Page:Letters from India Vol 2.pdf/273

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LETTERS FROM INDIA.
261

the liberty which Englishwomen have. They told Mr. C—— it was the only foolish thing they had seen in Englishmen, that they could not have believed it, if it had been told to them. 'In fact,' Hyder Khan said, 'it makes up for all the rest. You are the slaves of your women, and we are the masters of ours.' I said that if I could get into their zenana we should hear another version. ‘Oh no,’ he said, ‘you could hear nothing, because our wives could not speak unless we gave leave; and if they did we should beat them. It is the first rule we make, that a - wife is never to speak till she is spoken to; so she can never begin a quarrel.’ They were quite curious to make out from Mr. C—— how it was that Englishwomen began to get their own way at first. I said it must be their own cleverness. ‘No,’ the Jewish nephew said; ‘they were very Clever, and that as Allah made them so, it was all right; but still He had made Englishmen very clever too, and how they who could invent ships, and guns, and steamers, &c., could not invent a way by which they could be masters of their own wives he could not understand.’ My drawing is a very pretty one, and they are pleased with their own likenesses.