"Harem" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... with clumps of flowers and of women, this immense harem where his seven hundred princesses and his three hundred concubines disported themselves, Solomon watched the whirl of dances, gazed at the living hedge of women, seen against the background of gold-plated walls, their bodies clothed ...
— The Cathedral • Joris-Karl Huysmans
... 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 kisses ...
— The Talisman • George Borrow
... 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 had got around ...
— The Valley of the Moon • Jack London
... by the Eunuchs to descend from the box, was conducted to an inner receptacle, and," Miss CHENNELLS grimly adds, "then and there bastinadoed." Incidentally, in connection with the English Governess's struggle for supremacy in the City of the Pharaohs, we get pictures of life in the Harem, and glimpses of the lavish magnificence of the Khedieval Court, with its French embroidery on Eastern robes. It was with the object of describing these scenes, viewed from a rare vantage point, that the story was written. But not the least interesting ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 104, April 15, 1893 • Various
... to take care of the coffee; and the head officer among them, or he who has the inspection over all the rest, has an apartment allowed him near the hall which is destined for the reception of visitors. The Turks call this officer Kavveghi, that is, Overseer or Steward of the Coffee. In the harem or ladies' apartment in the seraglio, there are a great many such officers, each having forty or fifty Baltagis under them, who, after they have served a certain time in these coffee-houses, are sure to be well provided for, either by ...
— All About Coffee • William H. Ukers
... fool. If you don't he will cut the throats of every one of them and stick your girl into the emposeni" (that is harem), "while you will become a prisoner as ...
— Marie - An Episode in The Life of the late Allan Quatermain • H. Rider Haggard
... slew incontinently with the tiller; thus disciplined, they pulled him by night to the scene of his vengeance, which he would then execute alone and return well-pleased with his connubial crew. The inmates of the harem held a station hard for us to conceive. Beasts of draught, and driven by the fear of death, they were yet implicitly trusted with their sovereign's life; they were still wives and queens, and it was supposed ...
— In the South Seas • Robert Louis Stevenson
... prize in heritage:— Yet—not all lost—even yet—he may redeem His sloth and shame, by only being that Which he should be, as easily as the thing 20 He should not be and is. Were it less toil To sway his nations than consume his life? To head an army than to rule a harem? He sweats in palling pleasures, dulls his soul,[a] And saps his goodly strength, in toils which yield not Health like the chase, nor glory like the war— He must be roused. Alas! there is no sound [Sound of soft music heard from ...
— The Works of Lord Byron - Poetry, Volume V. • Lord Byron
... his three brothers had been terminated by order of Mourad) had never been improved by cultivation. Destitute alike of capacity and inclination for the toils of government, he remained constantly immersed in the pleasures of the harem; while his mother, the Sultana-Walidah Kiosem, (surnamed Mah-peiker, or the Moon-face,) who had been the favourite of the harem under Ahmed I., and was a woman of extraordinary beauty and masculine understanding, kept the administration of the ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXII. - June, 1843.,Vol. LIII. • Various
... said Toby, deliberately. "But I expect he's the sort the girls like. Well, he's got a harem there, and no mistake, all fussing round him. Is ...
— Coquette • Frank Swinnerton
... waterways and enter dry-shod into the vast and immemorial temples and palaces. The tragedy, the human quality of the design, is summed up by the agitated groups in the foreground; the king, surrounded by his harem, makes a gesture of despair; the women, with loose-flowing draperies, surround him like frightened swans. A high priest raises his hand to the stormy heavens, upon which he is evidently invoking ...
— Promenades of an Impressionist • James Huneker
... 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 he competes with other males ...
— The Forerunner, Volume 1 (1909-1910) • Charlotte Perkins Gilman
... given over the mastership of Rachel, daughter of Maai the Israelite, to thy fan-bearer, Har-hat. By the lips of his own servants, I am informed that he would have put her in his harem. ...
— The Yoke - A Romance of the Days when the Lord Redeemed the Children - of Israel from the Bondage of Egypt • Elizabeth Miller
... about 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 married, she must obey her husband; 1 中庸, xx. 2. 2 Ana. XV. x. 3 Mencius, III. Pt. I. iv. 8. 4 男子者, 任天道而長萬物者也; 女子者, 男子之道, 而長其理者也. when her husband is dead, she must obey her son. She may not think of marrying a second time. No instructions or orders must issue from the harem. Woman's business is simply the preparation and supplying of drink and food. Beyond the threshold of her apartments she should not be known for evil or for good. She may not cross the boundaries of the State to attend a funeral. She may take no step on her own motion, and may come ...
— THE CHINESE CLASSICS (PROLEGOMENA) Unicode Version • James Legge
... fountain, while round the sides are richly inlaid cabinets and windows of stained glass; and in a recess is the divan, a low, narrow, cushioned seat. The basement storey is generally built of the soft calcareous stone of the neighbouring hills, and the upper storey, which contains the harem, of painted brick. The shops of the merchants are small and open to the street. The greater part of the trade is done, however, in the bazaars or markets, which are held in large khans or storehouses, of two storeys and ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 4 - "Bulgaria" to "Calgary" • Various
... enjoyed a piece of good fortune which I believe has fallen to the lot of few men. Often as I passed by the garden walls of some rich Pacha, I felt, as every one who visits Constantinople feels, no small desire to penetrate, into that mysterious region—his harem—and see something more than the mere exterior of Turkish life. "The traveler landing at Stamboul complains," I used to say to myself, "of the contrast between its external aspect and the interior of the city; but the real interior, that is the inside ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 3, August, 1850. • Various
... the rest by flight. He did not stop till he reached Tepelen, where he had a warm reception from Kamco, whose thirst for vengeance had been disappointed by his defeat. "Go!" said she, "go, coward! go spin with the women in the harem! The distaff is a better weapon for you than the scimitar!" The young man answered not a word, but, deeply wounded by these reproaches, retired to hide his humiliation in the bosom of his old friend the mountain. The popular ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... revolution proceeding in Turkey; my turn was coming. Not that I was a conspirator, but the treasury wanted my money and the seraglio my daughter. Death is easy for me, but I will not let my daughter go into the harem nor myself be made a beggar. Therefore I hired your vessel, and loaded it with grain. The owner, Athanas Brazovics, is a connection of mine; I have often shown him kindness, he can return it now. By a miracle we got safely through ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Volume V. • Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton, Eds.
... becomes as a sealed fountain. I know not how long this season of expectation would have lasted for Iris, but for Arnold's conversation with his cousin, which persuaded him to speak and bring matters to a final issue. To this girl, living as secluded as if she was in an Oriental harem, who had never thought of love as a thing possible for herself, the consciousness that Arnold loved her was bewildering and astonishing, and she waited, knowing that sooner or later something would be said, but trembling for fear that it ...
— In Luck at Last • Walter Besant
... 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 ...
— The Poems of Goethe • Goethe
... love And homage, which the meekness of her voice, The rapture of her smile, commanding most When she seems weakest, must demand from him, Her master; whose stern strength at once submits In manly, but endearing, confidence, Unlike his selfish tyranny who sits The sultan of his harem! Oh, then, think How great the blessing, and how high thy rank 240 Amid the civilised and social world! But hast thou no deep failings, that may turn Thy thoughts within thyself! Ask, for the sun That shines in heaven hath seen it, hath thy power Ne'er scattered sorrow ...
— The Poetical Works of William Lisle Bowles, Vol. 1 • William Lisle Bowles
... on. Over here, on the other side, are the nobles' quarters. And this,"—he indicated a towering structure at the rear of the walled enclosure—"is the citadel and the royal dwelling. Audience hall on this side; harem over here on this side. A wide stone platform, about fifteen feet high, runs completely across the front of the citadel, from the audience hall to the harem. Since this picture was taken, the new temple of Muz-Azin was built right about ...
— Temple Trouble • Henry Beam Piper
... deceived her. She put up with that, provided she had her share of his attention. Perhaps also it gave her a sort of pleasure. She was placid and sensual. She had the attitude of mind of a woman of the harem. ...
— Jean Christophe: In Paris - The Market-Place, Antoinette, The House • Romain Rolland
... cavernous rooms where conspirators were crouched round a tiny charcoal fire. Groups of truculent young Arabs followed us shouting objurgations, and accepting small coins as ransom. We had glimpses of a mosque, the outside of a prison, and the inside of what once was a harem. On returning to the steamer one gentleman fell overboard and, swimming to the shore, was rescued by a swarthy ruffian who robbed him of his watch and disappeared in the darkness. When the victim of Algerian piracy stood on the deck, dripping and indignant, and told ...
— Humanly Speaking • Samuel McChord Crothers
... Eastern servant 'phoned for me one night last week; and I found Ferrara lying unconscious in a room like a pasha's harem. He looked simply ghastly, but the man would give me no account of what had caused the attack. It looked to me like sheer nervous exhaustion. He gave me quite an anxious five minutes. Incidentally, the room was blazing hot, with a fire roaring right ...
— Brood of the Witch-Queen • Sax Rohmer
... 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 ...
— Some Poems by Sir Walter Scott • Sir Walter Scott
... the chief of the Jakoit's district, and returned on board with five or six young girls, to whom he gave permanent quarters on board, selling from time to time his sails, whaling gear, and trade to keep his harem in luxury. At the end of a year the brig was pretty well stripped of all of any value; and W——— went utterly, ...
— The Ebbing Of The Tide - South Sea Stories - 1896 • Louis Becke
... 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 ...
— Maupassant Original Short Stories (180), Complete • Guy de Maupassant
... 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
... and care as little about it as it cares about me; and I have no doubt she would be glad to do the same if she had the pluck. I confess I shouldnt like to make a regular legal bargain of going to live with a man. I dont care to make love a matter of money; it gives it a taste of the harem, or even worse. Poor Bob, meaning to be honorable, offered to buy me in the regular way at St. George's, Hanover Square, before we came to live here; but, of course, I refused, as any decent woman in my circumstances would. Understand me now, Doctor: I dont want to give myself any virtuous ...
— The Irrational Knot - Being the Second Novel of His Nonage • George Bernard Shaw
... "Historical Records" this barbarous practice began with duke Ching, Muh's predecessor. In all, 170 individuals were buried with Muh. The death of the last distinguished man of the Ts'in dynasty, the Emperor I, was subsequently celebrated by the entombment with him of all the inmates of his harem.] ...
— Chinese Literature • Anonymous
... of the women compelled the force of character, the superior knowledge, the very genius of the men to bow gracefully before it, but a too numerous mob in which the women, who alone are seated, whisper together like captives in the harem, and have no other enjoyment than that of being beautiful or of seeming to be. De Gery, after wandering through the doctor's library, the conservatory and the billiard room, where there was smoking, tired of dull, serious conversation, which seemed to him to be ...
— The Nabob, Volume 1 (of 2) • Alphonse Daudet
... of such 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 ...
— Great Pictures, As Seen and Described by Famous Writers • Esther Singleton
... a merry and splendid life to him. But as, with such custodians, the treasure could be "lifted" without the slightest difficulty, he too lay down by it, and went to sleep, dreaming of Schiraz wine in golden cups and a harem peopled with mortal houris. And this is the history of the ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 2 - To the Close of the 19th Century • George Saintsbury
... 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
... present scenery and habits, history and 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 Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger
... 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 ...
— Women of Modern France - Woman In All Ages And In All Countries • Hugo P. Thieme
... "Old—unpleasing—" He made an upward 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 ...
— The Eye of Zeitoon • Talbot Mundy
... 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
... 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' ...
— The Rose in the Ring • George Barr McCutcheon
... 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, ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 2 • Richard F. Burton
... fracture and laid up with a uniform 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
... boy, born in a Turkish harem, is said to have forty-eight step-mothers living. Our office-boy, however, is still undefeated in the ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, November 3, 1920 • Various
... great negro came forward and did a turn of his own. Hamilton looked away. What was this man to the little circle? he wondered. He could not keep his mind off that one query? Were they his slaves? willing or unwilling? did they constitute his harem? or were they paid, independent workers? His mind was made up to get speech with this one girl, at least, that evening. This delightful feeling of interest, this pleasure, even this keen disgust, all were so welcome to him in the dreary mental state of ...
— Six Women • Victoria Cross
... bell hanging above him in the most remote corner of the wall, and looked at it steadfastly. While he was doing so, a small side door had opened, and Germain, in the rich costume of a servant of the harem, had entered. Thugut had not once looked round toward him; he had not once glanced at the silver vases with the most splendid flowers, which Germain had placed on the marble tables; his nose was apparently indifferent to the ...
— LOUISA OF PRUSSIA AND HER TIMES • Louise Muhlbach
... to myself Narses, living till his grey hairs in the effeminate intrigues of the harem, and then springing forth a general; the Warrior Eunuch; the misanthrope avenging his great wrong upon all mankind in bloody battle-fields; dark of counsel, and terrible of execution; him to whom in after years the Empress Sophia ...
— The Roman and the Teuton - A Series of Lectures delivered before the University of Cambridge • Charles Kingsley
... and a look of terror convulsed his face. "The Large One! Shut him out! Call the Chief Eunuch and the Major Domo of the Harem! ...
— Further Foolishness • Stephen Leacock
... backgrounds in which the loveliest scenery is so skilfully reproduced. "What plump young beauties," cries Thackeray, "those are with which Mr. Punch's chief contributor supplies the old gentleman's pictorial harem!" It is true, they are nearly always the same girl, this ideal of Punch's—short in stature, simple and pouting and laughing, with big eyes and rounded chin, with bewitching dimples and pretty ringlets; but then this ideal, this "little dumpling," was none other than Mrs. Leech! ...
— The History of "Punch" • M. H. Spielmann
... precaution of depositing his clothes in some convenient cavern. 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 ...
— The Birth of Yugoslavia, Volume 2 • Henry Baerlein
... imagery. He had a profound contempt for women as companions, which grieved Mr. Greyne's Western ideas, and evidently thought that Mademoiselle Verbena ought to be clapped forthwith into a long veil, and put away in a harem behind an iron grille. When Mr. Greyne explained the English point of view Abdallah Jack took refuge in a sulky silence; but during the week immediately preceding the arrival of Mrs. Greyne his temper had become actively ...
— The Mission Of Mr. Eustace Greyne - 1905 • Robert Hichens
... ghost, and she stepped light with a terrified tread. Bertram could see at a glance she was profoundly agitated. For a moment he could hardly imagine the reason why: then he remembered all at once the strict harem rules by which married women in England are hemmed in and circumvented. To visit an unmarried man alone by night is contrary to tribal usage. He rose, and advanced towards his visitor with outstretched arms. "Why, Frida," he cried,—"Mrs. Monteith—no, ...
— The British Barbarians • Grant Allen
... the precious Karagatch wood, the rose pavilion, in which visitors receive a truly Oriental hospitality, the interior court of Moorish decoration recalling the adorable architectural fancies of the Alhambra, the terraces with their splendid views, the harem where the thousand wives of the Sultan—a hundred more than Solomon—live in peace together, the lacework of the fronts, the gardens with their shady walks under the ancient vines—that is what you ...
— The Adventures of a Special Correspondent • Jules Verne
... setting of dense foliage and drooping palms. It had been built in the sixteenth century for heathen worship, and subsequently converted by a Mohammedan grandee into a residence for his own accommodation and that of his harem. To Joyce it looked an irregular mass of ruined masonry, roofless in parts and overgrown with jungle. The portion which had been reserved to the women formed a separate wing which at one time had been enclosed by a high wall, but which was ...
— Banked Fires • E. W. (Ethel Winifred) Savi
... know you are young in years, but there is nothing of the child in you. As for beauty, it is nothing. If beauty was all a man required, he could, if rich, have a harem full of it any day. I want some ...
— My Brilliant Career • Miles Franklin
... Rookh." Everybody, in his happy turn, has been in love with that lady of the peerless enchantments: perhaps they will be taken a little aback when they hear that before the lord of the East gave her the name of Nourmahal, 'Light of the Harem,' or, in the later excess of his love, Nourdjihan, 'Light of the World,' she was known to her family and friends as Mher-ul-Nica, or, in equivalent Saxon, the 'Strapping Wench;' and that this 'tallest of women,' of whom it is said ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 3 No 2, February 1863 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... no. He's got a big, fat wife in the harem named Bad Dora that he don't like. I believe he intends to saddle her up and ride her up and down the board-walk in the Bulbul Gardens a few times every day. You haven't got a pair of extra-long spurs you could ...
— Heart of the West • O. Henry
... I bring hither from the harem of his Majesty the Sultan, an odalisk, who is to be put up to public auction by command of the Padishah. The name of this odalisk is Guel-Bejaze; her age is seventeen years, she has all her teeth, her breath is pure, her skin is clean, her hair is thick, she can dance and sing, and do all ...
— Halil the Pedlar - A Tale of Old Stambul • Mr Jkai
... 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, absolutely!—who is an inch shorter than pretty Lelia and more tiger-headed ...
— The International Magazine, Volume 2, No. 2, January, 1851 • Various
... in the harem furnished a solution of the difficulty. Saul had raised one of his wives of the second rank, named Eizpah, to the post of favourite. Abner became enamoured of her and took her. This was an insult to the royal ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 6 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... than once, making one of a party of six, five of whom were men. She did not care for women as a sex, and said so in the plainest language, denouncing their mentality as still afflicted by a narrowness that smacked of the harem. But for certain women she had a cult, and among these women Lady Sellingworth held a prominent, perhaps the ...
— December Love • Robert Hichens
... some especial pleasure that Tom took advantage of one of Laurence's rare visits to the farm to lead him down to the enclosure where Clover Fairy kept solitary state—the grass widower of a grazing harem. Tom felt some of his old dislike for his half-brother reviving; the artist was becoming more languid in his manner, more unsuitably turned-out in attire, and he seemed inclined to impart a slightly patronising tone to his conversation. He took no heed of a flourishing potato crop, but waxed enthusiastic ...
— The Toys of Peace • Saki
... be, yet his calling on Lacaita to recite was really just the same thing that every Pasha does after dinner, when he orders his tale-teller to repeat a story. The ladies meanwhile were packed off to the harem for the night, Lady Bowen acting as their interpreter. My L.H.C., his two secretaries, his three aide-de-camps, Captains Blomfield and Clanricarde, and the vice-consul, all slept in the same room, and that not a large one, and we were packed tight on the floor, ...
— The Life of William Ewart Gladstone, Vol. 1 (of 3) - 1809-1859 • John Morley
... Amenhotep III to Kallima-Sin, King of Babylonia, had also been preserved. One deals with statements made by Babylonian ambassadors, whom the Pharaoh stigmatizes as liars. Kallima-Sin had sent his daughter to the royal harem of Egypt, and desired to know if she was alive and well. He also asked for "much gold" to enable him to carry on the work of extending his temple. When twenty minas of gold was sent to him, he complained in due course that the quantity received was ...
— Myths of Babylonia and Assyria • Donald A. Mackenzie
... 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
... they, "ordinary justice is engaged in checking the audacious crimes of your subjects against the sanctity of the harem. Prevaricating criminals have the boldness to defend themselves by the example that is before their eyes; and the delays which arise from your Majesty in this affair are so many pretences which they allege in their justification. ...
— Eastern Tales by Many Story Tellers • Various
... exists. It furnished a half hour's amusement to the soldiers of France. On either side of the high altar are the oratories of the royal family, and above them are the kneeling effigies of Charles, with his wife, daughter, and sisters, and Philip with his successive harem of wives. One of the few luxuries this fierce bigot allowed himself was that of a new widowhood every few years. There are forty other altars with pictures good and bad. The best are by the wonderful deaf-mute, Navarrete, of Logrono, and by ...
— Castilian Days • John Hay
... Baba. "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 ...
— The Lion of Petra • Talbot Mundy
... before his little charcoal brasier and drives a brisk business. If you are likely to prove a good customer at the bazaar, you are invited to curl yourself up on the rug on the floor of the booth, and are regaled with coffee. Do you make a call or visit a harem, the same beverage is immediately offered. Even in the government offices, while waiting for an interview with some grandee, coffee is frequently passed round. Here it is particularly acceptable, for without its sustaining qualities one could hardly survive the slow movements ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XVII. No. 101. May, 1876. • Various
... affectionate letters will not persuade us that he ever cared more seriously for her than for scores of others. Though some letters must have been written when he was courting the sister of Odysseus or keeping a harem at Athens, and others when his heart was disengaged, can any one decide which are sincere and which are not? Or, rather, are they not all equally sincere? The following extract may help us to ...
— Pot-Boilers • Clive Bell
... to whom I had been shying money to keep her quiet. I sent the guide around to ask her what was the nature of the building upon which I had trespassed and which seemed to worry her so much— He came back to tell me that I was on the top of a harem and the old woman thought I was getting up a flirtation with the gentleman's wives. So ...
— Adventures and Letters • Richard Harding Davis
... 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 ...
— A Modern Telemachus • Charlotte M. Yonge
... 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
... 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 preparations of his grandfather Yussef, they were not surpassed by his own, if, ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 5 • Various
... family which attained great power under the Abbasid caliphs. Barmak, the founder of the family, was a Persian fire-worshipper, and is supposed to have been a native of Khorasan. According to tradition, his wife was taken for a time into the harem of Abdallah, brother of Kotaiba the conqueror of Balkh, and became the mother of Khalid b. Barmak the Barmecide. Barmak subsequently (about A.D. 736) rebuilt and adorned his native city of Balkh after the rebellion of Harith. The family prospered, and his grandson Ya[h.]y[a] b. Khalid was the ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 3 - "Banks" to "Bassoon" • Various
... standpoint we would honor any Chinese woman who claimed the right to her feet and powers of locomotion; the Hindoo widows who refused to ascend the funeral pyre of their husbands; the Turkish women who threw off their masks and veils and left the harem; the Mormon women who abjured their faith and demanded monogamic relations. Why not equally honor the intelligent minority of American women who protest against the artificial disabilities by which their freedom is limited and their development arrested? That only a few, under any circumstances, ...
— Eighty Years And More; Reminiscences 1815-1897 • Elizabeth Cady Stanton
... he sent as Vizier Jelaludin Pacha thither, with orders to punish with extreme severity all who should show any signs of discontent. This man, who is said to have belonged to the sect of Bektashi, an order of Mahomedan monks, did not live like other Pachas. He neither kept a harem nor a court, and devoted himself exclusively to fulfilling the duties of his mission. To do this more effectually, he used to go about in disguise, visiting even the Christian places of worship, and thus obtaining a real knowledge of the feelings and wishes of the people. ...
— Herzegovina - Or, Omer Pacha and the Christian Rebels • George Arbuthnot
... same. He will survive you for rather more than forty years; in the full enjoyment of your harem, your ...
— Works, V1 • Lucian of Samosata
... Ahasuerus as recorded in Esther. In both narratives the King is offended with his Queen and chooses a new wife daily. Shahryar has recourse to the scimitar, Ahasuerus consigns wife after wife to the seclusion of his harem. Shahryar finds a model consort in Shahrazad, Ahasuerus in Esther. Each queen saves a multitude from death, each king lies awake half the night listening to stories. [144] While many of the stories in The Arabian Nights are ancient, some, as internal evidence proves, are comparatively recent. ...
— The Life of Sir Richard Burton • Thomas Wright
... protection he affords the family is in his own interests, he is chief much more than father. His sons he drives away as soon as they are old enough to give him any trouble; his daughters he adds to his harem. We may conceive that the domination of his sexual jealousy must have chiefly occupied his time and his attention. It is probable that he was fed by his women; at least it seems certain that he cannot have provided food for ...
— The Position of Woman in Primitive Society - A Study of the Matriarchy • C. Gasquoine Hartley
... 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 from ...
— Operas Every Child Should Know - Descriptions of the Text and Music of Some of the Most Famous Masterpieces • Mary Schell Hoke Bacon
... driven some Hagar into the desert to starve with his child upon her bosom; defiled his own daughters; ripped open with the sword the sweet bodies of loving and innocent women; advised one brother to assassinate another; kept a harem with seven hundred wives and three hundred concubines, or had persecuted Christians ...
— Lectures of Col. R. G. Ingersoll - Latest • Robert Green Ingersoll
... very much agitated on finding myself amongst all the other slaves who were waiting for purchasers. Most of them were poor girls who had been brought there to be exchanged. They had been sent away from one harem, and would probably have to go to some other. My heart was filled with a vague kind of dread of I knew not what, when suddenly my eyes rested on three hideous negroes, who had come there to buy some ...
— The Strand Magazine, Volume V, Issue 26, February 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... tickets for the two weeks intervening, and on November 2, Mrs. Stow gave her lecture to a large and interested audience, taking for her theme, "Woman's Work." The Rev. Mr. Hamilton followed, November 9, with "The Parlor and the Harem," and the Rev. C. G. Ames concluded the course, November 18, with "What Does it Mean?" The lectures were well received, and though not particularly directed to the right of suffrage for women, succeeded in ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume III (of III) • Various
... 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 to the microscope. ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 2 • Richard F. Burton
... a fact that has been evident enough for ages: that the current of civilization can never rise higher than the springs of motherhood. Given the ignorant, debased mothers of the Turkish harem, and the inevitable result is a nation destitute of truth, honor or political position. All the power of the Roman legions, all the wealth of the imperial empire, could not save the throne of the Csars when the Roman matron was ...
— The Bay State Monthly - Volume 2, Issue 3, December, 1884 • Various
... ventured to invest capital in mills and factories which were liable to be burned or plundered by Turks or Russians for strategical or other warlike purposes, or would be taxed beyond endurance by a suzerain master for the maintenance of his Constantinople harem and of his needy officials? The soil indeed could not be carried off, or there would not have been even an agricultural industry. But the time is not far distant when the advantages of Roumania as a manufacturing country will become apparent, and when her native products, ...
— Roumania Past and Present • James Samuelson
... provide for the emergency, his courtiers suggested that he should collect in his harem all the beautiful virgins of the land, and choose him a wife. Among these was Hadassah, the adopted daughter of Mordecai. He urged her to enter her name among the rivals for kingly favor. It was not ambition ...
— Half Hours in Bible Lands, Volume 2 - Patriarchs, Kings, and Kingdoms • Rev. P. C. Headley
... scrupulous precaution into the arrangements of the locality where his pupils studied. The entrance to the attic above his apartments was walled up. To reach this retreat, as sacred as a harem, it was necessary to go up a small spiral staircase made within his own rooms. The studio, occupying nearly the whole attic floor under the roof, presented to the eye those vast proportions which surprise inquirers when, after attaining sixty feet above the ground-floor, they expect to ...
— Vendetta • Honore de Balzac
... that you maintain a harem, denotes that you are wasting your best energies on low pleasures. Life holds fair promises, if ...
— 10,000 Dreams Interpreted • Gustavus Hindman Miller
... desire to win his approbation and with her industry and intellect, so different from the indolence and idleness of the Persian women in his harem. His wonder and satisfaction increased when, after recommending her to obey the orders of Boges, the eunuch, who was head over the house of women, she reminded him that she was a king's daughter, bound to obey the commands of her lord, but ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol IV. • Editors: Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton
... 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 ...
— A Peep into Toorkisthhan • Rollo Burslem
... by a eunuch. He was preceded by five green and red flags, on each of which were extracts from the Koran, written in letters of gold. Etiquette even required that the sultan should follow with his unwieldy pomp, having a harem, and attendance much more numerous; while frumfrums, or wooden trumpets, were continually sounding before him. This monarch is too distinguished to fight in person; but his guards, the swollen and overloaded figures formerly ...
— Lander's Travels - The Travels of Richard Lander into the Interior of Africa • Robert Huish
... this were not a case in point,—if it were, after all, the color, and not the sex, that weighed. That aroused her indignation, aroused also a feeling of race: she would not have changed color that moment with the fairest Circassian of a harem, could the white slave have appeared in all the dazzle of her beauty.—Mas'r Henry had called that man, of whom he read aloud to-day, her ancestor. She knew what that was, for she had heard Miss Emma boast of her progenitors. But he was free; then it ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 96, October 1865 • Various
... 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 ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 1 • Charles Dudley Warner
... 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 ...
— Life in Mexico • Frances Calderon De La Barca
... own hand Beneath the great oak tree. He'd traveled in a foreign land. He tried to make her understand The dance that's called the Saraband, But he called it Scarabee. He had called it so through an afternoon, And she, the light of his harem if so might be, Had smiled and said naught. O the body was fair to see, All frosted there in the shine o' the moon— Dead for a Scarabee And a recollection that came too late. O Fate! They buried him where he lay, He sleeps ...
— The Devil's Dictionary • Ambrose Bierce
... think. It seemed strange at first and rather awful to be lodged on a rock like this in a section of a Rangar's harem! Yes, there are several women here behind the scenes, but I only see the waiting-women. I've forgotten time; the news about rebellion seems too awful to leave room ...
— Rung Ho! • Talbot Mundy
... fancy!" he said in a whisper, but with a considerable anger in his voice. "Such a fancy as comes only to a man who has lost his judgment through much loneliness. See, he sits like any negro outside an Eastern harem! Sir, I am shamed ...
— Ensign Knightley and Other Stories • A. E. W. Mason
... his harem wives of all ages and of all kinds. The larger part of them accompanied him in this visit ...
— Dick Sand - A Captain at Fifteen • Jules Verne
... 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 ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII No. 6 June 1848 • Various
... were not his teachers Artazostra and Roxana? He found it no difficult tongue, simple and much akin to Greek, and unlike most of the uncouth tongues the Oriental traders chattered in Sardis. The two women were constantly with him. Few men were admitted to a Persian harem, but Mardonius never grudged the Greek the company of ...
— A Victor of Salamis • William Stearns Davis
... vest is suggestive of endless quarrels with Washington washerwomen; but the heroism of Mark is settled for all time, for such purity and smoothness were never seen before. His lavender gloves might have been stolen from some Turkish harem, so delicate were they in size; but more likely—anything else were more likely than that. In form and feature he bears some resemblance to the immortal Nasby; but whilst Petroleum is brunette to the core, Twain is ...
— Chapters from My Autobiography • Mark Twain
... Star of Poland came to comfort me. When I was alone, I used to take it from its case and feast my eyes upon it. I made many attempts to get away, but the Prince would never let me go, though he had long since tired of me and I was merely one of his harem ...
— Okewood of the Secret Service • Valentine Williams
... 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 ...
— Theological Essays and Other Papers v2 • Thomas de Quincey
... quarter, we left ourselves at the disposal of the consuls, who distributed us 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
... said of the Royal harem or seraglio, which, however, as a feature of the Court always important, and ultimately preponderating over all others, claims a share of our attention. In the early times, it would appear that the Persian kings were content with three or four ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 5. (of 7): Persia • George Rawlinson
... 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
... managed to 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 ...
— Across Asia on a Bicycle • Thomas Gaskell Allen and William Lewis Sachtleben
... high and massive walls, and defended by fifty pieces of cannon, and some mortars, so placed as equally to awe the city and country. The apartments set apart for the habitation of the Dey and the ladies of his harem, are described as extremely magnificent, and abundantly supplied with marble pillars, fountains, mirrors, carpets, ottomans, cushions, and other articles of oriental luxury; but there are others no less valuable and curious, such as the armory, furnished ...
— The Pirates Own Book • Charles Ellms
... 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 from those that picked ...
— Nonsenseorship • G. G. Putnam
... a bloated sultan summoning one of the ladies of the harem to his presence," confessed Miles apologetically when he had shaken hands. "I've added a sprained ankle to my other disabilities," he continued cheerfully. "Hence my ...
— The Hermit of Far End • Margaret Pedler
... seemed to have an unusual effect on her. Then I could see that she was not only the kind of fish that lose their heads at auctions, but the terrible kind that believe everything the auctioneer says. You know, they believe that the Oriental rugs really came from the harem of the caliph and that the antique bed really was the one in which DuBarry slept and that the Elizabethan tablecloth really was an Elizabethan tablecloth. They are kind of goofily romantic and they fall hard for everything and they spend their last penny ...
— A Thousand and One Afternoons in Chicago • Ben Hecht
... their 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 own family ...
— Sketches of the Fair Sex, in All Parts of the World • Anonymous
... death of King Lazare, Queen Miliza ruled the country together with her son, Stephen the Tall. But Sultan Bayazet asked three things from the new rulers in Serbia. Firstly, he asked for Miliza's daughter Mara for his harem. Miliza gave her daughter. Then Bayazet asked a second, more dreadful thing, namely, that his unfortunate mother-in-law should build a mosque in Krushevaz, the Serbian capital at that time, so as to have a place where he could pray when ...
— Serbia in Light and Darkness - With Preface by the Archbishop of Canterbury, (1916) • Nikolaj Velimirovic
... enthroned, with room for a fair admirer on either side of him—the clerical sultan of a platonic harem. His persuasive ministry is felt as well as heard: he has an innocent habit of fondling young persons. One of his arms is even long enough to embrace the circumference of Miss Plym—while the other clasps the rigid silken waist of Francine. "I do it everywhere else," ...
— I Say No • Wilkie Collins
... 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 ...
— Emile • Jean-Jacques Rousseau
... his life of Artaxerxes not only from Ctesias, but also from authorities now lost to us, leaves us with much the same impression of the lords of the East at the close of the fifth century B.C. Corrupt and treacherous central rule, largely directed by harem intrigue; an unenthusiastic body of subjects, abandoned to the schemes of satraps; inefficient and casually collected armies in which foreign mercenaries were almost the only genuine soldiers—such was Persia now. It was something very ...
— The Ancient East • D. G. Hogarth
... 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
... to Cairo he seemed to be much respected by his brother Mahometans, and gave pledge of his sincere alienation from Christianity by keeping a couple of wives. He affected the same sort of reserve in mentioning them as is generally shown by Orientals. He invited me, indeed, to see his harem, but he made both his wives bundle out before I was admitted. He felt, as it seemed to me, that neither of them would bear criticism, and I think that this idea, rather than any motive of sincere jealousy, induced him to keep them out of sight. The rooms of the harem reminded me of an English ...
— Eothen • A. W. Kinglake
... 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. Davids and Oldenberg, in translating this legend from the "Mahavagga," say in a note, ...
— Oriental Religions and Christianity • Frank F. Ellinwood
... 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 are the narrators of the subordinate tales, as in the Indian romances, ...
— Flowers from a Persian Garden and Other Papers • W. A. Clouston
... but Ayesha's mother siding with Gaddo, and promising a more amicable deportment for the future towards the other lights of the harem, the matter was arranged, and Gaddo recited the Mahometan profession of faith, and became the Emir's son-in-law. The execrable social system under which he had hitherto lived thus vanished like a ...
— The Twilight of the Gods, and Other Tales • Richard Garnett
... mountaineers, well armed, during the night; of how the Turkish Pasha refused to receive him or notice him till he had washed himself in a golden basin, and anointed his beard from vessels of gold; how the Turkish army was disgracefully routed; how he ('Abdu'l Lateef) was appointed to guard the Pasha's harem during the flight, etc., etc. This narrative was occasionally attested as true by a negro slave in the room, who had been with my ...
— Byeways in Palestine • James Finn
... such a faith has existed in every age and among almost every people. Charon and his boat might be the means of conveyance. Or the believer, dying in battle for the creed of the Faithful, might expect to wake up in a celestial harem peopled with Houris. Or the belief might embody the matchless horrors painted by Dante; his dolorous city with the terrible inscription over its entrance-gate: "Lasciate ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 97, November, 1865 • Various
... 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 grass he ...
— The Book of Humorous Verse • Various
... not bow humbly and quickly enough, ordered the village Jew to be brought to the manor, stretched on a bench by two strong lackeys (called in Hungary heiducks) and soundly thrashed whenever he felt a desire for cheap amusement; regarded the women of the village, without exception, as his natural harem, spent his days and nights in immoderate feasting and wild drinking, derived all his education from the Bible with 32 leaves (the number of cards contained in the pack commonly used in the country), and only displayed ...
— How Women Love - (Soul Analysis) • Max Simon Nordau
... now, depend upon it," replied Marat, with his sardonic laugh. "King Louis the well beloved has given this palace to his wife, in order that she may establish there a larger harem than Trianon; that miserable, worthless little mouse-nest, where virtue, honor, and worth get hectored to death, is not large enough for her. Yes, yes, that fine, great palace of the French kings, the noble St. ...
— Marie Antoinette And Her Son • Louise Muhlbach
... 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
... greatly troubled Abraham when he fled from Canaan to Egypt. It was disconcerting to have crowds of travelers gazing at his wife as if she were something more than human. Besides, he feared that the Egyptians would seize Sarah for the king's harem. ...
— Jewish Fairy Tales and Legends • Gertrude Landa
... easy familiarity of his race, he had a little world of self-indulgence and misrule around him. He had his clerks, canoe men, and retainers of all kinds, who lived with him on terms of perfect sociability, always calling him by his Christian name; he had his harem of Indian beauties, and his troop of halfbreed children; nor was there ever wanting a louting train of Indians, hanging about the establishment, eating and drinking at his expense in the ...
— Astoria - Or, Anecdotes Of An Enterprise Beyond The Rocky Mountains • Washington Irving
... broad shoulders, an arrogant expression and a bristling beard; they say he had the appearance of a janissary in clerical garb. He took into his service an Albanian bandit, through whom he terrorized the diocese. At one time he had the young wife of a man who was away in Roumania brought into his harem. The husband returned, asked for his wife and succeeded in obtaining her, but after two months he was assassinated, and the widow thought she might as well allow the bishop to console her. The outcry ...
— The Birth of Yugoslavia, Volume 1 • Henry Baerlein
... then, and this was all his epitaph. Jefferson Hope looked wildly round to see if there was a second grave, but there was no sign of one. Lucy had been carried back by their terrible pursuers to fulfil her original destiny, by becoming one of the harem of the Elder's son. As the young fellow realized the certainty of her fate, and his own powerlessness to prevent it, he wished that he, too, was lying with the old farmer in ...
— A Study In Scarlet • Arthur Conan Doyle
... the princess was not forthcoming and the true state of affairs was discovered, the Sulu fleet was naturally anxious to start in pursuit; but the Brunei prahus intercepted them, and before the Sulus could fight their way through, the lady had been safely lodged in the Sultan's harem at Brunei. ...
— The Last Voyage - to India and Australia, in the 'Sunbeam' • Lady (Annie Allnutt) Brassey
... word of many senses, see vols. i. 231; ix. 221. M. Caussin de Perceval (viii. 16), quoting d'Herbelot (s.v.), notes that the Abbasides thus entitled the chief guardian of the Harem. ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 6 • Richard F. Burton
... desired many wives; in a far and alien land his own womankind were few. Again and again the ordinary Hindu householder, lacking the desperate courage of the Rajput, stood by helpless, like the Armenian of to-day, while his wife and daughter were carried off from before his eyes, to increase the harem of his ruler. Small wonder that seclusion became the order of the day—a woman would better spend her life behind the purdah of her own home than be added to the zenana of her conqueror. Later when the throes of ...
— Lighted to Lighten: The Hope of India • Alice B. Van Doren
... the Shah; and, knowing the royal methods of treating unsatisfactory slaves, I feared greatly for the consequences. My fears were warranted. I was ordered, with others, to wait below the tower of the royal harem at midnight and bear away a corpse. We saw a woman struggling with two men at the top of the tower. The woman was flung over. We rushed forward. At my feet, in the death-agony, lay my beloved Zeenab. I hung over her in the deepest ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol VI. • Various
... appeared against the horizon. Fifty or a hundred. They came after the first clump. The first-seen group of a bull and his harem were moving faster, now. The girl fled from them, but it is the instinct of beef-cattle on the open range—Calhoun had learned it only two days before—to charge any human they find on foot. A mounted man to their dim minds is a ...
— Pariah Planet • Murray Leinster
... intend to do with her? Perhaps go so far as to make her marry him, and imprison her with the rest of his wives; for Leoline was prepared to think the very worst of the count, and had not the slightest doubt that he already had a harem full of abducted wives, somewhere. But no—he never could do that, he might do what he liked with weaker minds, but she never would be a bride of his while the plague or poison was to be had in London. And with this invincible determination rooted fixedly, not to say obstinately, in her mind, she ...
— The Midnight Queen • May Agnes Fleming
... saw it would not be safe to rub that sore again. "Forgive me, Le Gardeur!" said he, with an air of sympathy well assumed. "I meant no harm. But you are suspicious of your friends to-night as a Turk of his harem." ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... once the slave of a Louisiana planter, who designed her for his harem. Her lover, a slave named David, resisted that design to the only gain of being flogged, while his loved one was borne away. David was no common black; he had been educated in France, and was the plantation surgeon. The story of ...
— Mysteries of Paris, V3 • Eugene Sue
... Caramania and Caesarea none were left alive. On the roads—in the camps—in the caravansaries—unburied bodies alone were seen; and a few cities only (Arabian historians name Maarael-Nooman, Schisur, and Harem) remained, in an unaccountable manner, free. In Aleppo, 500 died daily; 22,000 people, and most of the animals, were carried off in Gaza, within six weeks. Cyprus lost almost all its inhabitants; and ships without ...
— The Black Death, and The Dancing Mania • Justus Friedrich Karl Hecker
... Marmora, and next morning I am agreeably surprised to find sandy roads, 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 ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle V1 • Thomas Stevens
... they are kept in subjection. While the chief, Little White Belt, smokes, the women are silent in his wigwam; while Mahomet Ben Jawbrahim causes volumes of odorous incense of Latakia to play round his beard, the women of the harem do not disturb his meditations, but only add to the delight of them by tinkling on a dulcimer and dancing before him. When Professor Strumpff of Gottingen takes down No. 13 from the wall, with a picture of Beatrice Cenci upon it, and ...
— The Fitz-Boodle Papers • William Makepeace Thackeray
... states, the brutality of despotism, a prodigality of vigorous punishments, the exploitation of the subject, servile habits, insecurity of property, impoverished production, female slavery, and the customs of the harem. If the sentiment of obedience is rooted in the instinct of discipline, sociability, and honor, you find, as in France, a complete military organization, a superb administrative hierarchy, a weak public spirit with outbursts of patriotism, the unhesitating docility ...
— Prefaces and Prologues to Famous Books - with Introductions, Notes and Illustrations • Charles W. Eliot
... of 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
... on a delicate subject, i.e., the taking over of my predecessor's harem of three native women. I explained that I was expecting my wife down soon from Samoa and couldn't do it. He said it was a great pity, as one of 'Parka's' wives could make tea and cook meat. Also, that I need be under no fear of her making ...
— Ridan The Devil And Other Stories - 1899 • Louis Becke
... When I built this villa, a long embankment formed the boundary behind it; in front the prospect extended over a clear canal; all around grew countless cypresses, and flowing water meandered round the house. There were pools there, and outlook towers; I bred birds and fishes. In my harem there were always good musicians who played dance tunes. When I went out I enjoyed nature or hunted birds and fished. When I came home, I enjoyed playing the lute or reading; I also liked to concoct an elixir of life and to ...
— A history of China., [3d ed. rev. and enl.] • Wolfram Eberhard
... since he was a boy. Maxwell Davison had gone to the East 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 ...
— The Invader - A Novel • Margaret L. Woods
... 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 ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various |
