passion froze down to the ordinance of custom. From the disappointments of ...
— The Last Days of Pompeii • Edward George Bulwer-Lytton
... refuge in vague generalities and Eastern imagery. He had a profound contempt for women as companions, which grieved Mr. Greyne's Western ideas, and evidently thought that Mademoiselle Verbena ought to be clapped forthwith into a long veil, and put away in a harem behind an iron grille. When Mr. Greyne explained the English point of view Abdallah Jack took refuge in a sulky silence; but during the week immediately preceding the arrival of Mrs. Greyne his temper ...
— The Mission Of Mr. Eustace Greyne - 1905 • Robert Hichens
... constitutes slavery; legal according to Chinese law, but illegal according to British law. Reference is made to Chinese gentlemen; I believe that not one of them has his 'house' in Hong Kong; the wife (small-footed) is kept at the family home in China. Each of them has his harem only in Hong Kong. There may be an exception to this rule, but I have never heard of any such exception. (I know of only one, of a Chinese gentleman, who, for certain reasons, was afraid to return to ...
— Heathen Slaves and Christian Rulers • Elizabeth Wheeler Andrew and Katharine Caroline Bushnell
... saw it would not be safe to rub that sore again. "Forgive me, Le Gardeur!" said he, with an air of sympathy well assumed. "I meant no harm. But you are suspicious of your friends to-night as a Turk of his harem." ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... human interests from the private grounds of my intelligence. Then, again, there is a subject, perhaps I may say there is more than one, that I want to exhaust, to know to the very bottom. And besides, of course I must have my literary harem, my pare aux cerfs, where my favorites await my moments of leisure and pleasure,—my scarce and precious editions, my luxurious typographical masterpieces; my Delilahs, that take my head in their lap: the pleasant story-tellers and the like; the books I love because they are fair to look ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... rooms. As an added fillip to the occasion Cowperwood had hung, not only the important pictures which he had purchased abroad, but a new one—a particularly brilliant Gerome, then in the heyday of his exotic popularity—a picture of nude odalisques of the harem, idling beside the highly colored stone marquetry of an oriental bath. It was more or less "loose" art for Chicago, shocking to the uninitiated, though harmless enough to the illuminati; but it gave a touch of color to ...
— The Titan • Theodore Dreiser
... fashion, by putting her name at the head of the list, and the collection was a success, everybody contributed ... including the architect, who was still prowling round her, in the passages, on the stage, everywhere. Lily was decidedly courted: the rich bookmaker who ran the theater as his private harem, he, too, patted her cheek in a funny way, complimented her on her firm, round hips before the group of dancing-girls packed like poultry, in the shadow of the pillars. Gee, it only rested with herself to have as much of that as Poland! And ...
— The Bill-Toppers • Andre Castaigne
... you want some yellow perfumed tobacco that I receive every month from Constantinople, a treat right from the harem? I will get enough for you, if you like it, to smoke ten ...
— The Secret of the Night • Gaston Leroux
... another, mounted on a swift mahary, and fantastically dressed with a straw hat and ostrich feathers, carried his timbrel, or drum, which it is the greatest misfortune to lose in action. In the rear followed the harem; but on such occasions the sheikh takes but three wives, who are mounted astride on trained horses, each led by a slave boy, their heads and figures completely enveloped in brown silk bournouses, with an attendant on either side. The ...
— Great African Travellers - From Mungo Park to Livingstone and Stanley • W.H.G. Kingston
... main parts: a public megaron or great hall where the men live during; the day and sleep at night, and a private region, ruled by the queen and centring in the thalamos or royal bed-chamber. If the new woman were taken into this "harem," even if Admetus never spoke to her, the world outside would surmise the worst ...
— Alcestis • Euripides
... was advertised. "Leda and the Swan," "The Birth of Venus," "The Rape of the Sabines," "Cupid and Psyche" were some of the classic themes treated as having taken place in a warm climate. "Susannah and the Elders" and "Salome Dancing" gave the Biblical flavour. The "Bath of the Harem" finished the collection. No canvas was of less size than seven ...
— The Gray Dawn • Stewart Edward White
... made her approach a series of half curtsies. Her arm in the sling was all twisted, but at the same time she was accidently showing her breasts—I remember thinking you won't distract this breed bull that way, sister, he probably has a harem of six-foot heifers. I had my head thrown back and my hands stretched out supplicatingly. Meanwhile the both of us were babbling a blue streak. I was rapidly croaking something like, "Mister for God's sake save ...
— The Night of the Long Knives • Fritz Reuter Leiber
... thermometer in the whole hospital; potatoes were kept in the baths. The superintendent, the housekeeper, and the medical assistant robbed the patients, and of the old doctor, Andrey Yefimitch's predecessor, people declared that he secretly sold the hospital alcohol, and that he kept a regular harem consisting of nurses and female patients. These disorderly proceedings were perfectly well known in the town, and were even exaggerated, but people took them calmly; some justified them on the ground that there were only peasants and ...
— The Horse-Stealers and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... most notable, if not the only, purely Egyptian dancer of our time in the Alme or Ghowazee. The former name is derived from the original calling of this class—that of reciting poetry to the inmates of the harem, the latter they acquired by dancing at the festivals of the Ghors, or Memlooks. Reasonably modest at first, the dancing of the Alme became, in the course of time, so conspicuously indelicate that great numbers of the softer sex persuaded themselves to its acquirement and ...
— The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce, Volume 8 - Epigrams, On With the Dance, Negligible Tales • Ambrose Bierce
... sealed fountain. I know not how long this season of expectation would have lasted for Iris, but for Arnold's conversation with his cousin, which persuaded him to speak and bring matters to a final issue. To this girl, living as secluded as if she was in an Oriental harem, who had never thought of love as a thing possible for herself, the consciousness that Arnold loved her was bewildering and astonishing, and she waited, knowing that sooner or later something would be said, but trembling for fear ...
— In Luck at Last • Walter Besant
... facing the king and standing in an attitude at once dignified and respectful (see Fig. 22). Next came the great officers of the palace, the ministers as we should call them in modern parlance, and the governors of conquered provinces. Eunuchs were charged with the supervision of the harem and, as in the modern East, occupied high places at court. They may be recognized in the bas-reliefs, where they are grouped about the king, by their round, beardless faces (see Figs. 23 and 24). The Kislar-Aga is, in the Constantinople of to-day what more than one ...
— A History of Art in Chaldaea & Assyria, v. 1 • Georges Perrot
... a hand Wilted with harem-heats, and all the land Was hovered over by those vulture ills That snuff decaying empire from afar, Then, with a nature balanced as a star, Dara arose, a shepherd of ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell
... of the interior of the seraglio in Don Juan is also only probably correct, and may have been drawn in several particulars from an inspection of some of the palaces, but the descriptions of the imperial harem are entirely fanciful. I am persuaded, by different circumstances, that Byron could not have been in those sacred chambers of any of the seraglios. At the time I was in Constantinople, only one of the imperial residences was accessible ...
— The Life of Lord Byron • John Galt
... prove the rule, whereas in Russia the honest official is rather the exception. After all, public opinion decides the standard of conduct adopted by a country. Morals change with time, also with countries and peoples. A harem would be a nuisance in London, but stands as a sign of Allah's blessing ...
— With the "Die-Hards" in Siberia • John Ward
... distinguished and, at last, the reigning favourite of all this unworthy Harem was a woman named Margarita Cogni, who has been already mentioned in one of these letters, and who, from the trade of her husband, was known by the title of the Fornarina. A portrait of this handsome virago, drawn by Harlowe when at ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. IV - With His Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... the insects and the dirt. Though polygamy is practised, it is confined, because of the expense involved in maintaining a matrimonial stable, to the wealthier chiefs and other men of means. A Turkish pasha who maintained a large harem once told me that polygamy is as trying to the disposition as it is to the pocketbook, because of the incessant jealousies and bickerings among the wives. And I suppose the same conditions obtain ...
— Where the Strange Trails Go Down • E. Alexander Powell
... intoxicating fascination that a veil seems to fall from our eyes and we discover an unknown world, a paradise of delights situated beyond all imagination and all dreams. When the Old Man of the Mountain transported into his harem his sleeping youths to render them capable of extreme devotion, doubtless it was such ...
— Great Pictures, As Seen and Described by Famous Writers • Esther Singleton
... can I conceive to myself Narses, living till his grey hairs in the effeminate intrigues of the harem, and then springing forth a general; the Warrior Eunuch; the misanthrope avenging his great wrong upon all mankind in bloody battle-fields; dark of counsel, and terrible of execution; him to whom in after years the Empress Sophia sent word that he was more fit to ...
— The Roman and the Teuton - A Series of Lectures delivered before the University of Cambridge • Charles Kingsley
... this is no ordinary town. . . . And yet the houses, with their windows barred like those of a harem, are in no way singular—except that they are shut and silent. It is all this whiteness, perhaps, which freezes us. And then, too, the silence is not, in fact, like that of the desert, which did at least seem natural, inasmuch as there was nothing there; here, on the contrary, there is a sense ...
— Egypt (La Mort De Philae) • Pierre Loti
... hast given over the mastership of Rachel, daughter of Maai the Israelite, to thy fan-bearer, Har-hat. By the lips of his own servants, I am informed that he would have put her in his harem. ...
— The Yoke - A Romance of the Days when the Lord Redeemed the Children - of Israel from the Bondage of Egypt • Elizabeth Miller
... and the fact that marriage was but a temporary formality which could be terminated on official notice by either party, and that after all it gave a woman no real rights or prerogatives that could not be terminated at the whim of her husband, and established her as nothing but the favorite of his harem, if he had an income large enough to keep one, or the most definitely acknowledged of his favorites if he hadn't, it is easy to see that no such thing as a real ...
— The Airlords of Han • Philip Francis Nowlan
... Armenia, and as far as Trapezus the flat country submitted without resistance to the conqueror. The commanders of the royal treasure-houses also surrendered after more or less delay, and delivered up their stores of money. The king ordered that the women of the royal harem—his sisters, his numerous wives and concubines—as it was not possible to secure their flight, should all be put to death by one of his eunuchs at Pharnacea (Kerasunt). The towns alone offered obstinate resistance. It is true that the few in the interior— Cabira, Amasia, Eupatoria—were soon ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... the building was the long gallery or saloon, which had been called the "Hall of Assembly." The various parts of this palace included the royal apartments, the harem, and the temple, with its great seven-stage tower or observatory. The very extensive and systematic explorations carried out by the French explorer M. Botta had restored the remains of one of the most beautiful of the Assyrian palaces. The usurpation of the Assyrian throne ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 488, May 9, 1885 • Various
... of the hot and secret countries to which the man went he kept a harem, he tortured witnesses, he amassed shameful gold; but certainly he would have said with steady eyes that he did it to the glory of the Lord. My own theology is sufficiently expressed by asking which Lord? Anyhow, there is this about such evil, that it opens door after door in hell, ...
— The Innocence of Father Brown • G. K. Chesterton
... pipe-smoking nations they are kept in subjection. While the chief, Little White Belt, smokes, the women are silent in his wigwam; while Mahomet Ben Jawbrahim causes volumes of odorous incense of Latakia to play round his beard, the women of the harem do not disturb his meditations, but only add to the delight of them by tinkling on a dulcimer and dancing before him. When Professor Strumpff of Gottingen takes down No. 13 from the wall, with a picture ...
— The Fitz-Boodle Papers • William Makepeace Thackeray
... the East, some years ago, it was my fortune to be summoned as a physician into a harem. With curious and not unwilling step I obeyed the summons. While examining the patient, nearly a dozen Syrian girls—a grave Turk's wifely crowd, a result and illustration of Mohammedan female education—pressed around the divan with eyes and ears intent to see and hear a Western Hakim's medical ...
— Sex in Education - or, A Fair Chance for Girls • Edward H. Clarke
... becomes impatient—unreasonably, perhaps—with a certain Major Kitchener in the Intelligence Branch, whose information miscarried or was not despatched; is wearied by the impracticable Shaiggia Irregulars; takes interest in the turkey-cock and his harem of four wives; laughs at the 'black sluts' seeing their faces for the first time in the mirror. With him he trembles for the fate of the 'poor little beast,' the Husseinyeh, when she drifts stern foremost on the shoal, 'a penny steamer under cannon ...
— The River War • Winston S. Churchill
... years ago," he writes, "a farmer, living in the immediate neighbourhood of Lochmaben, Dumfriesshire, kept a gander, who not only had a great trick of wandering himself, but also delighted in piloting forth his cackling harem, to weary themselves in circumnavigating their native lake, or in straying amidst forbidden fields on the opposite shore. Wishing to check this flagrant habit, the farmer one day seized the gander just as he was about to spring upon the blue bosom of his favourite ...
— Le Morvan, [A District of France,] Its Wild Sports, Vineyards and Forests; with Legends, Antiquities, Rural and Local Sketches • Henri de Crignelle
... deference to woman, and a disposition to protect and honor her, is a necessary element of a manly character in our Western civilization; but young Haldane was as truly an Oriental as if he had been permitted to bluster around a Turkish harem; and those whom he should have learned to wait upon with delicacy and tact became subservient to his varying moods, developing that essential brutality which mars the nature of every man who looks upon woman ...
— A Knight Of The Nineteenth Century • E. P. Roe
... began to discuss the merits of Grecian ladies; and loudly expressed their horror at the idea of appearing before brothers unveiled, and at the still grosser indelicacy of sometimes allowing the face to be seen by a betrothed lover. Then followed a repetition of all the gossip of the harem; particularly, a fresh piece of scandal concerning Apollonides of Cos, and their royal kinswoman, Amytis, the wife of Megabyzus. Eudora turned away to conceal her blushes; for the indelicacy of their language was such as seldom met the ear of ...
— Philothea - A Grecian Romance • Lydia Maria Child
... crowded. The huge room, glittering with mirrors and crystal, floored with thick carpets, and hung with rich drapes, had something of the appearance of a Sarkian harem. Although there were only five of the Alexander family present, there were at least twenty Lani whose costumes ranged from the black G string and halter of the household staff to the utter nudity of Douglas's playthings. ...
— The Lani People • J. F. Bone
... times he will watch for the whole night, without showing the least trace of fatigue on the following day. He eats little, and water is his only beverage. According to Mohammedan custom, he keeps several wives. In 1844 he had three, of which his favorite (Pearl of the Harem, as she was called) was an Armenian, of ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 4, September, 1850 • Various
... he converted the mother of the celebrated Nanda. In the town of Ankavari, he subdued the powerful mahabala spirit; Bhanabhadra, Sronadanta, the malevolent and powerful Nagas, the king of the country and his harem, received together the true law, as he opened to them the gate of immortality. In the celebrated Viggi village, Kina and Sila, earnestly seeking to be born in heaven, he converted and made to enter the right path. The Angulimala, in that ...
— Sacred Books of the East • Various
... fair, alas, she was fair, So that her beauty goes To a garden of dying flowers, Made one with the girls that mourn And wither for light and love Behind the harem bars. ...
— The Garden of Bright Waters - One Hundred and Twenty Asiatic Love Poems • Translated by Edward Powys Mathers
... progressive formation of the Pharaonic Protocol—Royal etiquette an actual divine worship; the insignia and prophetic statues of Pharaoh, Pharaoh the mediator between the gods and his subjects—Pharaoh in family life; his amusements, his occupations, his cares—His harem: the women, the queen, her origin, her duties to the king—His children: their position in the State; rivalry among them during the old age and at the death of their father; succession to the throne, ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 2 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... and sentiments on the East, expressed in a series of rich cantos and stanzas full of sweetness and spirit, and all this as enchanting as a harem emitting the most delicious and rare perfumes, and blooming with exquisitely-lovely nymphs with eyebrows painted black, eyes piercing as those of the antelope, arms white as alabaster, and of the most graceful and perfectly-formed shapes, while the heart of ...
— The Poems of Goethe • Goethe
... impress the unlettered; also our prophets have imaginations of their own, and can invent nomenclature and ritual and symbolism never seen in heaven nor on earth before. Thus there is Dr. Newo Newi New, who called himself "Archbishop of the Newthot Church," and gathered about him a harem of devoted females in San Francisco, and was landed in jail for using the mails to defraud. Or there is "Oahspe, the Cosmic Bible," a work of brand-new revelation with a brand-new view of the ...
— The Profits of Religion, Fifth Edition • Upton Sinclair
... the barn with merry din, And roused the prisoned brutes within. The old horse thrust his long head out, And grave with wonder gazed about; The cock his lusty greeting said, And forth his speckled harem led; The oxen lashed their tails, and hooked, And mild reproach of hunger looked; The horned patriarch of the sheep, Like Egypt's Amun roused from sleep, Shook his sage head with gesture mute, And emphasized with stamp ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 101, March, 1866 • Various
... for the scenes they recalled that she sighed. The hens that burrowed yesterday under the lilacs in the door-yard; the cock that her aunt so often drove, insulted and exclamatory, at the head of his harem, out of forbidden garden bounds; the social groups that scratched and descanted lazily about the wide, sunny barn doors; the anxious companies seeking their favorite perches, with alarming outcries, in the dusk of summer ...
— The Lady of the Aroostook • W. D. Howells
... women in a rich man's harem amusing themselves by dancing and singing. In the tomb of Ay there is a scene showing the interior of the women's quarters, and here the ladies are shown dancing, playing guitars, feasting, or adorning themselves with their jewellery; while the ...
— The Treasury of Ancient Egypt - Miscellaneous Chapters on Ancient Egyptian History and Archaeology • Arthur E. P. B. Weigall
... the slave of a Louisiana planter, who designed her for his harem. Her lover, a slave named David, resisted that design to the only gain of being flogged, while his loved one was borne away. David was no common black; he had been educated in France, and was the plantation surgeon. ...
— Mysteries of Paris, V3 • Eugene Sue
... keep her quiet. I sent the guide around to ask her what was the nature of the building upon which I had trespassed and which seemed to worry her so much— He came back to tell me that I was on the top of a harem and the old woman thought I was getting up a flirtation with the gentleman's wives. So I dropped ...
— Adventures and Letters • Richard Harding Davis
... Harem, to enclose The loveliest maidens of the Christian line; Then, menials, to their misbelieving foes, Castile's young nobles held forbidden wine; Then, too, the holy Cross, salvation's sign, By impious hands was from the altar thrown, And the deep aisles of ...
— Some Poems by Sir Walter Scott • Sir Walter Scott
... actresses who proceeded to play an act of a tragedy by Corneille, the applause was quintupled. At the end of the tragedy the applause was decupled. Then the Spanish palace dissolved into an Abyssinian harem, and Eliza Fiddle in Abyssinian costume was discovered lying upon two thousand cushions of two thousand colours, and the audience rose at Eliza and Eliza rose at the audience, and the resulting frenzy was the sublimest frenzy that ever shook a theatre. The piece was stopped dead for three minutes ...
— Mr. Prohack • E. Arnold Bennett
... and enervated by luxury, Solomon forgot his higher duties, and yielded to the fascination of oriental courts. In his harem were 700 wives, princesses, and 300 concubines, who turned his heart to idolatry. In punishment for his apostasy, God declared that his kingdom should be divided, and that his son should reign only over the single tribe of Judah, which was spared him for the sake of his father David. In his latter ...
— Ancient States and Empires • John Lord
... and to overcome her coyness by the display of his skill. The peacock that struts about in imperial pride under the eyes of his attentive hens, is really contributing to the future beauty and strength of his race by collecting to himself a harem through whom he hands down to posterity the valuable qualities which have gained the admiration of his mates in his own person. Mr. Wallace has shown that to be beautiful is to be efficient; and sexual selection is thus, as it were, a mere lateral form of natural ...
— Falling in Love - With Other Essays on More Exact Branches of Science • Grant Allen
... Jeff's white coat and Mr. Smith's flowered waistcoat and the red geranium in the window and the Florida water and the double extract of hyacinth, the little shop seemed multi-coloured and luxurious enough for the annex of a Sultan's harem. ...
— Sunshine Sketches of a Little Town • Stephen Leacock
... often enough that Mr. Lewis hates literary women! I am not goose enough to expect him to sympathize with any intellectual pursuits of mine. No. Fatima in the harem, or Nourmahal thrumming her lute under a palm-tree, is his belle-ideale; failing that, a ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 12, No. 73, November, 1863 • Various
... into Frances' room to do her hair, and employ her busy tongue while she plied the brush. She was a pretty bit of a figure in her fancily-worked Japanese kimono and red Turkish slippers—harem slippers, she called them, and thought it deliciously wicked to wear them—as she sat shaking back her bright hair like a ...
— The Rustler of Wind River • G. W. Ogden
... scarce—and she was out looking for her own Sir Galahad, as he went up and down the earth searching for the Holy Grail. The war to her, we knew, was a great opportunity to enjoy the new freedom of her sex, to lose her harem veil, to breathe free air as an achieving human creature—but, alas! one's forties are too wise. Pretty as she was, innocent as she was, and eager as her soul was in high emprise of the conflict of world ideals into which she was plunging, we felt that, after all, hidden ...
— The Martial Adventures of Henry and Me • William Allen White
... good and enlightened man might go. The substance of all that need be said against the harem with the door ajar, in which the eighteenth century had confined the mind if not the body, of women, is to be found in Holbach and Condorcet. But they wrote from outside. They were the wise spectators who saw the consequences of the degradation of women, but did not intimately know its cause. ...
— Shelley, Godwin and Their Circle • H. N. Brailsford
... White House, a few hundred yards from his official home. His well-beloved Amelia lived in another house half a block distant; another favorite, just across the street; Emmeline, on the same block; and not far away the latest acquisition to his harem. ...
— The Story of the Mormons: • William Alexander Linn
... won the respect of the sultan, who treated him with generosity, and listened to the terms of ransom which he proposed. The queen remained at Damietta, which was strongly garrisoned. Fearful, nevertheless, of falling into the hands of the Moslems, who would have carried her into the sultan's harem, she prayed an old knight in her suite to slay her with his sword, should there be any danger of that event. "I had determined on so doing, madam," was the answer. Margaret's heroism was not put to this severe test, for the surrender of Damietta was one of the conditions of her husband's release; ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 5 of 8 • Various
... temperance of the born athlete. Besides all this, his main interests were man-interests. But women would not let him alone. He had but to look and the thing was done. Wreaths hung on every balcony for Honey Smith and, always at his approach, the door of the harem swung wide. He was a little lazy, almost discourteously uninterested in his attitude towards, the individual female; for he had never had to ...
— Angel Island • Inez Haynes Gillmore
... disgraced China for four long years to be humanly possible. Far and wide the word was rapidly passing that Yuan Shih-kai was not the man he had once been; he was in reality feeble and choleric—prematurely old from too much history-making and too many hours spent in the harem. He had indeed become a mere Colossus with feet of clay,—a man who could be hurled to the ground by precisely the same methods he had used to destroy the Manchus. Even his foreign supporters were becoming tired and suspicious of him, endless trouble being now associated with his name, ...
— The Fight For The Republic in China • Bertram Lenox Putnam Weale
... rest by flight. He did not stop till he reached Tepelen, where he had a warm reception from Kamco, whose thirst for vengeance had been disappointed by his defeat. "Go!" said she, "go, coward! go spin with the women in the harem! The distaff is a better weapon for you than the scimitar!" The young man answered not a word, but, deeply wounded by these reproaches, retired to hide his humiliation in the bosom of his old friend the mountain. The popular legend, always thirsting for the marvelous in the adventures ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - ALI PACHA • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... ridiculed and ignored. From our standpoint we would honor any Chinese woman who claimed the right to her feet and powers of locomotion; the Hindoo widows who refused to ascend the funeral pyre of their husbands; the Turkish women who threw off their masks and veils and left the harem; the Mormon women who abjured their faith and demanded monogamic relations. Why not equally honor the intelligent minority of American women who protest against the artificial disabilities by which their freedom is limited and their development arrested? That only a few, under any circumstances, ...
— Eighty Years And More; Reminiscences 1815-1897 • Elizabeth Cady Stanton
... adultery being punished with death; but a man may have more than one wife, though usually that number is not exceeded. However, a man was pointed out to us, who maintains in his desire for issue, but without avail, a regular harem, having no fewer than fifteen wives in different villages, he ...
— The Head Hunters of Northern Luzon From Ifugao to Kalinga • Cornelis De Witt Willcox
... that Zeenab was ill, and unable to dance before the Shah; and, knowing the royal methods of treating unsatisfactory slaves, I feared greatly for the consequences. My fears were warranted. I was ordered, with others, to wait below the tower of the royal harem at midnight and bear away a corpse. We saw a woman struggling with two men at the top of the tower. The woman was flung over. We rushed forward. At my feet, in the death-agony, lay my beloved Zeenab. I hung over her in the deepest ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol VI. • Various
... expression and a bristling beard; they say he had the appearance of a janissary in clerical garb. He took into his service an Albanian bandit, through whom he terrorized the diocese. At one time he had the young wife of a man who was away in Roumania brought into his harem. The husband returned, asked for his wife and succeeded in obtaining her, but after two months he was assassinated, and the widow thought she might as well allow the bishop to console her. The outcry was enormous; no one doubted ...
— The Birth of Yugoslavia, Volume 1 • Henry Baerlein
... sooner set off to the Hyeres islands in a caique, on the chance of being captured by an Algerian corsair and sold to the Grand Turk. Then I should be a Sultana some day, and wouldn't I make a stir in the harem while I was ...
— Letters of Two Brides • Honore de Balzac
... of scurrying hoofs and the herd was gone; but Numa, the lion, moved not. He was familiar with the ways of Pacco, the zebra. He knew that he would return, though many times he might wheel and fly before he summoned the courage to lead his harem and his offspring to the water. There was the chance that Pacco might be frightened off entirely. Numa had seen this happen before, and so he became almost rigid lest he be the one to send them galloping, ...
— Jungle Tales of Tarzan • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... deep shadows—the effect of the sun's rays struggling to penetrate the leafy roof of nature's aisle. Deep in the solitude of the woods see now the dappled herd, and watch the handsome buck as he roams here and there in the midst of his harem, or, browsing amongst the bushes, exhibits his graceful antlers to the lurking foe, who by patient woodcraft has succeeded in approaching his unsuspecting victim; observe how proudly he holds himself, as some other buck of less pretensions dares to approach the ladies ...
— Natural History of the Mammalia of India and Ceylon • Robert A. Sterndale
... my ears, in sad contrast with the coarse mirth and loud rude laughter that rang over the decks of the Pandora. On board it was a day of jubilee. King Dingo Bingo was entertained by the captain, and brought not only some of his chief men with him, but also his harem of black-skinned beauties, between whom and the rough men of the crew, love-making, dancing, and carousing was kept up to a late ...
— Ran Away to Sea • Mayne Reid
... The foot-soldiers also set out, together with the reserves. The children of the Andhaka and the Vrishni races, all followed Arjuna. The Brahmanas and Kshatriyas, and Vaisyas, and wealthy Sudras, set out, keeping before them the 16,000 women that had formed Vasudevas harem, and Vajra, the grandson of the intelligent Krishna. The widows of the other heroes of the Bhoja, the Vrishni, and the Andhaka races, lordless now, that set out with Arjuna, numbered many millions. That foremost ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 4 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... at last, a considerable force of cavalry, then mules and barbarous carriages with the harem, all the riders and inmates enveloped in what appeared to be winding-sheets, white and shapeless; about them eunuchs and servants. The staff of the pachas followed, preceding the grandees who closed the march, ...
— Lothair • Benjamin Disraeli
... last man had disappeared, the women, like those of an eastern harem, began to come out. The first that entered the deserted room was a hard-featured, reproachful-looking woman, the sister of the departed. She instantly began to put the place in order, as if she expected her turn to come on the morrow. In a few moments more a servant appeared, and ...
— Alec Forbes of Howglen • George MacDonald
... perhaps the greatest profligate of the two. Madame de Pompadour, when she ceased to be his mistress, became his procuress. This infamous woman had the command of the state purse, and she contrived to build for the sovereign a harem, called the Parc-aux-Cerfs, in the park of Versailles, which cost the country at least a hundred millions of francs.[71] The number of young girls taken from Paris to this place excited great public discontent; and though morals generally were not very ...
— The Huguenots in France • Samuel Smiles
... in the East, in youth, where they are prized as custodians of the harem, they are fat, usually large of frame, but short-lived. The growth of hair on the head is often scant; on the face and body it is altogether missing. The voice is high, partaking of a treble quality. When through surgical operation or accident it happens that a man is deprived of the testicular ...
— The Goat-gland Transplantation • Sydney B. Flower
... machines, cigar-lighters, a vase of wax flowers under glass, and a racing chart setting forth the day's odds, weights, and entries. On the end wall over the pantry-slides was a second "barroom" picture, representing the ladies of a harem ...
— Vandover and the Brute • Frank Norris
... would be necessary to keep herself and all her women as closely as possible secluded in the cabins; and even then, he added, that if once seen he could hardly answer for some of those corsairs not endeavouring to secure a fair young Frank girl for his harem; and as his eye fell on Rosette, she bridled and hid herself behind ...
— A Modern Telemachus • Charlotte M. Yonge
... utmost, with a cestus or zone: by way of bed-clothes, however, it must be observed, that they swathed their person in the folds of a robe or shawl. Up to the time of Solomon, this practice obtained through all ranks; and so long the universal household dress of a Hebrew lady in her harem, was the tunic as here described; and in this she dressed herself the very moment that she rose from bed. Indeed, so long as the Hebrew women were content with a single tunic, it flowed loose in liberal ...
— Theological Essays and Other Papers v2 • Thomas de Quincey
... silence. For several months I was disabled by the gout from holding a pen; and you must know, Madam, that one can't write when one cannot write. Then, how write to la Fianc'ee du Roi de Garbe? You had been in the tent of the Cham of Tartary, and in the harem of the Captain Pacha, and, during your navigation of the AEgean, were possibly fallen into the terrible power of a corsair. How could I suppose that so many despotic infidels would part with your charms? I never ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole, V4 • Horace Walpole
... with clumps of flowers and of women, this immense harem where his seven hundred princesses and his three hundred concubines disported themselves, Solomon watched the whirl of dances, gazed at the living hedge of women, seen against the background of gold-plated walls, their bodies ...
— The Cathedral • Joris-Karl Huysmans
... chambers on the second storey, which were devoted to the ladies. At the principal entrance to these they were received by the cadi's wife, and, with much display of friendliness and affection, were conducted into the harem—that mysterious retreat which, in a Mohammedan household, is never entered by mortal man, except the ...
— The Pirate City - An Algerine Tale • R.M. Ballantyne
... all lost—even yet—he may redeem His sloth and shame, by only being that Which he should be, as easily as the thing 20 He should not be and is. Were it less toil To sway his nations than consume his life? To head an army than to rule a harem? He sweats in palling pleasures, dulls his soul,[a] And saps his goodly strength, in toils which yield not Health like the chase, nor glory like the war— He must be roused. Alas! there is no sound [Sound of soft music ...
— The Works of Lord Byron - Poetry, Volume V. • Lord Byron
... of Rachel," said Mrs. Harley, after reading this letter for the third or fourth time. "I must say I never expected Edith to get to the end of her six months, still less that she should gain so much approval. She was always such a wild, harem-scarem girl at home." ...
— The Empire Annual for Girls, 1911 • Various
... that purchaser. They had now been haggling, she said, for two or three years; a DENOUEMENT might be expected at any moment. If the Count's avarice could be appeased the unhappy child might expect to find herself, with as little delay as possible, an inmate of the floating harem on board the FLUTTERBY. ...
— South Wind • Norman Douglas
... yet recovered from these many wounds, when the Pasha of Egypt advanced through Syria, threatening destruction to the last descendant of Osman. A newly levied army was sent against the insurgents, but the generals fresh from the harem led it to destruction. The Porte applied to England and France, who were calling themselves its oldest and most natural allies, but received from them only promises. At this juncture Sultan Mahommed invoked ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. X. • Kuno Francke
... Nor could any one suggest that I am not in high favour. Oh, no. I have been appointed Chief... Inspector... Oh, no, no, Chief... Manager... Oh, no, no, no... Chief Administrator... Quite so! Chief Administrator of the Harem of her Imperial Highness the Princess Turandot. ...
— Turandot, Princess of China - A Chinoiserie in Three Acts • Karl Gustav Vollmoeller
... shelter in the next. On the banks of some of the large rivers, however, such as the Gunduch and the Bagmuttee, there are vast stretches of undulating sand, crossed at intervals by narrow creeks, and spotted by patches of close, thick jungle. Here the grey tusker takes up his abode with his harem. When once you turn him out from his lair, there is grand hunting room before he can reach the distant patch of jungle to which he directs his flight. In some parts the jowah (a plant not unlike broom in appearance) is so thick, that even the elephants can scarcely force their way ...
— Sport and Work on the Nepaul Frontier - Twelve Years Sporting Reminiscences of an Indigo Planter • James Inglis
... Persia, India and Turkey. First, there was the seraglio, or the palace properly so-called, which comprised the reception-halls and the men's apartments, and which is known now throughout the East under the name of selamlik; then came the harem containing the private rooms where the master saw his wives and children with their guards of eunuchs and their throngs of attendants; and lastly, there was the khan, a cluster of dependent structures including servants' quarters and out-buildings. ...
— The American Architect and Building News, Vol. 27, No. 733, January 11, 1890 • Various
... now one of a group of oriental beauties who, in the second act of the comic opera, were paraded by the vizier before the new potentate as the treasures of his harem. There was no word assigned to any of them, but on the evening when Hurstwood was housing himself in the loft of the street-car barn, the leading comedian and star, feeling exceedingly facetious, said in a profound voice, which created ...
— Sister Carrie • Theodore Dreiser
... caliph Mahoud, commonly called the Magnificent. Such was the admiration in which the memory of the traveller was held, the poets made dirges on the occasion, and mournful songs were heard in the twilight from the windows of every harem. Nor did the generation of the time content itself with the ceremonies of lamentation: they caused a fountain to be erected, which they named the Fountain of Haddad-Ben-Ahab the traveller; and when the slaves go to fetch water, they speak of ...
— Stories of Comedy • Various
... woman. Getting the worst of it, she fastened her teeth deep into his hand. Grunting with pain Shu[u]zen flung her off, and quickly brought down the sword. Prostrate she lay, the blood stream pouring over the real lord of this harem. ...
— Bakemono Yashiki (The Haunted House) - Tales of the Tokugawa, Volume 2 (of 2) • James S. De Benneville
... moving with indolence among the tender leaves, sleepy from the scents of lilac and apple bloom which it had drunk on its way. And now it loitered under the eaves of the porch to mix honeysuckle with its stream of drowsy sweets, like a chemist of Araby the Blest preparing a perfume for the harem's pride. ...
— The Bondboy • George W. (George Washington) Ogden
... sequel. Kimera, suddenly risen to eminence, grew proud and headstrong—formed a strong clan around him, whom he appointed to be his Wakunga, or officers—rewarded well, punished severely, and soon became magnificent. Nothing short of the grandest palace, a throne to sit upon, the largest harem, the smartest officers, the best dressed people, even a menagerie for pleasure—in fact, only the best of everything—would content him. Fleets of boats, not canoes, were built for war, and armies formed, ...
— The Discovery of the Source of the Nile • John Hanning Speke
... wife of the sacrificer, the principal in the service, and other ladies of the harem. The dishes under their care, the smaller dishes, would be those ...
— The Shih King • James Legge
... old traditions with the rigid tenacity of the orthodox Mohammedan, disdainful of the French jurisdiction under which he was compelled to live, and occupied solely with the affairs of the tribe and his beautiful and adored wife who reigned alone in his harem, despite the fact that she had given him no child; the younger in total contrast to his brother, a dashing ultra-modern young Arab as deeply imbued with French tendencies as the conservative Omar was opposed to them. The wealthy and powerful old Sheik, whose friendship had been assiduously sought ...
— The Shadow of the East • E. M. Hull
... historic times we read of it as existing only in the families of the gods. The female singers consecrated to Amon and other deities, owed obedience to several superiors, of whom the principal (generally the widow of a king or high priest) was called chief-superior of the ladies of the harem of Amon. Besides these wives, there were concubines, slaves purchased or born in the house, prisoners of war, Egyptians of inferior class, who were the chattels of the man and of whom he could dispose as he ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 1 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... Constantinople. The fair Circassians and Georgians reside in the houses of the merchants, to whom many of them are regularly consigned by their friends, and of these it is impossible for a Frank to obtain a glimpse, for the usual privacy of the harem is granted to them. The chief depot of the blacks is in a large court-yard attached to the Mosque of Suleyman. In a street immediately outside the wall was a row of coffee-houses, where opium, was also to be procured for smoking, which ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 2, July, 1850. • Various
... ghost, and she stepped light with a terrified tread. Bertram could see at a glance she was profoundly agitated. For a moment he could hardly imagine the reason why: then he remembered all at once the strict harem rules by which married women in England are hemmed in and circumvented. To visit an unmarried man alone by night is contrary to tribal usage. He rose, and advanced towards his visitor with outstretched arms. "Why, Frida," he cried,—"Mrs. Monteith—no, Frida—what's the matter? ...
— The British Barbarians • Grant Allen
... are resemblances between the story of Shahryar and that of Ahasuerus as recorded in Esther. In both narratives the King is offended with his Queen and chooses a new wife daily. Shahryar has recourse to the scimitar, Ahasuerus consigns wife after wife to the seclusion of his harem. Shahryar finds a model consort in Shahrazad, Ahasuerus in Esther. Each queen saves a multitude from death, each king lies awake half the night listening to stories. [144] While many of the stories in The Arabian Nights ...
— The Life of Sir Richard Burton • Thomas Wright
... The reform of revenue administration was entrusted to an orthodox Hindu, Todar Mall. Among the Emperor's personal friends were Brahmans and Rajputs, and the principal Hindu states (except Mewar) sent daughters to his harem. In religion he was eclectic and loved to hear theological argument. Towards the end of his life he adopted many Hindu usages and founded a new religion which held as one of its principal tenets that Akbar was God's Viceregent. His successors, Jehangir and Shah ...
— Hinduism and Buddhism, Vol I. (of 3) - An Historical Sketch • Charles Eliot
... history of the Indian Hellenic mind, called mythology. Does John Bull take it in? With not less pleasure your instructive essay on "Burning and other Funereal Ceremonies." How noble is all that is really old among the Aryans! Weber sent me the "Malavika," a miserable thing, harem stories,—I hope by a dissolute fellow of the tenth century, and surely not by the author of "Sakuntala." For your just, but sharply expressed and nobly suppressed essay against ——, a thousand thanks. I have to-day received the last sheet of "Egypt," Book IV., and the last but one ...
— Chips From A German Workshop. Vol. III. • F. Max Mueller
... generously help; what sorrow hadst thou mercy on? Do the 'five hundred thousand' ghosts, who sank shamefully on so many battle-fields from Rossbach to Quebec, that thy Harlot might take revenge for an epigram,—crowd round thee in this hour? Thy foul Harem; the curses of mothers, the tears and infamy of daughters? Miserable man! thou 'hast done evil as thou couldst:' thy whole existence seems one hideous abortion and mistake of Nature; the use and meaning of thee not ...
— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle |
