LADY GORDONS REMINIS CENCES. Scenes in the Orient Which Were of Uncommon Interest.

Te Aroha News, Volume IV, Issue 197, 2 April 1887, Page 7

LADY GORDONS REMINIS CENCES. Scenes in the Orient Which Were of Uncommon Interest.

Eastern life ia to this close observer a perpetual panorama. She seea from her windows a Turkish wedding procession with a pretty boy of 13 for bridegroom, dressed in scarlet robe and turban, preceded by flaring creeeets and surrounded by carrying tapers and pinginp songs — or a Coptic bride dressed ! in white and blazing with diamonds, passes by ; abyattes with .harp, sackbut and dulcimer, playing and singing before her, and little girls in scarlet habarabs, ac ing as bridesmaids. Or, the scene changing, as life itself changes, a poor man who has lost his little son creeps out of his desolate home and stands under her window, wailing, "Oh, my boy !" wetting the dupt with his tears, and calling on the paesere by to grieve with hitn Or a little half- black, not 2 years old, wearing " a bit of iron wire in one ear, and iron rings round his ankles — and nothing else," solemnly gazes at the Inkeleezeh Sitt for an hour or so, and then dances before her "to amuse her mind ;" his uncle having made him fit to be seen by emptying a pitcher of water on his head to rinse off the duet—" which," says Lady Duff Gordon, "ia equivalent to a clean pinafore." The precocity of Eastern children is marvellous. A boy of 12 fell desperately in love with a pretty Bai-oness X., more than twice his age, put on a turban for the first time to look like a man, and seated himself cross-legged on the carpet before Lady Duff Gordon, to tell her of hia devouring passion, and begged some medicine to " make him white" and improve him in the eyes of hia beloved. The son of the Sultan of Darfoor, "pretty, imperious little nigger" about 11, dreesed in a yellow silk caftan and scarlet burnooso, being pre sented to her, exclaimed scornfully, ' Why, she is a woman ; ehe can't talk to me !" But a box of French sweetmeats altered his opinion, and on being a-ked how many brothers he had the young Prince condescended to reply : " Who can count them ? They are like mice !" The Arabs often carry their reverence for the other sex to the opposite extreme. Omar submitted to be buliied and lectured by Zeynib, a Nubian girl of 8 who had been given to Lady Duff Gordon, and when laughed at for his docility answered : "How I say anything? to it? That one child !" When Abd-el Kader was expected at Cairo Lady Duff Gordon's donkey driver asked her if he were not Akhul Ben at (a brother of girls). She eaid she did not know that he had any sisters. " The Arabs, oh lady," was the reply, "call that man 'a brother of girls,' to whom God has given a clean heart to love all women as his sisters, and strength and courage to fight for their protection." Even polygamy ia, according to Lady Duff Gordon, often merely consideration for the necessities of the " weaker vessel." Hearing that Hassan, the janissary of American Consulate, had married his brother's widow and adopted both her boys, she said the two wives did not aound to her very comfortable. " Ob, no," replied Omar, " not comfortable at all for the man, but he take care of the women. That is what ia proper. That is the good Muslim."