"Harem" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... echo in 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 ...
— Ran Away to Sea • Mayne Reid
... time the Sultan had just completed the butchery of many Armenians. His garments were red with blood, his hands dripped with gore. His house was a harem; his hand held a dagger. The sea-wall behind his palace rose out of the blue waters ...
— The Blot on the Kaiser's 'Scutcheon • Newell Dwight Hillis
... his sorrows, joys, etc. The nest he could feather decently enough himself; the sole problem, a critical one in its way, was to decide upon the helpmeet. West was neither college boy nor sailor. His heart was no harem of beautiful faces. Long since, he had faced the knowledge that there were but two girls in the world for him. Since, however, the church and the law allowed him but one, he must more drastically monogamize his heart and this he found enormously ...
— Queed • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... her by the delicacy of his colouring, 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 selection—a ...
— Falling in Love - With Other Essays on More Exact Branches of Science • Grant Allen
... beautiful poem, "The Light of the Harem," speaks of that luminous pulsation which precedes the real, ...
— English Literature, Considered as an Interpreter of English History - Designed as a Manual of Instruction • Henry Coppee
... his hands a few months before, countermanding the order almost immediately afterwards—and, happily, in good time—partly because they were women, and he still hoped, notwithstanding present difficulties and frequent former failures, to add them to his harem; and partly because he was under the apprehension that, among their other attributes, his mysterious visitors might possess that of omniscience, and, getting knowledge of the execution, object to and call him to account for it. It was a similar consideration alone which deterred him from solacing ...
— The Log of the Flying Fish - A Story of Aerial and Submarine Peril and Adventure • Harry Collingwood
... 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 wished. All the children of one father were legitimate, whether their ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 1 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... the same thing may be said of the women in the harem of an Oriental They do not complain.... They think our ...
— Men, Women, and Gods - And Other Lectures • Helen H. Gardener
... her, With her boy and demon fever, The midnight watch—none to relieve her, Save a little Busy Bee: He was called the Harem-Skarem, Noisy as a drum-clock larum, Yet his treasures he would share 'em, With ...
— Revised Edition of Poems • William Wright
... the daughter of kings. In the anxiety of their hearts they started from their seats, And all gave answer with one voice: "O crown of the ladies of the earth! Maiden pre-eminent amongst the pre-eminent! Whose praise is spread abroad from Hindustan to China; The resplendent ring in the circle of the harem; Whose stature surpasseth every cypress in the garden; Whose cheek rivalleth the lustre of the Pleiades; Whose picture is sent by the ruler of Kanuj Even to the distant monarchs of the West— Have you ceased to be modest in your own eyes? Have you lost all reverence ...
— National Epics • Kate Milner Rabb
... to demonstrate the contrary; and this disappointment, combined with his love of power and his impatience under the restraints of an ascetic life, quickly disabused him of his imaginary godhead, and drove him back to his palace and his harem. The king of Siam "is venerated equally with a divinity. His subjects ought not to look him in the face; they prostrate themselves before him when he passes, and appear before him on their knees, their elbows resting on the ground." There is a ...
— The Golden Bough - A study of magic and religion • Sir James George Frazer
... female slaves, passed in the gynaikonitis, from which they issued only on rare occasions. The family life of Greek women widely differed from our Christian idea; neither did it resemble the life in an Oriental harem, to which it was far superior. The idea of the family was held up by both law and custom, and although concubinage and the intercourse with hetairai was suffered, nay favored, by the state, still such impure elements never intruded on ...
— Museum of Antiquity - A Description of Ancient Life • L. W. Yaggy
... strange 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
... education of all the young blood of the village—my little self included. This school, I must say in passing, turned out some very good scholars: there was no set teacher—the "learned 'uns" of the neighbourhood came forward and gave their services. It used to be said I was a wild dog, a harem-scarem; and I was often caned for my pranks. Caricaturing the teacher was one of my favourite attractions and principal offences—at least I had to smart most for it. But I got over it, as all boys seem to have done. Perhaps the best description of my antics before I was ten years of age will ...
— Adventures and Recollections • Bill o'th' Hoylus End
... Sultan bring his famous horses, Let him bring his golden swords to me,— Bring his slaves, his eunuchs, and his harem; He would offer them in vain ...
— Four Famous American Writers: Washington Irving, Edgar Allan Poe, • Sherwin Cody
... i' the bosom of the sun, Under the roses dappled and dun. I thought of the Sultan Gingerbeer, In his palace beside the Bendemeer, With his Afghan guards and his eunuchs blind, And the harem that stretched for a league behind. The tulips bent i' the summer breeze, Under the broad chrysanthemum-trees, And the minstrel, playing his culverin, Made for mine ears a merry din, If I were the Sultan, and he were I, Here i' the ...
— The Book of Humorous Verse • Various
... 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
... places; nothing discourages them, neither cold nor heat, nor even hunger. They hurry on, but they never arrive. Among them D'Argenton, better clothed and better fed, resembled a rich Hadji with his harem, his pipes, and his riches; on this evening he was especially radiant, ...
— Jack - 1877 • Alphonse Daudet
... we had anything like that," Vall said, studying the glowing tip of his cigarette, his face wearing the curiously withdrawn expression of a conscious memory recall. "Fifty years ago; the time that gang kidnaped some girls from Second Level Triplanetary Empire Sector and sold them into the harem of some Fourth ...
— Time Crime • H. Beam Piper
... tastes of the new king lay in other directions than war. The two celebrated Colossi of Memnon (statues of himself), many great buildings, the important part played by his favourite wife Teye, the well-filled harem, the cultivation of "wisdom" (which practically, no doubt, was tantamount to what we should call "preciosity"); last, but not least, the solemn adoration of his own divine image—all these facts combine to indicate ...
— The Tell El Amarna Period • Carl Niebuhr
... informed that there were two or three very charming English ladies at Dacca, was strongly tempted to adorn his harem with them." ...
— Three Frenchmen in Bengal - The Commercial Ruin of the French Settlements in 1757 • S.C. Hill
... But still, 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 sense he sought to raise himself ...
— The Last Days of Pompeii • Edward George Bulwer-Lytton
... three weeks—three 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 speedy and ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII No. 6 June 1848 • Various
... his Mr. Dougherty repaired each night when the hour was so late as to promise no further diversion in the arch domains of sport. By that time the occupant of the monogamistic harem would be in dreamland, the bulbul silenced and the ...
— The Voice of the City • O. Henry
... not quite 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
... GARDEN OF EDEN.—The Garden of Eden was no harem. Primeval nature knew no community of love; there was only the union of two souls, and the twain were made one flesh. If God had intended man to be a polygamist he would have created for him two or more wives; but he only created one wife for the first man. He also directed Noah to take ...
— Searchlights on Health: Light on Dark Corners • B.G. Jefferis
... his education was more Tatar than Chinese. He was one of the numerous grandchildren of the imperial house of Keelung, but without any expectation of filling the throne, as both his mother and paternal grandmother were inferior members of the imperial harem. The discipline under which the royal family was trained, was of the strictest kind. Each of the male children, on completing his sixth year, was placed with the rest under a course of education superintended by the state. Though eminent doctors ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 433 - Volume 17, New Series, April 17, 1852 • Various
... 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. The story of this high-handed and ...
— Mysteries of Paris, V3 • Eugene Sue
... food and drink were constantly supplied to them, in Egypt laid upon the altars, in other lands burnt for a sweet savour. At Thebes the divine wife of the god, or high priestess, was the head of the harem of concubines of the god; and similarly in Babylonia the chamber of the god with the golden couch could only be visited by the priestess who slept there for oracular responses. The Egyptian gods could not be cognisant of what passed on earth {3} without being informed, ...
— The Religion of Ancient Egypt • W. M. Flinders Petrie
... farmer at the time of killing in autumn is wont to do with his herd of cattle. Females and young are only killed exceptionally. Even the married males, or more correctly the males that can get themselves a harem and can defend it, commonly escape being killed, if not for any other reason, because the skin is too often torn and tattered and the hair pulled out. It is thus the bachelors that have to ...
— The Voyage of the Vega round Asia and Europe, Volume I and Volume II • A.E. Nordenskieold
... Hard malmola. Hard (difficult) malfacila. Hard (severe) severega. Harden (to make hard) malmoligi, hardi. Harden (to become hardy) hardigxi. Hardly apenaux. Hardness malmoleco. Hardwareman kuirilvendisto. Hardy hardita. Hark! auxskultu. Hare leporo. Hairbrained sencerba. Harem haremo. Haricot-bean fazeolo. Harlequin arlekeno. Harm malutili. Harm malutilo. Harmonica harmoniko. Harmonious harmonia. Harmonize harmoniigi. Harmony harmonio. Harness jungi. Harness jungajxo. Harp harpo. Harpoon harpuno. Harpy ...
— English-Esperanto Dictionary • John Charles O'Connor and Charles Frederic Hayes
... maintain a harem, denotes that you are wasting your best energies on low pleasures. Life holds fair promises, if your desires are ...
— 10,000 Dreams Interpreted • Gustavus Hindman Miller
... 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 was bareheaded, ...
— Maupassant Original Short Stories (180), Complete • Guy de Maupassant
... custom for choosing and dowering brides, which was of Asia. The national treatment of women was akin to that of an Oriental State; Venetian women lived in a retirement which recalled the life of the harem, only appearing on great occasions to display their brocades and jewels. Girls were closely veiled when they passed through the streets. The attachment of men to women had no intellectual bias, scarcely any sentiment, but "went straight to the mark: the enjoyment ...
— The Venetian School of Painting • Evelyn March Phillipps
... sure I have not made a mistake?” asked my interlocutor, with a faint quiver of the eyelids. “It is my intention, while travelling, to remain faithful to my harem.” ...
— The Ways of Men • Eliot Gregory
... get a damned good rest. I let myself rip! In my sober moments I daren't go and order tea for the Mater in a bunshop because I'm petrified with terror of the waitress. When I'm drunk I'd barge into a harem. That first affair—with the French girl—was a tremendous thing to me. Most boys have played about with that sort of thing before that age. They looked down on me because I hadn't. But it made such a deep dint on my brain that whisky ...
— Captivity • M. Leonora Eyles
... philosophical, the other the more satirical, visit Europe, inform their friends by letter of all the aspects of European and especially of French life, and receive tidings from Persia of affairs of the East, including the troubles and intrigues of the eunuchs and ladies of the harem. The spirit of the reaction against the despotism of Louis XIV. is expressed in Montesquieu's pages; the spirit also of religious free-thought, and the reaction against ecclesiastical tyranny. A sense of the dangers impending over society is present, and ...
— A History of French Literature - Short Histories of the Literatures of the World: II. • Edward Dowden
... the waters by Constantinople Arsenal are not healthy to linger in after one has scared up the whole sea-front, so "turned to go out." Matters were a little better below, and E11 in her perilous passage might have been a lady of the harem tied up in a sack and thrown into the Bosporus. She grounded heavily; she bounced up 30 feet, was headed down again by a manoeuvre easier to shudder over than to describe, and when she came to rest on the bottom ...
— Sea Warfare • Rudyard Kipling
... habit—acknowledged even by the author of the "Dhammapada" 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
... I must be at Finsbury Circus to-morrow, for certainly no Columbine in a harem skirt will be there. Simpson in his loneliness will be delighted to see me, and then we can throw away his button-hole and have a nice little ...
— The Holiday Round • A. A. Milne
... scattered jewels, the sly old dog has spirited away his vast stealings! My work was all in vain, save the vengeance!" And the oily Ram Lal, in the zenana, drew a willing beauty of Cashmere to his bosom, and hid his face from the chatterers of street and shop. He was safe from all prying eyes in the Harem. ...
— A Fascinating Traitor • Richard Henry Savage
... brilliancy and such 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 a spectacle that ...
— Great Pictures, As Seen and Described by Famous Writers • Esther Singleton
... 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
... individualist. If Inger goes up for rehabilitation, it will be because he 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 ...
— Legacy • James H Schmitz
... a moment. As this girl had been thrown into my arms, in this manner, I would keep her; I would make her a kind of slave-mistress, hidden in my house, like women in a harem are. When the time should come that I no longer cared for her, it would be easy for me to get rid of her in some way or another, for on African soil those sort of creatures almost belong to us, body and soul, and so ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume IV (of 8) • Guy de Maupassant
... bird to this Turk and her keeper—probably some Georgian going to a rich Mussulman's harem in company with his eunuch," ...
— Visionaries • James Huneker
... foreign shores, or the miners in their pits, forced by the deadly "damps" from all visible connection with human life, or the child of a superior race held captive by savages, or the beautiful white girl sold into the harem of a barbarous sultan, or any or all other of such expressions of destiny in the isolated lives of men are but pioneering the way of the race to complete homogeneousness and unquestioned ownership of ...
— Insights and Heresies Pertaining to the Evolution of the Soul • Anna Bishop Scofield
... line from Anna! The obdurate girl still trifled with my misery; and in revenge I entertained a momentary resolution of adopting the notions of Mahmoud, in order to qualify myself to set up a harem. ...
— The Monikins • J. Fenimore Cooper
... 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 ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 4, September, 1850 • Various
... 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, often steal out, foregoing ...
— The Works of Max Beerbohm • Max Beerbohm
... are just as capable as men of managing a large estate, a vast wealth. Mr. Mill gives a fact which surprised even him—that the best administered Indian States were those governed by women who could neither read nor write, and were confined all their lives to the privacy of the harem. And any one who knows the English upper classes must know more than one illustrious instance—besides that of Miss Burdett Coutts, or the late Dowager Lady Londonderry—in which a woman has proved herself able to use wealth and power as well, or better, than ...
— Women and Politics • Charles Kingsley
... indifferent to them. This should not be, I grant you, but it will be, since husbands are but men. I would have an English maiden cultivate the talents which will delight her husband as zealously as the Circassian cultivates the accomplishments of an Eastern harem. Husbands, you say, care little for such accomplishments. So I should suppose, when they are employed, not for the husband, but to attract the young rakes who dishonour the home. But imagine a virtuous and charming wife, adorned with such accomplishments and devoting them to her husband's amusement; ...
— Emile • Jean-Jacques Rousseau
... 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
... told 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
... pride, which is the safest curb to monarchic encroachment, crumbled away in the atmosphere of a despotism, which received its capricious checks or awful chastisement only in the dark recesses of a harem. Retaining to the last their disdain of all without the Persian pale; deeming themselves still "the most excellent of mankind;" [49] this people, the nobility of the East, with the arrogance of the Spartan, contracting the vices of the Helot, rapidly decayed from all their national and ...
— Athens: Its Rise and Fall, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... After this age the diameter of the cigarette increases year by year; and when a lady has reached the mature age of twenty-four, no one sees anything remarkable in her smoking a modest little chibouque as she sits on the lower divan of the harem. Elderly matrons—and in Turkey every lady is an elderly matron in her fortieth year—are passionately devoted to this enjoyment. The pipe-bowls and stems always remain of the size appropriated by etiquette ...
— Tobacco; Its History, Varieties, Culture, Manufacture and Commerce • E. R. Billings
... "Let us fight, then, with Abbas Mahommed, and plunder his harem instead! It is simple. We come on his village before dawn when those sons of Egyptian mothers* are asleep. We set fire to the thatch, and thereafter act as seems fit, slaying some ...
— The Lion of Petra • Talbot Mundy
... his town, the Bey of Constantine had left his harem there and the ladies of it were shut up in the palace, which had been turned into head-quarters, and where I was living with Nemours. As may be imagined, this harem gave me subjects for many sketches, which ...
— Memoirs • Prince De Joinville
... harem, with a private court-yard; two other sides contain small apartments for his people, and the fourth is open towards the valley, and Deir el Kammar, commanding a distant view of the sea. In the neighbouring mountain is a spring, the waters from which have been conducted ...
— Travels in Syria and the Holy Land • John Burckhardt
... mingled grove and city. One of the hills was surmounted by the Alcazaba, a strong fortress commanding all that part of the city; the other by the Alhambra, a royal palace and warrior castle, capable of containing within its alcazar and towers a garrison of forty thousand men, but possessing also its harem, the voluptuous abode of the Moorish monarchs, laid out with courts and gardens, fountains and baths, and stately halls decorated in the most costly style of Oriental luxury. According to Moorish tradition, the king who built this mighty and magnificent pile was skilled in the occult sciences, ...
— Chronicle of the Conquest of Granada • Washington Irving
... that my excuse might be manifest for me.' The king sent for her and beheld a person of tawny complexion, and feeble frame of body. She appeared to him in a contemptible light, inasmuch as the lowest menial in his harem, or seraglio, surpassed her in beauty and excelled her in elegance. Mujnun, in his sagacity, penetrated what was passing in the king's mind and said: 'It would behove you, O King, to contemplate the charms of Laila through the wicket of a Mujnun's ...
— Primitive Love and Love-Stories • Henry Theophilus Finck
... its back, would recite his poem or elegy. Certainly some of them were wanting in genius, some were even ludicrous. Among the number was a little fellow with a cadaverous face, about as large as two farthings' worth of butter, who declared, in a long speech with flat rhymes, that an Asiatic harem was not capable of quenching his ardent love of pleasure. A fat-faced fellow with a good, healthy, country complexion, announced, in a long story, his formal intention of dying of a decline, on account of the treason of a courtesan with a face as cold as marble; while, if ...
— A Romance of Youth, Complete • Francois Coppee
... marvellous tale, which seems, however, to be countenanced by the manners of the people, and by the extraordinary duration of his reign, we must admire not only the fortune, but the genius, of Sapor. In the soft, sequestered education of a Persian harem, the royal youth could discover the importance of exercising the vigor of his mind and body; and, by his personal merit, deserved a throne, on which he had been seated, while he was yet unconscious of the duties and temptations of absolute power. His minority ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 2 • Edward Gibbon
... Villagers, Elders, and Soldiers. The story, briefly told, is one of the power of love. The Beloved and Solomon are both in love with the Sulamite, and the king tears her from the former to be the favorite among the women of the harem. Amid all the splendors of the palace and the luxuries heaped upon her by her passionate admirer she remains true to the Beloved, is ultimately restored to him, and returns to the vineyards of Sulam. The work is divided as follows: Prologue; Part I. Separation; ...
— The Standard Oratorios - Their Stories, Their Music, And Their Composers • George P. Upton
... men to comprehend the necessity of diplomatic conciliation. He mastered his impulses, and spoke politely and coldly, saying the girl was young and as the apple of his eye. Tuan Reshid, a Faithful and a Hadji, would not want an infidel woman in his harem; and, seeing Abdulla smile sceptically at that last objection, he remained silent, not trusting himself to speak more, not daring to refuse point- blank, nor yet to say anything compromising. Abdulla understood the meaning of that silence, and rose to ...
— Almayer's Folly - A Story of an Eastern River • Joseph Conrad
... two stories, the purport of which being to warn him to put no faith in the accusations of women, to which the lady replies by stories representing the wickedness and perfidy of men; and that of the Bakhtyar Nama, in which a youth, falsely accused of having violated the royal harem, obtains for himself a respite from death during ten days by relating to the king each day a story designed to caution him against precipitation in matters of importance. In others supernatural beings ...
— Flowers from a Persian Garden and Other Papers • W. A. Clouston
... priceless pelisse, and a vast pair of purple velvet pantaloons embroidered all over in gold. She was ushered by chamberlains with silver wands through the inner courts of the palace to a pavilion in the harem, where the Pasha, rising to receive her, conversed with her for an hour. From Cairo she turned northwards, visiting Jaffa, Jerusalem, Acre, and Damascus. Her travelling dress was of scarlet cloth trimmed with gold, and, when on ...
— Books and Characters - French and English • Lytton Strachey
... colour to the tea and coffee—among them an old bull or two, to propagate the species on reaching the projected settlement. Not unfrequently a drove of pigs, or flock of sheep, with coops containing ducks, geese, turkeys, Guinea-fowl—perhaps a screaming peacock, but certainly Chanticleer and his harem. ...
— The Death Shot - A Story Retold • Mayne Reid
... publication of 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 vow of chastity they had taken before ...
— The Task of Social Hygiene • Havelock Ellis
... Theatre, a reproduction of which was published in the third number of this Magazine, together with the story associated with it, told me by the late Mr. Henry Graves, who sat by the side of Parris when he made the sketch. Lewis is responsible for "Interior of a Harem." ...
— The Strand Magazine, Volume V, Issue 29, May 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... intelligence were 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 ...
— The Martial Adventures of Henry and Me • William Allen White
... 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
... associations, of a people in deciding the character of their anticipations of the future. The Esquimaux paradise is surrounded by great pots full of boiled walrus meat. The Turk's heaven is a gorgeously idealized pleasure garden or celestial harem. As the apparition of a man wanders into the next state, a shadow of his present state floats over into the future with him. The Hereafter is the image flung by the Now. Heaven and hell are the upward and downward echoes of the earth. Like the spectre of the Brocken on ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger
... 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 ...
— The Life of Lord Byron • John Galt
... cruelty was chargeable to the men of the regular forces. The hordes of Bashi-Bazouks, of Smyrniotes and Tripolites were of course a set of most unspeakable ruffians, and there are probably no more deplorable specimens of human nature in the world than are to be found among the Paris-bred spawn of the harem. ...
— Recollections • David Christie Murray
... society 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 reserve and had taught them the ...
— The Girl and Her Religion • Margaret Slattery
... The symbolism of lock and key has been very gracefully employed by Uhland in his song about the "Grafen Eberstein," to make a common smutty joke. The dream of walking through a row of rooms is a brothel or harem dream. Staircases, ladders, and flights of stairs, or climbing on these, either upwards or downwards, are symbolic representations of the sexual act. Smooth walls over which one is climbing, facades of houses upon which one ...
— Dream Psychology - Psychoanalysis for Beginners • Sigmund Freud
... with soot. Then put some of these dishes on your head; you may be taken for a servant belonging to the eating house, and they will let you pass. If they happen to ask you where the master of the house is, answer, without any hesitation, that he is within." "Alas! madam," answered Harem, concerned for himself than for Fetnah, "you only take care of me, what will become of you?" "Let not that trouble you," replied Fetnah, "it is my part to look to that. As for what you leave in ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments vol. 1 • Anon.
... the meanwhile, it was evident that his Highness old Duke Barnim was greatly struck by her beauty, and wished to get near her upon the carpet; for his Grace was well known to be a great follower of the sex, and many stories are whispered about a harem of young girls he kept at St. Mary's—but these things are allowable in ...
— Sidonia The Sorceress V1 • William Mienhold
... stealing, and I've prayed to be wrecked on a desert island like Robinson Crusoe to see if I am man enough to live it out. I want to stand my trial for murder and defend my own case, and I want to be found by the eunuchs in the harem of the Shah. I want to dive for pearls and scale the Matterhorn. I want to know where the tunnel leads to—the tunnel down under the Great Pyramid of Gizeh—and I'd love to shoot ...
— Fire-Tongue • Sax Rohmer
... 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 ...
— The Gold Hunter's Adventures - Or, Life in Australia • William H. Thomes
... For a small fee, a native pilots one through the carved archways, underground halls and subways and cells. As one stands in the large banqueting hall, it is possible to conjure up the ceremonials of a past age, and, in the mind's eye, to group retainers round the Sultan and the members of his harem, while gaudily dressed courtesans sang and danced for the entertainment ...
— Across the Equator - A Holiday Trip in Java • Thomas H. Reid
... the Spaniards, which they declined, being unwilling to dismount. They did not refuse, however, to quaff the sparkling chicha from golden vases of extraordinary size, presented to them by the dark-eyed beauties of the harem.23 Taking then a respectful leave of the Inca, the cavaliers rode back to Caxamalca, with many moody speculations on what they had seen; on the state and opulence of the Indian monarch; on the strength of his ...
— History Of The Conquest Of Peru • William Hickling Prescott
... a night in the grand hotel at the top of Mount Olympus, to say that they have been there; and the journey is continued to the Bosphorus, to rest there a few hours, and see the place where Byzantium lay; and where the legend tells that the harem stood in the time of the Turks, poor fishermen ...
— Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen • Hans Christian Andersen
... 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
... 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 ...
— The Birth of Yugoslavia, Volume 2 • Henry Baerlein
... Life had grown opulent. They fared better physically, materially, and spiritually; and all this was reflected in their features, in the carriage of their bodies. She knew Billy had never been handsomer nor in more splendid bodily condition. He swore he had a harem, and that she was his second wife—twice as beautiful as the first one he had married. And she demurely confessed to him that Mrs. Hall and several others of the matrons had enthusiastically admired her form one day when in for a cold dip in Carmel river. They ...
— The Valley of the Moon • Jack London
... stained to impart love and languor to their wondrous depths. Whisper it not in Gath, and tell it not in the streets of Frangistan, that the wondrous asp-i-awhan has proved an open sesame capable of revealing to an inquisitive and all-observant Ferenghi the collective charms of a Persian swell's harem! ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle Volume II. - From Teheran To Yokohama • Thomas Stevens
... swallowed it. I made the best 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 a ...
— Some Roundabout Papers • W. M. Thackeray
... of a Roman Senator. The King of Algiers is on the quay when the captives are brought ashore. He falls in love with Elvire on the spot, and adds her to his collection. But his passion is respectful and pure. Aided by Zelmis, she escapes from the harem. They are retaken and brought back; but instead of the whipping usually bestowed upon returned runaways, the generous king, despairing of winning Elvire's affections, gives her her liberty. In the mean time Zelmis has had his troubles. His master has four wives, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 92, June, 1865 • Various
... among the friendly competitors in a way most agreeable to everyone. Johnston and sixteen officers—myself being one of the company—were allotted to the Sultan, who placed his whole palace, except that part devoted to his harem, at our disposal, and entertained us in a truly princely manner. Yet, ungrateful as it may seem, I must say that we seventeen elect had every reason to envy those of our colleagues who were entertained ...
— Freeland - A Social Anticipation • Theodor Hertzka
... In our day Arabs and Hindus rarely submit to inspection the nuptial sheet as practiced by the Israelites and Persians. The bride takes to bed a white kerchief with which she staunches the blood and next morning the stains are displayed in the Harem. In Darfour this is done by the bridegroom. "Prima Venus debet esse cruenta," say the Easterns with much truth, and they have no faith in our complaisant creed which allows the hymen-membrane to disappear ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 3 • Richard F. Burton
... great father. Absorbed in effeminate pleasures, he paid little attention to the internal administration of his empire or to the welfare of his people. Yet he was not insensible to martial fame; and he accordingly showed no indisposition to forsake his harem for the field. After quelling two inconsiderable rebellions, he prepared to punish the audacity of Alfonso of Castile, who made destructive inroads into Andalusia. Much as the world had been astounded at the ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 5 • Various
... particularly offended me by their gross ignorance of life. The pictures of life they drew were as untrue as a description of a street-fight would be if written by a perfumed odalisque who had never crossed the threshold of a harem. The ancient elemental life of man, spent in storm and sunshine, under wide skies, they had not so much as looked at, and their voluminous chatter about man and his doings had as little relation to life as the philosophy that is enunciated in a monkey-house. Opera-bouffe performed ...
— The Quest of the Simple Life • William J. Dawson
... dismay and horror, four headmen with their servants came at daybreak to her house with a royal veil. This is a rudely embroidered cloth which the king of Coromantien sends to any lady whom he has a mind to make his wife. After she is covered with it, the maid is secured for the king's otan, or harem, and it is death to disobey ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol. I • Various
... to provide for in a pleasant way, And, maybe, to avoid their chat and worry, He shuts up in a harem night and day— With them contriving all his cares to bury— A point of policy which, I should say, Sweetens the dose to men about to marry; For, though a wife's a charming thing enough, Yet, like all other ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, November 20, 1841 • Various
... say, veni, vidi, vici, "I came, I saw, I conquered." Many of the beauties of the time did their best to confirm him in this good opinion of himself, and as Madame de Rmusat says of him, he in his court was not unlike the Grand Turk in his harem. ...
— The Court of the Empress Josephine • Imbert de Saint-Amand
... independent practitioners, able to treat patients within the women's quarters. In the 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 ...
— New Ideas in India During the Nineteenth Century - A Study of Social, Political, and Religious Developments • John Morrison
... putting his heels on the desk. "Adam had it. So did Solomon, only he had it in so many places he got so he didn't mind it. Think of them guys that have harems. Think of Brigham Young. Why, kid, you don't know the first thing about love pains. Think of the guy with the harem and his guesswork! He's got something to worry about, he has. It's awful when you've got to love a couple of hundred of 'em at once, and them all hatin' you like poison. And old Brigham—think of him settin' up all hours of the night, wonderin' whether she loves him as much as she used to, ...
— The Rose in the Ring • George Barr McCutcheon
... 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 ...
— Angel Island • Inez Haynes Gillmore
... not quite so credulous, but what chance has a man alone against his united harem! He was so far influenced by the earnest entreaties of his disconsolate wife, that it was determined in three days he should with a strong cavalcade accompany his darling invalid to the charmed waters of Bamee[a]n. The Toorkm[a]n warriors were too religious ...
— A Peep into Toorkisthhan • Rollo Burslem
... of my history since Monday has been unadulterated David Balfour. In season and out of season, night and day, David and his innocent harem—let me be just, he never has more than the two—are on my mind. Think of David Balfour with a pair of fair ladies—very nice ones too—hanging round him. I really believe David is as good a character as anybody has a right to ask for in a novel. I have finished ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 25 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... 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 ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 1 • Charles Dudley Warner
... 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
... 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, there ...
— The Fight For The Republic in China • Bertram Lenox Putnam Weale
... the passion and the delirium of passion, the long brown hair, the harem, the amorous divinities, the splendor, the poetry of love and the monuments of love.— To the West, the liberty of wives, the sovereignty of their blond locks, gallantry, the fairy life of love, the secrecy of passion, the profound ecstasy of the soul, the sweet feelings of melancholy ...
— The Physiology of Marriage, Part I. • Honore de Balzac
... palace remained void of rivals; so the mother called in her son, kissed his fair face, and told him the tale of her great sorrow. A chamberlain became aware of the secret and another suspicion fell upon him, and he said to himself, "The harem of the king is the sanctuary of security and the palace of protection. If I speak not of this, I shall be guilty of treachery and shall have wrought unfaithfulness." When the king returned from the chase, the chamberlain related to him what he had seen, and the eking was angry and said, ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 2 • Richard F. Burton
... habitation, where one's lot is cast, local habitation, berth, diggings, seat, lap, sojourn, housing, quarters, headquarters, resiance^, tabernacle, throne, ark. home, fatherland; country; homestead, homestall^; fireside; hearth, hearth stone; chimney corner, inglenook, ingle side; harem, seraglio, zenana^; household gods, lares et penates [Lat.], roof, household, housing, dulce domum [Lat.], paternal domicile; native soil, native land. habitat, range, stamping ground; haunt, hangout; biosphere; environment, ecological niche. nest, nidus, snuggery^; arbor, bower, &c ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... replied, tying his cravat. "I believe as much as I wish in these Arabian princes whose legs become black marble, and in these women of the harem who wander at night in cemeteries. These tales give me pleasant dreams which make me forget life. Last night I went to bed in sadness and read the history ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... opinion after the first week in a harem," said Herbert. And then there was a burst of laughter, in which Aunt Letty herself joined. "I would sooner go there than go to confession," she whispered to Mary, as they ...
— Castle Richmond • Anthony Trollope
... thought and worry. Her Jewish origin was revealed by her somewhat long and strangely charming face, with blue and softly voluptuous eyes. As indolent as an Oriental slave, disliking to have to move, walk, or even speak, she seemed intended for a harem life, especially as she was for ever tending her person. That day she was all in white, gowned in a white silk toilette of ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... ancient and venerable practice of inspecting the marriage-sheet is still religiously preserved in most parts of the East, and in old-fashioned Moslem families. It is publicly exposed in the Harem to prove that the "domestic calamity" (the daughter) went to her husband a clean maid. Also the general idea is that no blood will impose upon the exerts, or jury of matrons, except that of a pigeon-poult which exactly resembles hymeneal blood— when not subjected ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 2 • Richard F. Burton
... 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 marvellous in the adventures of heroes, ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... brought to pour on such a conflagration. "Miss Newcome! my dear Clive," says the confidant, "do you know what you are aspiring to? For the last three months Miss Newcome has been the greatest lioness in London: the reigning beauty winning the horse: the first favourite out of the whole Belgravian harem. No young woman of this year has come near her: those of past seasons she has distanced and utterly put to shame. Miss Blackcap, Lady Blanch Blackcap's daughter, was (as perhaps you are not aware) considered by her mamma the great beauty of last season; ...
— The Newcomes • William Makepeace Thackeray
... "Leila", hanging in the next room? I think not. Mr. Dicksee probably thought that having painted what the critics would call "somewhat sad subjects" last year, it would be well if he painted something distinctly gay this year. A girl in a harem struck him as a subject that would please every one, especially if he gave her a pretty face, a pretty dress, and posed her in a graceful attitude. A nice bright crimson was just the colour for the dress, the feet he might leave bare, ...
— Modern Painting • George Moore
... advantage of his 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 the extension ...
— Prolegomena to the History of Israel • Julius Wellhausen
... India who know the truth of that charge: men who were at Bisnagar when my father, sick and heartbroken, was shut up in his deserted harem, hemmed in by spies and traitors, men with murder in their faces. There are those who know tint he was strangled by one of those wretches, that a grave was dug for him under the marble floor of his zenana, a grave in which his bones were found ...
— Phantom Fortune, A Novel • M. E. Braddon
... withdraw our patronage from the revolution in Russia—not being seriously interested in it anyhow—and that we will show our contempt for revolutionary patriots by entertaining the rottenest grand duke in Russia if only he will come over to us, bringing his whole harem if he wish; that he is a reproach to us while he remains in this country, and that it is the sense of this great organization that he and the lady who is his wife in the highest ...
— Mother Earth, Vol. 1 No. 3, May 1906 - Monthly Magazine Devoted to Social Science and Literature • Various
... chained by him to the oars of Solyman the infidel Turk! Long days and horrible nights was he witness to the lives of Solyman the magnificent, and Don Teodore the fortunate. When the end came,—when the magnificent patron began to set spies on his favorite lady of the harem, the tricky Greek escaped one dark night, and brought up in Barcelona as an escaped slave of the Turk, pretending he had eluded the swords of the oppressor ...
— The Flute of the Gods • Marah Ellis Ryan
... 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 in the seraglios ...
— Where the Strange Trails Go Down • E. Alexander Powell
... Remember her as well as possible. Four years ago, 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 Wolves and the Lamb • William Makepeace Thackeray
... wedding dress was a $5000 creation. 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 House ...
— The Boss and the Machine • Samuel P. Orth
... 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 shore. In these ...
— Life in Mexico • Frances Calderon de la Barca
... dancing girls; in which profession being called to exhibit at a festival, the late Nabob took a liking to her, and, after some cohabitation, she obtained such influence over him that he took her for one of his wives and (she seems to have been the favorite) put her at the head of his harem; and having a son by her, this son succeeded to his authority and estate,—Munny Begum, the mother, being by his will a devisee of considerable sums of money, and other effects, on which he left ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. VIII. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... thinking at this 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
... He summarises this idea with one of his most brilliant illustrations: "It is the negation of property that the Duke of Sutherland should have all the farms in one estate; just as it would be the negation of marriage if he had all our wives in one harem." ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Maisie Ward
... look after themselves, I suppose, and the ladies of your harem don't trouble you overmuch. ...
— The Great Hunger • Johan Bojer
... to be fossicking around somebody's stables and find a horse-boy entertaining his friends. They don't like visitors in this country; and you'll be asking for trouble if you go inside those walls. I guess it's some old Buzzard's harem.' Buzzard was his own private peculiar name for the Turk, for he said he had had as a boy a natural history book with a picture of a bird called the turkey-buzzard, and couldn't get out of the habit of applying ...
— Greenmantle • John Buchan
... indignant, and we parted; but I did not think my prophecy would come true so soon. I have long since given up speculating how marriages will turn out, for it is quite impossible to tell. If women could be shut up in a harem, as in the East, a man who was ashamed of his wife might go into society without her; but for a refined and well-educated gentleman, as Edward Layton certainly is, to be united to the widow of a sugar-boiler!—yes, ...
— The International Magazine, Volume 2, No. 2, January, 1851 • Various
... that Jemshid had two sisters, named Shahrnaz and Arnawaz. They had been both seized, and conveyed to Zohak by his people, and continued in confinement for some time in the King's harem, but they were ...
— Persian Literature, Volume 1,Comprising The Shah Nameh, The - Rubaiyat, The Divan, and The Gulistan • Anonymous
... to deal death around, the murder of the infant did not prey upon his mind; but the words of the mother he never forgot. 'I am miserable, because I am childless,' he repeated every day; and he ordered all the women of his harem to be well beaten. But he was compelled to admit, that there was now little chance of his wishes being fulfilled. However, as a last resort, he consulted a magician, a man of Persian origin, who had recently arrived with merchandise in that country. This magician, after many very intricate ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 462 - Volume 18, New Series, November 6, 1852 • Various
... did it, personally," Paytrik Morland said. "For all we know, he's down in an air-tight cave city on some planet nobody ever heard of, sitting on a golden throne, surrounded by a harem." ...
— Space Viking • Henry Beam Piper
... girl" was a trying responsibility. There was an approved technique that every wise virgin had to master. It consisted of letting each man, on whom she conferred her favors, think that she really was in love with him. She called it "being engaged." And,—if perchance she came to possess a harem of fiancs,—remember that the young things of the period were not so well able to conduct their own courtings as our present-day emancipated flappers. They still had to depend on what the tide washed in. They still did their picking ...
— Nonsenseorship • G. G. Putnam
... 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 dozen ...
— A Soldier of the Legion • C. N. Williamson
... commiseration of their fate than in self-pity and regret 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 Lady of the Aroostook • W. D. Howells
... made!" irascibly responded Mr. Galloway. "Pittances, that folks go out with, are lost, when they are such as he. That's what it is. Harem-scarem chaps, who won't work, can do no good at Port Natal. Great fortunes made, indeed! I wonder that you can be led away by notions so wild ...
— The Channings • Mrs. Henry Wood
... biographical sketch by Edna Worthley Underwood The Ackerman Steppe Becalmed Mountains from the Keslov Steppe Baktschi Serai Baktschi Serai by Night The Grave of Countess Potocka The Graves of the Harem Baydary Alushta by Day Alushta by Night Tschatir Dagh (Mirza) Tschatir Dagh (The Pilgrim) The Pass Across the Abyss in the Tschufut-Kale (Mirza) The Ruins of Balaclava ...
— Sonnets from the Crimea • Adam Mickiewicz
... knowledge of the Beaver Island Mormons he was satisfied that the old man who displayed gold in such reckless profusion was anything but a bachelor. In all probability this was one of his wives and the cabin behind him, he concluded, was for some reason isolated from the harem. "Evidently that little Saintess is not a flirt," he concluded, "or she would have given me time to speak ...
— The Courage of Captain Plum • James Oliver Curwood
... sometimes a feeling that if he were to beat her she would continue to admire him and think it lovely of him. Lily had, in fact, the soul of an Oriental woman in the midst of New England. She would have figured admirably in a harem. George, being Occidental to his heart's core, felt an exasperation the worse because it was needfully dumb, on account of this adoration. He thought less of himself because his wife thought he could do no wrong. The power of doing wrong is, after all, ...
— By the Light of the Soul - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... 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, ...
— The Poems of Goethe • Goethe
... many. He 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 ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 5 of 8 • Various
... peculiar solicitude to its guardians. Many a Moslem eye was on those girls, as the results of a religious education appeared in their manners, their dress, and personal beauty. In one instance, an officer of government attempted to take one of them to his harem, but God thwarted his purpose through the interference of the English consul. Similar dangers threatened from other sources, and eternity alone will reveal the burden of care and watchfulness they involved. If only one pupil had been led ...
— Woman And Her Saviour In Persia • A Returned Missionary
... got very fuddled last night, with forbidden juice, in the harem, and tumbled down the ivory steps leading from the apartment of the favourite, by which accident he seriously cut his nose. Every guard is to be bastinadoed in consequence, and the wine-merchant will be privately sewn up in a canvas-bag and thrown ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, August 28, 1841 • Various
... the fellow-citizen at his mercy, to his countrymen, to mankind, is in proportion to his power. His prime minister, the agent of his edicts, should feel bound to withstand him if he seeks to gratify a personal feeling under the plea of public policy, unless the minister, like the slaves of the harem, is to find his qualification for office in leaving ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist) |
