Chavanne gives a glowing description of the ravishing but short-lived beauty of the Arab girl; also a specimen of the amorous songs addressed to her while she is young and pretty.  She is compared to a gazelle; to a palm whose fruits grow high up out of reach; she is equal in value to all Tunis and Algiers, to all the ships on the ocean, to five hundred steeds and as many camels.  Her throat is like a peach, her eyes wound like arrows.  Exaggerations like these abound in the literature of the Arabs, and are often referred to as proof that they love as we do.  In truth, they indicate nothing beyond selfish, amorous desires.  The proof of unselfish affection lies not in words, however glowing and flattering, but in kind actions; and the actions of the Arabs toward their women are disgustingly selfish, except during the few years that they are young and pretty enough to serve as toys.  The Arabs, with all their fine talk, are practically on a level with the Samoyedes who, as we saw, ignore or maltreat their wives, “except on an occasional amorous evening”; on a level with the Sioux Indian, of whom Mrs. Eastman remarks that a girl is to him an object of contempt and neglect from her birth to her grave, except during the brief period when he wants her for his wife and may have a doubt of his success.

THE UNCHIVALROUS GREEKS

A few pages back I cited the testimony of Morgan, who lived many years among the Indians and studied them with the intelligence of an expert ethnologist, that “no attempts by the unmarried to please or gratify each other by acts of personal attention were ever made.”  From this we can, once more, make a natural transition from the aboriginal American to the ancient Greek.  The Greek men, says the erudite Becker (III., 335), “were quite strangers to that considerate, self-sacrificing courtesy and those minute attentions to women which we commonly call gallantry,” Greek literature and all that we know of Greek life, bear out this assertion fully.  It is true the Alexandrian poets and their Roman imitators frequently use the language of sentimental gallantry; they declare themselves the slaves of their mistresses, are eager to wear chains, to go through fire, to die for them, promising to take their love to the next world.  But all these things are mere “words, words, words”—­adulation the insincerity of which is exposed as soon as we examine the actions and the motives of these poets, of whom more will be said in a later chapter.  Their flatteries are addressed invariably to hetairai; they are conceived and written with the selfish desire to tickle the vanity of these wantons in the hope and expectation of receiving favors for which the poets, who were usually poor, were not able to pay in any other way.  Thus these poets are below the Arabs, for these sons of the desert at least address their flatteries to the girls whom they are eager to marry, whereas the Greek