We have had many revelations from the interior, but nothing quite like this.  Most histories are valuable in proportion to the truthfulness of the narrator, but Mrs. Melek’s story owes a large show of its interest to her obvious tension of the long-bow.  It is, in fact, a self-revelation—­the vain and audacious betrayal by an Oriental woman of the narrowness, the shallowness, the dishonesty which ages of false education have fastened upon her race.  The lady in question is—­and evidently knows herself to be—­an exception among her countrywomen for ability and acumen:  an extreme self-satisfaction and vanity are revealed in the recital of her most disreputable tricks.  She passes for a white blackbird, a woman of intellect caught in the harem; and it needs but little ingenuity to guess the torment she must have been to her protectors—­first to the excellent Dr. Millingen, with whom she formed a love-match, and whom she abuses—­and then to her second husband, Kibrizli, ambassador in 1848 to the court of England, upon whom she attempted to palm off an heir by the ruse practiced by our own revered Mrs. Cunningham.  Whatever the clever Melek does, or whatever treatment she receives, it is always she who is in the right, and her eternal “enemies” who are unjust, barbarous and stingy.  The ferocious blackmailing of natives in the Holy Land which she practiced when her husband represented the sultan there, is represented as cleverness; but her divorce after the infamous false accouchement is a piece of persecution.  The marriage and adventures of her daughter form a tangled romance through which we hear of a great deal more oppression and cruelty; and the escape into Europe, where the old enchantress appears to be now prowling in poverty and degradation, concludes the curious story.  The narrative bears marks of having passed through a French translation and then a British version.  To disentangle the thread of actuality that probably runs through it would be too troublesome and futile; but the truths that the wily Melek cannot help telling—­the facts of the harem and of Eastern life that involuntarily sprinkle it all like a flavoring of strange spices—­these are what give it the odd dash of interest which keeps it in our hands long after we had meant to toss it aside.  Here is a “screaming sister” of the East—­an odalisque who was not going to be oppressed and degraded like the other women, but who meant to be capable and cultivated and smart, just like the Christian ladies; and this bundle of lies and crimes and hates is what she arrives at.

* * * * *

Hints on Dress; or, What to Wear, When to Wear it, and How to Buy it.  By Ethel C. Gale, (Putnam’s Handy-Book Series.) New York:  G.P.  Putnam & Sons.