"Harem" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... and habits of life, was soon exchanged by his successors for royal magnificence, rivaling that of the Abbaside court at Bagdad. It was Abdurrahman II. who, in a love quarrel with a beautiful inmate of his harem, caused the door of her chamber to be blocked up with bags of silver coin, to be removed on her relenting—"and she threw herself on her knees and kissed his feet; but," naively adds the Arab historian, "the money she kept, and no portion of it ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXLII. Vol. LV. April, 1844 • Various
... strangers of rank who abound in Cairo. For truth's sake I must add that, by the side of the most beautiful and richly dressed, were Coptic and Jewish faces, with strange head-dresses, impossible costumes, a howling of colours,—no one could deliberately have invented worse. The women of the harem could not be seen. They were in the first three boxes on the right, in the second gallery. Thick white muslin hid their faces ...
— Operas Every Child Should Know - Descriptions of the Text and Music of Some of the Most Famous Masterpieces • Mary Schell Hoke Bacon
... On the other hand, when the ladies in waiting on the Princess of Wied drove out in low-cut dresses, it being warm weather, the people of Durazzo were scandalized at what they called the terrible behaviour of their Prince's harem. These mountain people live on maize and milk and cheese—salt is unknown to them. Baron Nopsca is regarded by the few educated Albanians as the most competent foreign observer. He knew the language well and travelled everywhere. One custom he relates of the Merturi is the ...
— The Birth of Yugoslavia, Volume 2 • Henry Baerlein
... they not disclose, standing there with their long gray beards, and outstretched venerable arms, century after century: al ready old when Montezuma was a boy, and still vigorous in the days of Bustamante! There has the last of the Aztec emperors wandered with his dark-eyed harem. Under the shade of these gigantic trees he has rested, perhaps smoked his "tobacco mingled with amber," and fallen to sleep, his dreams unhaunted by visions of the stern traveller from the far-east, whose sails even then might be within sight of the ...
— Life in Mexico • Frances Calderon de la Barca
... the old woman continued, "if you could see some plan of making your escape, she would in no way throw difficulties in your path; but it must not be known that the harem in any way connived at your escape, for my lord's wrath would be terrible, and he is not a man to ...
— The Boy Knight • G.A. Henty
... 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 folds about the body; and was fastened by a belt or a clasp, just as we find it at ...
— Theological Essays and Other Papers v2 • Thomas de Quincey
... spirit in the age of Saint Louis, the crusader who conversed with Moslem sages on the threshold of the Holy Sepulchre, the Sultan of Lucera[1] who persecuted Paterini while he respected the superstition of Saracens, the anointed successor of Charlemagne, who carried his harem with him to the battlefields of Lombardy, and turned Infidels loose upon the provinces of Christ's Vicar—would be inexplicable, were it not that Palermo still reveals in all her monuments the genius loci which gave spiritual ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds
... It is just beginning to dawn on me that rash action is the worst kind of selfishness; how, just by a little kindness and a great deal of love, I, a harem-scarem girl, who never stopped to think in my life before, have reconciled an old family feud of fifteen years standing, brought Lady Hope triumphantly to Houghton, and swept ever so many cares out of my father's way, besides all the little pleasantness that ...
— The Old Countess; or, The Two Proposals • Ann S. Stephens
... 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
... the might of the Hunnish Empire was broken. The great robber-camp needed the ascendancy of one strong chief-robber to hold it together, and that ascendancy no one of the multitudinous sons who emerged from the chambers of his harem was able to exert. Unable to agree as to the succession of the throne, they talked of dividing the Hunnish dominions between them, and in the discussions which ensued they showed too plainly that they looked ...
— Theodoric the Goth - Barbarian Champion of Civilisation • Thomas Hodgkin
... in Chapter VI, we have shown that it exists in several forms, and that these are not all so humiliating for the women as people think, who only know of the shameful abuses of the Mussulman's harem. What lowers the moral level of polygyny is especially the barbarous system of marriage by purchase, by which the women become slaves burdened with heavy labor, and are in a state of legal dependence. We have seen that polygyny has a higher moral character among certain Indian ...
— The Sexual Question - A Scientific, psychological, hygienic and sociological study • August Forel
... the grated 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 the polluted shrine Echoed, for ...
— Some Poems by Sir Walter Scott • Sir Walter Scott
... nothing of these peoples apart from the testimony of their monuments, and nearly all of these refer to the achievements of their kings. The Assyrians are always represented at war, hunting, or in the performance of ceremonies; their women never appear on the bas-reliefs; they were confined in a harem and never went into public life. The Chaldeans on the contrary, were a race of laborers and merchants, but of their life we know nothing. Herodotus relates that once a year in their towns they assembled all the girls to give them in marriage; they sold the prettiest, and the profits of the ...
— History Of Ancient Civilization • Charles Seignobos
... of adding commentaries, notes, etc., to original teachings. Not only was this common among Buddhist writers, but even more surprising liberties were taken with the narrative. For example: The legend describing Buddha's leave-taking of his harem is clearly borrowed from an earlier story of Yasa, a wealthy young householder of Benares, who, becoming disgusted with his harem, left his sleeping dancing girls and fled to the Buddha for instruction. ...
— Oriental Religions and Christianity • Frank F. Ellinwood
... serving it well or ill; and youth is the time to learn how. But the androcentric home cannot teach him. We live to-day in a democracy-the man-made family is a despotism. It may be a weak one; the despot may be dethroned and overmastered by his little harem of one; but in that case she becomes the despot—that is all. The male is esteemed "the head of the family;" it belongs to him; he maintains it; and the rest of the world is a wide hunting ground and battlefield wherein ...
— The Forerunner, Volume 1 (1909-1910) • Charlotte Perkins Gilman
... the King of Upper and Lower Egypt, Nebka, the blessed, commanded, and they brought forth the wife of Uba-aner to the north side of the harem, and burned her with fire, and cast her ashes ...
— Egyptian Literature
... importation of samples of femininity serves to keep it alert, though not to gratify it. A like result is achieved by another modern development—photography. The undergraduate may, and usually does, surround himself with photographs of pretty ladies known to the public. A phantom harem! Yet the houris have an effect on their sultan. Surrounded both by plain women of flesh and blood and by beauteous women on pasteboard, the undergraduate is the easiest victim of living loveliness—is as a fire ever ...
— Zuleika Dobson - or, An Oxford Love Story • Max Beerbohm
... 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
... to provide for and who keeps a man busy issuing promissory notes to Uncle Sam so that his wives may be properly supplied with filigree hair pins and divided skirts. They say he recently bought the entire stock of an insolvent dry goods store for his harem, and it only ...
— Said the Observer • Louis J. Stellman
... sceptre trembled in 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 ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell
... while the cadets have to content themselves with tallow candles stuck into scooped-out turnips and placed in a circle, and the lights throwing the shadows up, make the long legs of the cadets look like ever so many great goblin black spiders, hopping harem-scarem over each other; but the cadets call ...
— The Fairy Nightcaps • Frances Elizabeth Barrow
... gesture with his thumb, and a noise between his teeth suggestive of a severed wind-pipe. "If she were good-looking —I have heard say they pay high prices in the interior, say at Kaisarieh or Mosul. Once in a harem, who would ever know? The road ahead is worse than dangerous. Whoever wishes to save his life would do best to turn back now and try to ride ...
— The Eye of Zeitoon • Talbot Mundy
... dreary years of weeks, Anna said—when we received a letter containing the joyful intelligence that Edgar Elliott, his aristocratic sister Jane, his unaristocratic sister little Fanny, and Herbert Allen—a young lieutenant, by the way, and, by the way, the red-hot flame of my harem-scarem sister—would all four honor Dough-nut Hall, the name we had playfully given our old homestead, with a ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII No. 6 June 1848 • Various
... Young's Harem.—These are the houses of Brigham Young. The first on the right is the Lion House—so called because a crouching stone lion adorns the central front window. The adjoining small building is Brigham Young's office—and where he receives his visitors.—The large house in the centre ...
— The Complete Works of Artemus Ward, Part 6 • Charles Farrar Browne
... dusty halls of learning?" ejaculated a scholar of Lemoine. "What doth the jealous-pated slayer of his wife and unborn child within the reach of free-spoken voices, and mayhap of well-directed blades? Methinks it were more prudent to tarry within the bowers of his harem, than to hazard his perfumed person ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 1 • Charles Dudley Warner
... harem. Staying with us. Don't pity me. I deserve nothing. I made a mistake once. Don't ask me what. Don't come down ...
— If Winter Don't - A B C D E F Notsomuchinson • Barry Pain
... folly. He cannot understand why Faust is still dissatisfied with life. Surely he has seen enough of its pleasures. He advises him, if he is weary of court life, to build himself a Sultan's palace and harem and live in retirement—as Tiberius did on the island of Capri. 'Not so,' answers Faust. 'This world of earthly soil Still gives me room for greater action. I feel new strength for nobler toil—Toil that at ...
— The Faust-Legend and Goethe's 'Faust' • H. B. Cotterill
... exhibit, more commonly known as the "Beauty Show." Here were fifty young ladies chosen from as many different nationalities in order to exhibit the fashions of the world in the highest art of dress. At the front was Fatima, the queen of beauty. Her booth represented a room in the Sultan's harem. On either side, reclining on an ottoman, were her waiting maids, and at her feet her special servant. All the magnificence of oriental splendor surrounded her. A group of at least a hundred people were continually crowding the railing ...
— The Adventures of Uncle Jeremiah and Family at the Great Fair - Their Observations and Triumphs • Charles McCellan Stevens (AKA 'Quondam')
... virile 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
... a chain of; they don't mind stooping to conquer; they don't mind playing upon the weaker, baser sides of men's natures; they don't mind appealing, for their own ends, to the pity and generosity of others; they don't mind swallowing indignity and smiling abjectly, like any woman of the harem at her lord, so that they gain their object. That is the sort of 'woman's nature' that our conditions are busy selecting. Let us cultivate it. We live in a scientific age; the fittest survive. Let us ...
— The Daughters of Danaus • Mona Caird
... black eunuchs, whose duty it was to wait on the sultan, to guard the sultanas, and to superintend the harem.—Habesci, State of the ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama, Vol 1 - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook • The Rev. E. Cobham Brewer, LL.D.
... more (this when his every spare moment was divided between Peter the Great and the Arabian Nights), he saw himself, at the head of a Cossack army, storming Constantinople and carrying away the most beautiful Princess ever enslaved in royal harem. And while the boy silently performed these great deeds, he was also engaged upon a few simpler, but more salutary physical feats in a neighboring gymnasium, whence he emerged with muscles fairly well-developed, and a hand and eye ...
— The Genius • Margaret Horton Potter
... later years, marvelous changes have taken place all over the world. Even in China, official attempts are now being made to leave women free to walk by abolishing the bandaging of infants' feet. In Turkey, women are going out from the harem to participate in public life. In Germany, they are escaping from the exclusive service of the home. In England, they are repeating the cries of the men of 1776 and of 1789: "All men and women are born free and equal." "No taxation without ...
— Woman in Modern Society • Earl Barnes
... fornication; liaison; wenching, venery, dissipation. seduction; defloration, defilement, abuse, violation, rape; incest. prostitution, social evil, harlotry, stupration[obs3], whoredom, concubinage, cuckoldom[obs3], adultery, advoutry[obs3], crim[abbr]. con.; free love. seraglio, harem; brothel, bagnio[obs3], stew, bawdyhouse[obs3], cat house, lupanar[obs3], house of ill fame, bordel[obs3], bordello. V. be impure &c. adj.; intrigue; debauch, defile, seduce; prostitute; abuse, violate, deflower; commit adultery &c.n. Adj. impure; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus • Peter Mark Roget
... collocations of letters. Then in some beatific moment these huddles of letters took meaning; in instance after instance they represented, not a word, but words—a linguistic household. Let them be what they might—a harem, the domestic establishment of a Mormon, the dwelling-place of verbal polygamists,—he could at last see order in their relationships. To their morals he was indifferent, absorbed as he was ...
— The Century Vocabulary Builder • Creever & Bachelor
... their occasions. Then the eunuchs came to him and calling down on him length of life and continuance [of glory and prosperity], walked in attendance upon him and raised the curtain, and he entered the pavilion of the harem, where he found candles lighted and lamps burning and singing-women smiting [on instruments of music]. When he saw this, he was confounded in his wit and said in himself, "By Allah, I am in truth Commander of the Faithful!" As soon as he appeared, the slave-girls rose to him and carrying him ...
— Tales from the Arabic Volumes 1-3 • John Payne
... rage against the rood Your devils and your swine; A colder scorn of womanhood, A baser fear of wine, And lust without the harem, And Doom without the God, Go. It is not this rabble Sayeth ...
— G. K. Chesterton, A Critical Study • Julius West
... loveliness two hundred and eighty Italian poets and rimesters in vain exhausted the resources of several languages;—a loveliness shared by the sister whose device was the "Flower of Love" amaranth blazoned on her shield. This beauty Kheyr-ed-d[i]n destined for the Sultan's harem, and so secret were the Corsairs' movements that he almost surprised the fair Giulia in her bed. She had barely time to mount a horse in her shift and fly with a single attendant,—whom she afterwards condemned to death, perhaps because the beauty ...
— The Story of the Barbary Corsairs • Stanley Lane-Poole
... the surge with awful bellow Doth ever lash the rocky wall; And where the moon most brightly mellow Dost beam when mists of evening fall; Where midst his harem's countless blisses The Moslem spends his vital span, A Sorceress there with gentle ...
— The Talisman • George Borrow
... by the palace In the sunset's fading glow Felt the soft warm breezes blow; Watched the fair girls of the Harem Idly saunter ...
— Bars and Shadows • Ralph Chaplin
... Johnny Hill, who trained Auraria, the Melbourne Cup winner. The pride of place amongst breeders was then taken by Sir Thomas Elder. The stud farm at Morphetville left nothing to be desired. The renowned chestnut, Gang Forward, and a big-boned bay horse named Neckesgat were the lords of the harem. Some twenty brood mares, descendants of the best strains of thoroughbred stock, had been brought together, and many a good horse which played about as a foal at Morphetville's beautiful ...
— The Chronicles of a Gay Gordon • Jose Maria Gordon
... appreciate the depth of my passion. I felt as if some one had thrust a red-hot iron into my heart. Ah! what a wretched country France is! If I were in Turkey, I would bear you off on my Arab steed, shut you up in a harem, with walls bristling with cimetars, surrounded by a deep moat; black eunuchs should sleep before the threshold of your chamber, and at night, instead of dogs, lions should guard ...
— The Cross of Berny • Emile de Girardin
... than on safety and convenience, and it threatens without attaining these to become no better than a modern drawing-room, with its divans, and ottomans, and sun-shades, and a hundred other oriental things, which we are taking west with us, invented for the ladies of the harem and the effeminate natives of the Celestial Empire, which Jonathan should be ashamed to know the names of. I would rather sit on a pumpkin and have it all to myself than be crowded on a velvet cushion. I would rather ride on earth in an ox cart, with a free circulation, than go to heaven ...
— Walden, and On The Duty Of Civil Disobedience • Henry David Thoreau
... three principal courts. In the first live the guards; in the second, the officers and higher authorities; in the third, which occupies the side towards the Jumna, stands the palace, the baths, the harem, and several gardens. In this court, everything is made of marble. The walls of the rooms in the palaces are covered with such stones as agates, onyxes, jasper, cornelian, lapis-lazuli, etc., inlaid in mosaic work, representing flowers, birds, arabesques, and other figures. Two rooms ...
— A Woman's Journey Round the World • Ida Pfeiffer
... too hungry to make many objections, and therefore followed the advice of my friend. On came the flock, the old patriarch at their head, unsuspicious of danger, and thinking probably of the rich treat which he was about to confer upon his numerous harem, by allowing them to partake of a bit of salt grass at the close ...
— The Gold Hunter's Adventures - Or, Life in Australia • William H. Thomes
... aspect was safe and easy in the execution. He was informed by his spies of the weakness and anarchy of Hindustan: the subahs of the provinces had erected the standard of rebellion; and the perpetual infancy of Sultan Mahmud was despised even in the harem of Delhi. The Mongol army moved in three great divisions, and Timur observes with pleasure that the ninety-two squadrons of a thousand horse most fortunately corresponded with the ninety-two names or epithets of ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... women, who doubtless had already dried their tears, the sky began to smile before we reached the treacherous pass in the outer reef. Beyond Moto Utu, the tiny islet in the harbor that had been harem and fort in kingly days, we saw the surf foaming on the coral, and soon were ...
— White Shadows in the South Seas • Frederick O'Brien
... Scott, the sealer, who had taken up is abode on the island with his harem, three Tasmanian gins ...
— The Book of the Bush • George Dunderdale
... irregular kind, and contain also many vivid pictures of Venetian society and manners. "Manfred" was completed in 1817, and was followed by the fourth canto of "Childe Harold." Margarita Cogni was the reigning favourite of Byron's unworthy harem at this time; and his poem of "Don Juan," now begun, most faithfully and lamentably reflects every whim and passion that, like the rack of autumn, ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol X • Various
... 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
... wandering along the shores of the Bosphorus in his company. Still, she says a good deal about Sir Stratford Canning, the British Ambassador, by whom, she declares, she was given a letter to the Chief Eunuch, admitting her to the Sultan's harem. But this, like many of her other statements, must be taken with a ...
— The Magnificent Montez - From Courtesan to Convert • Horace Wyndham
... when little Foxbury used to dance in the ballet over the water. DON'T I remember her! She boxed my ears behind the scenes, by jingo. [Coming forward]. Miss Pemberton! Star of the ballet! Light of the harem! Don't you remember the grand Oriental ballet of the "Bulbul ...
— The Wolves and the Lamb • William Makepeace Thackeray
... the nose of him. In regard to the Dissident and all other curative processes he is languid, evasive, for moments recalcitrant to Russian suggestions; a lost imbecile,—forget him, with or without a tear. He has still a good deal of so-called gallantry on his hands; flies to his harem when outside things go contradictory. [Hermann, v. 402, &c.] Think of malign Journalists printing this bit of Letter at one time, to do him ill in a certain quarter: "Oh, come to me, my Princess! Dearer than all Empresses:—imperial ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XXI. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... her fingers and restin' her chin on 'em thoughtful, "not precisely that type, either. My mind may not be particularly advanced, but the modified harem existence for women doesn't appeal to me. And I must confess that, with kitchenette breakfasts, dinners out, and one maid, I can't get wildly excited over a wholly domestic career. Torchy, I simply must have ...
— The House of Torchy • Sewell Ford
... made more than one effort to approach him again, but in vain. From other sources I afterwards learned that the only kind of opera Count Kuscelew recognised was Adam's. As for the operatic company to be engaged to suit his taste, what he really wanted was more a small harem than a company ...
— My Life, Volume I • Richard Wagner
... forgotten and the things of nature for amusement and fun. "If we drop out now," she told her daughter, "all is lost." And so they made their plans. The daughter was not an adept in learning the rapid succession of combination dances wherein orientalism, the harem, the submerged tenth, and the various beasts of the field and fowls of the barnyard figured, so the first step was to secure a teacher who would correct her errors and give her skill in the performances which had robbed so many of her friends of all ...
— The Girl and Her Religion • Margaret Slattery
... sure," I replied. "He is probably this moment staking half his property on the red at Monte Carlo, or trying to peep into a harem at Stamboul, or dining off bison steak in ...
— My New Curate • P.A. Sheehan
... brethren in Christ, all promptings of the inner spirit are holy; incest, even, is no sin. They repudiate marriage, and justify their abominations by the Biblical legends of Lot's daughters, Solomon's harem, and the like."[141] ...
— Religion & Sex - Studies in the Pathology of Religious Development • Chapman Cohen
... up again, and the Histoire as well. This last is the story of a young modern Greek slave named Theophe (a form of which the last syllable seems more modern than Greek), who is made visible in full harem by her particularly complaisant master, a Turkish pasha, to a young Frenchman, admired and bought by this Frenchman (the relater of the story), and freed by him. He does not at first think of making her ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 1 - From the Beginning to 1800 • George Saintsbury
... opening with diluted clay, only leaving a hole through which the captive can pass her beak to receive the fruits which he brings her in abundance. If the lady is thus cloistered as closely as in the most jealous harem, her lord and master at least expends on ...
— The Industries of Animals • Frederic Houssay
... 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 ...
— South Wind • Norman Douglas
... you 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 housekeeper ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 12, No. 73, November, 1863 • Various
... come, Abigail was to be wife to David, after the custom of the period, which attached a numerous harem to the entourage of a chieftain or ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 3 of 8 • Various
... 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 Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... which the rains have rather improved than otherwise; and although much is unridably heavy, it is immeasurably superior to yesterday's mud. I pass the country residence of a wealthy pasha, and see the ladies of his harem seated in the meadow hard by, enjoying the fresh morning air. They form a circle, facing inward, and the swarthy eunuch in charge stands keeping watch at a respectful distance. I carry a pocketful of bread with me this morning, and about nine o'clock, upon coming to a ruined mosque and a ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle V1 • Thomas Stevens
... least of the respectable Kensington house must have been sacrificed. The walls were decorated with Egyptian frescoes and Chinese embroideries, and silk divans which might have figured in a cinema producer's idea of a Turkish harem were set haphazard on the mosaic floor. In the centre a stone fountain of the modern-primitive school and banked with flowers splashed noisily. Somehow it offered Kensington the final insult. But she had wanted it, just as she had wanted ...
— The Dark House • I. A. R. Wylie
... a certain air of pensive reflection down the street. I rested my revolver on my left arm, took careful aim and fired. The bird towered madly, executed a wild waltz, and went round the corner. The noise of the shot disturbed some members of his harem, and a hen fluttered into the branches of a tree close by. Francis potted her, and she fell at our feet. Here, at least, was supper; but at the first corner we turned, in search of a place in which to camp for the night, we found the rest of the feathered brood feeding ...
— The Making Of A Novelist - An Experiment In Autobiography • David Christie Murray
... widow-burning. It is only within half a generation past that British interference has succeeded in putting a stop to these horrible immolations. When, in 1843, Suchet Singh, uncle of the present maharajah, Ranbir Singh, died, his home harem of a hundred and fifty wives were burned with his body at Ramnagar, and the same execution was inflicted on his branch establishment of twenty-five at Jummoo. Seven years after the beginning of British sway the thirty-two widows of a cousin of the maharajah were burned. This scene was ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 22, September, 1878 • Various
... will install me as queen of your harem, I suppose," interrupted Ruth acidly. "Have you informed the other ladies you mentioned of ...
— Fire Mountain - A Thrilling Sea Story • Norman Springer
... subjects than the benefit of his exchequer, and the same object appears in his horse traffic (1Kings ix. 19), his Ophir trade (1Kings x. 11), and his cession of territory to Hiram (1Kings ix. 11). His passions were architecture, a gorgeous court, and the harem, in which he sought to rival other Oriental kings, as for example his Egyptian father-in-law. For this he required copious means-forced labour, tribute in kind, and money. He had especially at heart ...
— Prolegomena to the History of Israel • Julius Wellhausen
... wants it. And he doesn't, of course. Being a slob suits him fine. He's just likely to be more cautious about it in future. So we'll let him go his happy way. Now—let's get down to business. How does Pluly's yacht harem stack up?" ...
— Legacy • James H Schmitz
... Do 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
... gems of beauty," rejoined Fitzgerald. "If I were the Grand Bashaw, I would have them both in my harem." ...
— A Romance of the Republic • Lydia Maria Francis Child
... 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 ...
— Sex in Education - or, A Fair Chance for Girls • Edward H. Clarke
... 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 through, ...
— Sport and Work on the Nepaul Frontier - Twelve Years Sporting Reminiscences of an Indigo Planter • James Inglis
... case? Why, in de fus' place, I know how my lordship dere—and a perty lordship he is—and de oder shamwally, which I don't see here present, and dat whited saltpeter, ought ebery single one ob dem to be hung up as high as Harem. Dere! dat what I know; and I hope you'll do it, ole ...
— Self-Raised • Emma Dorothy Eliza Nevitte Southworth
... Europe the laxity of morals they had contracted during the Crusades. The Comte de Comminges practised polygamy, and, according to ecclesiastical chronicles, Raymond VI, Comte de Toulouse, one of the most ardent of the Albigense Credentes, had his harem.[220] The Albigensian movement has been falsely represented as a protest merely against the tyranny of the Church of Rome; in reality it was a rising against the fundamental doctrines of Christianity—more than this, against all principles of religion and morality. For whilst ...
— Secret Societies And Subversive Movements • Nesta H. Webster
... harem, and quaffing date syrup mixed with ginger out of the silver cups looted from the church of the Christians. But that imposing figure had only to show itself for the ...
— Eminent Victorians • Lytton Strachey
... 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 despair; my feelings could not be concealed ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol VI. • Various
... might be, by he grace of her dowry, Queen of England, but she was soon to discover that to King Charles she was no more than a wife de jure. With wives de facto Charles would people his seraglio as fancy moved him; and the present wife defacto, the mistress of his heart, the first lady of his harem, was that beautiful termagant, Barbara Villiers, wife of the accommodating Roger Palmer, ...
— The Historical Nights Entertainment, Second Series • Rafael Sabatini
... year 1905 a lady lawyer, Miss Cornelia Sorabjee, a Parsee Christian lady, was appointed by the Government of Bengal to be a legal adviser to the Bengal Court of Wards, or landowning minors. Zenana or harem ladies, e.g. the widowed mothers of the minors, would thus be able to consult a trained lawyer at first hand within the zenana or harem. Missionaries are discussing the propriety of authorising certain Christian women to baptize women converts within the zenanas.[28] Long ago missions ...
— New Ideas in India During the Nineteenth Century - A Study of Social, Political, and Religious Developments • John Morrison
... tending the light that burned, Tortured and trodden therefore, spat on and slain and spurned; Branded for others' vices, robbed of your rightful fame, Clinging to Truth in a truthless land in the name of the ancient Name; Generous, courteous, gentle, patient under the yoke, Decent (hemmed in a harem land ye were ever a one-wife folk); Royal and brave and ancient—haply an hour has struck When the new fad-fangled peoples shall weary of raking muck, And turning from coward counsels and loathing the parish lies, In shame ...
— The Eye of Zeitoon • Talbot Mundy
... eyes happier than the wild Indians with hardy frames and calm tempers, seasoned to the privations for which you pity them, and uncursed with desires of that better state never to be theirs. The Arab in his desert has seen all the luxuries of the pasha in his harem; but he envies them not. He is contented with his barb, his tent, his desolate sands, and his ...
— Alice, or The Mysteries, Book VI • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... on his cushions for a moment. Then he reopened his eyes. "Is there anything else you want to know," he asked, "before I retire to the Inner Harem?" ...
— The Hohenzollerns in America - With the Bolsheviks in Berlin and other impossibilities • Stephen Leacock
... whose tents covered the plain, and who here profess Islamism, cried furiously after them, "See, how the Royal Servians now-a-days have the audacity to enter Novibazar on horseback!" Youssouf Bey, the governor, was said to be asleep in his harem, (the usual Not-at-home of an Oriental,) but, as they afterwards ascertained, was actually afraid to receive them; and while they were sauntering round the town, a savage-looking Bosniak starting up, exclaimed, "Giaours, kafirs, spies! I know what you come for!—Do ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 364, February 1846 • Various
... converse in the Turkish language, which, strange to say, we found available in all the countries that lay in our transcontinental pathway as far as the great wall of China. Toward evening we rode in the garden of the harem of the khan, and at daybreak the next morning were again in the saddle. By a very early start we hoped to escape the burden of excessive hospitality; in other words, to get rid of an escort that was an expensive nuisance. At the next village we were confronted by what ...
— Across Asia on a Bicycle • Thomas Gaskell Allen and William Lewis Sachtleben
... face. Herrera had no occasion to speak of the use of marble and porphyry in the walls of this house in such a vague manner and upon more vague information. The reference to the thousand or more women as forming the harem of ...
— Houses and House-Life of the American Aborigines • Lewis H. Morgan
... as I have said before, she may have had sunstroke, and lost her memory, or have been stolen and put away in a harem. She's not dead, that's certain, because she had her hand told before she left on her last trip, and she's to ...
— Desert Love • Joan Conquest
... leads down from her room to the garden. There she saunters for a time, enjoying the perfume of roses and jasmine, and stands before the cage of singing birds to amuse herself with them. One of the other wives comes down to the harem garden and calls out to her: "You are as ugly as a monkey, Fatima; you are old and wrinkled and your eyes are red. Not a man in all Stambul would care to look at you." Fatima answers: "If Emin Effendi had not been tired of you, old moth-eaten parrot, he ...
— From Pole to Pole - A Book for Young People • Sven Anders Hedin
... about. There was nothing striking about the room; every-where were beautiful and modest things, simple and rare furniture, Oriental curtains which did not seem to come from a department store but from the interior of a harem; and exactly opposite me hung the portrait of a woman. It was a portrait of medium size, showing the head and the upper part of the body, and the hands, which were holding a book. She was young, bareheaded; ribbons were woven in her hair; she was smiling sadly. Was it because she ...
— Maupassant Original Short Stories (180), Complete • Guy de Maupassant
... the chief overseer of the harem and bade him lead Fatma to the throne-room. The maiden had passed the night in weeping, for she had heard that she was to be given in marriage to a strange man. She shuddered at the thought, for as only child of the Caliph she had ...
— Tales of Wonder Every Child Should Know • Various
... natural daughter of Anne Bequs, who was supported by M. Dumonceau, a rich banker at Paris. The child was put into a convent, and, after passing through different phases of life, she was finally placed in a house of pleasure, where she captivated the Comte du Barry, at whose harem she became the favorite. The count, who had once before tried to supply the king with a mistress, now planned for his favorite. The king ordered the brother of Du Barry, Guillaume, to hasten to Paris to marry a lady of the king's choice. The girl's name had been changed officially ...
— Women of Modern France - Woman In All Ages And In All Countries • Hugo P. Thieme
... answered, but a look from Biddy enjoined silence. And so we were in touch with the "Ship's Mystery" again! I took the envelope, which was addressed to Miss Gilder in a distinctively American handwriting, strange to see coming from an Egyptian harem. ...
— It Happened in Egypt • C. N. Williamson & A. M. Williamson
... soul, are you awake?" was her greeting, as she perched herself on the foot of the bed. "I've just had the very sweetest note from Hunt-Goring accompanied by a box of the most exquisite Eastern cigarettes—'Companions of the Harem,' he says they are called. And how are you feeling now, you poor wan thing? What interesting shadows you have developed! I wish I could make my eyes look like that. The revered Max suffered agonies ...
— The Keeper of the Door • Ethel M. Dell
... down, Jay. You've been working too hard. A year out on this rock could make a man see King Solomon's harem." ...
— The Minus Woman • Russell Robert Winterbotham
... on the Asiatic side, a few miles from the city, we saw the beautiful white marble Beylerbey Palace, built in the year 1866 by Abdul-Aziz, the predecessor of the present Sultan, as a residence for his harem. For their pleasure he surrounded the palace with groves and gardens and established a menagerie in the grounds. About eight miles from the city all eyes were turned toward a hill on the European shore, where, above ...
— A Trip to the Orient - The Story of a Mediterranean Cruise • Robert Urie Jacob
... these trifles had applied their energies to the task of contenting the people, would they not have preserved the scepter in their family?" He then ordered that this building should be razed to the ground. Nor did this action stand alone. He reduced the size of the harem maintained by all the Chinese as well as the Mongol rulers, and he instituted a rigid economy in all matters of state ceremonial. Changtu, the Xanadu of Coleridge, the famous summer palace of Kublai, had been destroyed during the campaigns with the Mongols, ...
— China • Demetrius Charles Boulger
... incomparable set of his trousers spoilt by the perching of any dear little child upon his knee. And so, now that he is stricken with seventy years, he knows none of the bitterness of eld, for his toilet-table is an imperishable altar, his wardrobe a quiet nursery and very constant harem. Mr. Le V. has many disciples, young men who look to him for guidance in all that concerns costume, and each morning come, themselves tentatively clad, to watch the perfect procedure of his toilet and learn invaluable lessons. I myself, a lie-a-bed, ...
— The Works of Max Beerbohm • Max Beerbohm
... situation in Egypt! There they are bound down by the fetters of slavery, condemned to servitude, and have no influence in public affairs. Their empire is confined within the walls of the Harem. There are their graces and charms entombed. The circle of their life extends not beyond their ...
— Sketches of the Fair Sex, in All Parts of the World • Anonymous
... George Sand's Histoire de ma Vie, hoping that at last the great revelation was coming, and he was again disillusioned. But before this Emile Barrault had arisen and declared that in the East, in the solitude of the harem, "la femme libre" would be found in the person of some odalisque. The "mission of the mother" was formed, and with Barrault at the head it set out for Constantinople. All were dressed in white as an indication of the ...
— The Task of Social Hygiene • Havelock Ellis
... had not been pathetic. But to DeLisle it was only pathetic, because, European though he was, he knew the hidden romance of the Agha's life: his worship of a beautiful Spanish wife who had died years ago, and for love of whom he had vowed never to take into his harem any other woman, although he had no son. His nearest male relative was a nephew, to whom DeLisle imagined that some day Ourieda would be married, though the young man was at least a ...
— A Soldier of the Legion • C. N. Williamson
... 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
... throwing himself into the spirit of the East, to credit the disgust and detestation that numerous everyday acts, which appear perfectly harmless to his countrymen, excite in many Orientals."[154] If our women are shocked at polygamy and the harem, Mohammedan women are equally shocked at the ball and dinner dresses of our ladies, at our dances, and at the manners of social intercourse between the sexes. Negroes in East Africa are as much disgusted to see white men eat fowl or eggs as we are at any of their messes. Missions ...
— Folkways - A Study of the Sociological Importance of Usages, Manners, Customs, Mores, and Morals • William Graham Sumner
... 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 selection—a survival ...
— Falling in Love - With Other Essays on More Exact Branches of Science • Grant Allen
... At Greenwich he built a country estate where the stables were framed of choice mahogany. Sweeny hobnobbed with Jim Fiske of the Erie, the Tweed of Wall Street, who went about town dressed in loud checks and lived with his harem in his Opera ...
— The Boss and the Machine • Samuel P. Orth
... terribly foolish and piteous great men were.... Jesus dead on a crucifix; Socrates and the hemlock bowl; the earnest Paul beheaded at Rome.... A little wisdom, a little callousness would have avoided all this.... How satisfied he was, how damned petty! His little bourgeois life, his harem of one pretty girl, his nice ship ... smug as a shop-keeper ... and then life, fate, whatever you call it, had tripped him up, abashed, beaten, through the medium of a mountebank wrestler whom he had ...
— The Wind Bloweth • Brian Oswald Donn-Byrne
... unto himself. They lived in princely fashion, these lords of the castle, as they were called. Among the retainers, monogamy was practiced. The workers had their little families—husband, wife and children. But for the rulers, more than one wife was the rule. Within each castle was a harem of beauties, drawn perforce from the common people. The most beautiful girls of each settlement were trained from childhood to anticipate the honor of being selected by the master for ...
— The White Invaders • Raymond King Cummings
... infancy by his own unnatural father, the Sultan Ibrahim. This cruel maniac (whose only excuse was that he was not in possession of more than half his wits at the time) had been seized with a fit of ungovernable rage against the ladies of his harem, and in his fury had done his best to slay his own son and heir. Happily he had not succeeded in doing more than maim the child, and, before long, imprisonment and the bow-string put an end to his dangerous career. But though the boy Sultan ...
— A Book of Quaker Saints • Lucy Violet Hodgkin
... died in 1828, in the prime of life; and, by an intrigue in his harem, a concubine, Ranavalo, was proclaimed Queen of Madagascar. The advance had been too rapid, and, as in Japan, there was a large party of conservatives anxious to return to the old regime. The new queen dissembled for ...
— The Continental Monthly, Volume V. Issue I • Various
... every man aboard is all hyped up about living aground—especially with a harem. But before I grant liberty, suppose there's any VD around here that our prophylactics ...
— Masters of Space • Edward Elmer Smith
... person and character of the great destroyer. Mahomet the Second [1] was the son of the second Amurath; and though his mother has been decorated with the titles of Christian and princess, she is more probably confounded with the numerous concubines who peopled from every climate the harem of the sultan. His first education and sentiments were those of a devout Mussulman; and as often as he conversed with an infidel, he purified his hands and face by the legal rites of ablution. Age and empire appear to have relaxed this narrow bigotry: his aspiring genius disdained ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 6 • Edward Gibbon
... be no intervention. Your brave Thetians will be cut to pieces, your country will be pillaged and burned, your women will become the consorts of the Turkish soldiery, your ladies will go to grace a Turkish harem. These things must be unless you have the courage to hold out your hand. You call yourself a patriot. Prove it! The issue is ...
— The Traitors • E. Phillips (Edward Phillips) Oppenheim
... aloft into the star-studded, cloudless sky. Nothing could be more placid, nothing less prophetic of peril or ambush than this exquisite summer night. Somewhere within the forbidden region of Moreno's harem a guitar was beginning to tinkle softly. That was all very well, but then a woman's voice, anything but soft, took up a strange, monotonous refrain. Line after line, verse after verse it ran, harsh, changeless. He could not distinguish the words,—he did not ...
— Foes in Ambush • Charles King
... friends for sympathy, is far more piquant. The older residents among the ladies of the diplomatic corps, whose visiting list extends "beyond the curtain," have their own well-spiced tales to tell of "the great game" as it is played behind the latticed windows of the harem. It is not only in London and Berlin and Washington and Paris that wives and daughters of diplomats boost the business of their men-folk. In this mysterious, women's world of Turkey there are curious complications; as when a Young Turk, with a Paris veneer, has taken ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 21 - The Recent Days (1910-1914) • Charles F. Horne, Editor
... answered: "Names mean little in India; I know high-caste Brahmins who have given their children low-caste names to make them less an object of temptation to the gods of destruction. Also, the Gulab may have been stolen from the harem of some Nawab ...
— Caste • W. A. Fraser
... 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 wished. All the children of one father ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 1 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... maid of Hooe (Although his harem would have shocked her). But BROWN adored that maiden too: He ...
— The Bab Ballads • W. S. Gilbert
... points with his whip to the poor father of a family, remarking to the pretty woman at his side, "That's my chief." The Liberals call this state of things Progress; Rabourdin thought it Anarchy at the heart of power. He saw how it resulted in restless intrigues, like those of a harem between eunuchs and women and imbecile sultans, or the petty troubles of nuns full of underhand vexations, or college tyrannies, or diplomatic manoeuvrings fit to terrify an ambassador, all put in motion to obtain a fee or an increase in salary; it was like the hopping of ...
— Bureaucracy • Honore de Balzac
... 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
... 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 ...
— The Fight For The Republic in China • Bertram Lenox Putnam Weale
... the native blacks," said the girl, "as I am of Usanga and his people. He and his men were all attached to a German native regiment. They brought me along with them when they deserted, either with the intention of holding me ransom or selling me into the harem of one of the black sultans of the north. Usanga is much more to be feared than Numabo for he has had the advantage of European military training and is armed with more or ...
— Tarzan the Untamed • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... In the guarded harem prison, Where they smother under veils, And all echoes of the world are walled away; Though the sun has not yet risen, Yet the ancient darkness pales, And the sleepers, in ...
— Poems of Experience • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... that it should be the Pope and the Sultan, who are the chief encouragers of this branch of trade—women being prohibited as singers at St. Peter's, and not deemed trustworthy as guardians of the harem. ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 6 • Lord Byron
... three colored women, hired for the occasion, and to complete the "ongsomble" and make things perfectly "apropos"—two of Mrs. Phillipetti's favorite words—the three colored women had been dressed as Turkish slaves, while Mrs. Phillipetti and her aides dressed as Beauties of the Harem. ...
— Philo Gubb Correspondence-School Detective • Ellis Parker Butler
... were spoken, but instinctively the orphan knew that he had to decide between the scimitar and the quintet of wives—wall-flowers of the pasha's harem. ...
— Jack Harkaway's Boy Tinker Among The Turks - Book Number Fifteen in the Jack Harkaway Series • Bracebridge Hemyng
... of a hard life. We have all our burdens to bear. But hark! I hear the cock-crow, and snuff the morning air." And with this the royal ghost vanishes up the chimney — if there be a chimney in that dismal harem, where poor old Twoshoes and her companions pass their nights — their dreary nights, their restless nights, their cold long nights, shared in what glum companionship, illumined by what ...
— Some Roundabout Papers • W. M. Thackeray
... 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 ...
— All About Coffee • William H. Ukers
... every comfort, and is deeply attached to her lord, grows restless in her luxurious solitude; she pines for the excitement and triumphs of singing and dancing before an assembly. So, in the Nawab's absence, she takes professional disguise, and sings with a lute in the harem before his wife. To those who would like to see a Mohammedan lady of high rank in full dress, the following description of costume ...
— Studies in Literature and History • Sir Alfred Comyn Lyall
... already none too cleanly air with an odor of burning paraffin. She personified the outre; nothing so incongruous as her presence in that place could well be imagined. She was dressed as I remembered once to have seen her two years before, in the gauzy silks of the harem. There were pearls glittering like great tears amid the cloud of her wonderful hair. She wore broad gold bangles upon her bare arms, and her fingers were laden with jewelry. A heavy girdle swung from her hips, defining the lines of her slim shape, ...
— The Return of Dr. Fu-Manchu • Sax Rohmer
... limp, one that 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 my pal he's hurt a lot worse'n I am not a hundred yards away ...
— The Night of the Long Knives • Fritz Reuter Leiber
... are altogether Westernized, Indian habits rigidly exclude Englishmen from admission into the homes of Indian gentlemen, whether Hindu or Mahomedan. Intercourse between Indian and English ladies is in the same way almost entirely confined to formal visits paid by the latter to the zenana and the harem, and to so-called Purdah parties, given in English houses, in which Indian ladies are entertained as far as possible under the same conditions that prevail in their own homes—i.e., to the total exclusion of all males. So long as Indian ladies are ...
— Indian Unrest • Valentine Chirol
... i.e. the empresses of the first, second, third, and fourth ordos. Ordo is, properly speaking, a separate palace of the Khan, under the management of one of his wives. Chinese authors translate therefore the word ordo by 'harem.' The four Ordo established by Chingis Khan were destined for the empresses, who were chosen out of four different nomad tribes. During the reign of the first four Khans, who lived in Mongolia, the four ordo were considerably distant one from another, and the Khans visited them in different ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo Volume 1 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa
... founded in a feeling of consideration and gallantry, and with the determination to secure, under all circumstances, the convenience and comfort of the fair sex, is really, in its appearance and its consequences, anything but European, and produces a scene which rather reminds one of the harem of a sultan than a hall of chivalry. To judge from the countenances of the favoured fair, they are not themselves particularly pleased; and when their repast is over they necessarily return to empty halls, and are deprived of the dance at the very moment when they may feel most inclined ...
— Coningsby • Benjamin Disraeli
... denial of divine authority to any of them. If Hamlet, and the Sermon on the Mount, and the Koran, are all of a like divine authority, or all alike without any, it is merely a matter of taste whether I worship at Niblo's or the Tabernacle, or keep a harem in my house or a prayer-meeting. Most men, however, find it hard to believe that Christ and Mohammed taught exactly the same religion, or that the church and the theater are precisely equal and alike in their influences on the heart and life; and so they reject several of these ...
— Fables of Infidelity and Facts of Faith - Being an Examination of the Evidences of Infidelity • Robert Patterson
... and we set out at 7 A.M. on April 14th. I and Selim had the dignity of a "dingy" to ourselves: Mr. Tippet out of a little harem of twenty-five had chosen two wives and sundry Abigails, his canoe, laden with some fifteen souls, was nearly flush with the water. The beauties were somewhat surly, they complained, like the sluggard, of too early waking and swore that ...
— Two Trips to Gorilla Land and the Cataracts of the Congo Volume 1 • Richard F. Burton
... Louis XV. did not keep himself wholly to his pretty Annette. Being the mortgagee of lands bought by peasants who were unable to pay for them, he kept a harem in the valley, from Soulanges to five miles beyond Conches on the road to La Brie, without making other payments than "extension of time," for those fugitive pleasures which eat into the fortunes ...
— Sons of the Soil • Honore de Balzac
... moment,' he went on slowly, 'that I want her now, and that it is part of my revenge that I shall put her straight in my harem. Nothing is farther from my desires or my thoughts. The Black Roman is not satisfied with the leavings of such poor trash as you. I hate you both equally and for both of you there is waiting an experience more terrible than even your elastic imagination can conjure. You understand what that means!' ...
— The Clue of the Twisted Candle • Edgar Wallace
... H announced she has completed her selection of fifty young women, adding, "I hope they will prove satisfactory, sir." For a horrible moment I wondered if she thought I was arranging for a harem. ...
— Greener Than You Think • Ward Moore
... newspaper are combined in a statuette he modeled in Brussels and sent, in May, 1890, to Valentina Ventura in place of a letter; a clipping from a newspaper cut is also adapted for his model of "The Vengeance of the Harem"; and as evidence of his facility of expressing himself in this medium, his clay modeling of a Dapitan woman may be cited. One day while in exile he saw a native woman clearing up the street in front of ...
— Lineage, Life, and Labors of Jose Rizal, Philippine Patriot • Austin Craig
... earnest persuasion, and even the intervention of the viceroy of Naples, to induce Alexis to return to Russia. The miserable man had a harem of abandoned women with him, with whom he set out on his return. They arrived in Moscow the 13th of February, 1718, and on that very day Peter had an interview with his son. No one knows what passed in that interview. The ...
— The Empire of Russia • John S. C. Abbott
... of the time. With the help of Hiram, king of Tyre, who furnished materials and artisans, he erected a magnificent temple on Mount Moriah in Jerusalem. He built costly palaces. He brought horses from Egypt, and organized a standing army, with its cavalry and chariots. He established a harem, bringing into it women from the heathen countries, whom he allowed in their idolatrous rites. He was even seduced to take part in them himself. Renowned for his knowledge and for his wisdom—which was admired by the Queen of Saba (Sheba), who came to visit him from ...
— Outline of Universal History • George Park Fisher
... great fireplace which had been constructed at his orders, and admired the iron pot which hung by a chain above an artificial bivouac fire. This detail will suggest the rest of the studio—the Turkey carpet, the brass harem lamps, the Japanese screen, the pieces of drapery, the oak chairs covered with red Utrecht velvet, the oak wardrobe that had been picked up somewhere,—a ridiculous bargain, and the inevitable bed with spiral ...
— Confessions of a Young Man • George Moore
... revivers and renovators, regardless of expense. What with 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
... troops. Thus the vizier, or prime minister, who remained in the capital, became, by degrees, a more influential personage than 'the grand seignior' himself. The intrigues of the eunuchs in the imperial harem began to exert their baneful influences on the administration. The seraglio—in which many hundred females are immured, the most beautiful that can be found in the contiguous realms of Europe and Asia, wherever the ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol 3 No 3, March 1863 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... By the time that the boy came with little cups of Turkish coffee he was at least amiable. Nora talked dreamily. " The dragoman says this room used to be part of the harem long ago." She shot him a watchful glance, as if she had expected the fact to affect him. "Seems curious, doesn't it? A harem. Fancy that." He smoked one cigar and then discarded tobacco, for the perfume of orris-root and violet was making him meditate. Nora talked on in a low voice. She ...
— Active Service • Stephen Crane
... girls, snatched from their country, their parents, their lovers perhaps; yet they smiled through their tears, for the power of beauty is boundless, strangeness gives birth to caprice, and perhaps the royal favour awaited some of these barbaric captives in the secret depths of the harem. Soldiers accompanied them and kept the multitude from crowding ...
— The Works of Theophile Gautier, Volume 5 - The Romance of a Mummy and Egypt • Theophile Gautier
... Patricius, which his son mentions discreetly. Although he may not have been very faithful to his wife, that was in those days, more than in ours, a venial sin in the eyes of the world. At heart the African has always longed for a harem in his house; he inclines naturally to the polygamy of Muslemism. In Carthage, and elsewhere, public opinion was full of indulgence for the husband who allowed himself liberties with the serving-women. People laughed at it, and excused the man. ...
— Saint Augustin • Louis Bertrand
... originally as agent for some big firm, and had spent there nearly twenty years. He was an accomplished Persian and Arabic scholar, and gossip related that he had run off with a fair Persian from a Constantinople harem and lived with her in Persia until her death. But that ...
— The Invader - A Novel • Margaret L. Woods
... love. . . . Now, I hearn tell a heap about love and women in my time, but neither o' them things has affected my heart ever, though one time a spell back, tobaccy did. Still, Chief, with all respects to yore sentiments regardin' them Chocolate Drops what inhabits yore harem, . . . still, it sort o' roils me up to hear a white man a-talkin' and a-singin' o' takin' a ...
— Where the Sun Swings North • Barrett Willoughby
... guessed that the day of the Parade he would take Maud Vincent out in the country in his motor, to gather May-flowers. Polly told him she hoped they would have a good time, and then, after he had gone, drivin' his car lickety-split, harem skarum, owin' to his madness I spoze, Polly went upstairs and cried, for I hearn her, her room ...
— Samantha on the Woman Question • Marietta Holley
... dressed her, first sousing her thoroughly with sponge and soap in luke-warm rose-water in the silver cistern of the harem-bath, which is a circular marbled apartment with a fountain and the complicated ceilings of these houses, and frescoes, and gilt texts of the Koran on the walls, and pale rose-silk hangings. On the divan I had heaped a number of ...
— The Purple Cloud • M.P. Shiel
... "I can see that this is going to be one tight knit organization. Six men in love with the one dame ... ah, that is, lady. Kind of a reverse harem deal. Oh, this is going to lead to ...
— Border, Breed Nor Birth • Dallas McCord Reynolds
... under my eyes and on my ear-tips: an extra coat of pink and a brilliant (most injurious!) varnish on the nails. Then, with a dash of Rose Ambree for my companion's blouse and Nuits d'Orient for mine, we sallied forth scented like a harem, to do honour ...
— Everyman's Land • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... said the Frenchman, making a wry nose and taking a cigarette; "I'm accustomed to it. But you're wise to fumigate the air; one is n't in a harem." ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy |
