[36] The Rev. Isaac Malek Yonan tells us, in his book on Persian Women (138), that most Armenian women “are very low in the moral scale.”  It is obvious that only one of the wanton class could be in question in Trumbull’s story, for the respectable women are, as Yonan says, not even permitted to talk loudly or freely in the presence of men.  This clergyman is a native Persian, and the account he gives of his countrywomen, unbiassed and sorrowful, shows that the chances for romantic love are no better in modern Persia than they were in the olden times.  The women get no education, hence they grow up “really stupid and childlike.”  He refers to “the low estimation in which women are held,” and says that the likes and dislikes of girls about to be married are not consulted.  Girls are seldom betrothed later than the seventh to the tenth year, often, indeed, immediately after birth or even before.  The wife cannot sit at the same table with her husband, but must wait on him “like an accomplished slave.”  After he has eaten she washes his hands, lights his pipe, then retires to a respectful distance, her face turned toward the mud wall, and finishes what is left.  If she is ill or in trouble, she does not mention it to him, “for she could only be sure of harsh, rough words instead of loving sympathy.”  Their degraded Oriental customs have led the Persians to the conclusion that “love has nothing to do with the matrimonial connection,” the main purpose of marriage being “the convenience and pleasure of a degenerate people” (34-114).  So far this Persian clergyman.  His conclusions are borne out by the observations of the keen-eyed Isabella Bird Bishop, who relates in her book on Persia how she was constantly besieged by the women for potions to bring back the “love” of their husbands, or to “make the favorite hateful to him.”  She was asked if European husbands “divorce their wives when they are forty?” A Persian who spoke French assured her that marriage in his country was like buying “a pig in a poke,” and that “a woman’s life in Persia is a very sad thing.”

[37] Magazin fuer d.  Lit. des In-und Auslandes, June 30, 1888.

[38] The philosophy of widow-burning will be explained under the head of Conjugal Love.

[39] Willoughby, in his article on Washington Indians, recognizes the predominance of the “animal instinct” in the parental fondness of savages, and so does Hutchinson (I., 119); but both erroneously use the word “affection,” though Hutchinson reveals his own misuse of it when he writes that “the savage knows little of the higher affection subsequently developed, which has a worthier purpose than merely to disport itself in the mirth of childhood and at all hazards to avoid the annoyance of seeing its tears.”  He comprehends that the savage “gratifies himself” by humoring the whims “of his children.”  Dr. Abel, on the other hand, who has written an interesting pamphlet on the words used in Latin, Hebrew, English, and Russian to designate the different kinds and degrees of what is vaguely called love, while otherwise making clear the differences between liking, attachment, fondness, and affection, does not sufficiently emphasize the most important distinction between them—­the selfishness of the first three and the unselfish nature of affection.