hairs which overgrow it; and this is the extreme of sluggish ness and the sign, outward and visible, of stupidity[1] In short, there is no good thing about thee, and indeed the poet Title of thee,
'Heavy and swollen like an urine-bladder blown, * With hips and
thighs like mountain propping piles of stone;
Whene'er she walks in Western hemisphere, her tread * Makes the
far Eastern world with weight to moan and groan.'
Quoth her master, 'Sit thee down, this sufficeth;' so she sat down and he signed to the yellow girl, who rose to her feet and praised Allah Almighty and magnified His name, calling down peace and blessing on Mohammed the best of His creatures; after which she pointed her finger at the brunette and said to her," And Shahrazad perceived the dawn of day and ceased to say her permitted say.
When it was the Three Hundred and Thirty-seventh Night,
She continued, It hath reached me, O auspicious King, that "the yellow girl stood up and praised Almighty Allah and magnified His name; after which she pointed her finger at the brown girl and said to her: 'I am the one praised in the Koran, and the Compassionate hath described my complexion and its excellence over all other hues in His manifest Book, where Allah saith, 'A yellow, pure yellow, whose colour gladdeneth the beholders.'[2] Wherefore my colour is a sign and portent and my grace is supreme and my beauty a term extreme; for that my tint is the tint
- ↑ This is the popular idea of a bushy "veil of nature" in women: it is always removed by depilatories and vellication. When Bilkis Queen of Sheba discovered her legs by lifting her robe (Koran xxvii.), Solomon was minded to marry her, but would not do so till the devils had by a depilatory removed the hair. The popular preparation (called Núrah) consists of quicklime 7 parts, and Zirník or orpiment, 3 parts: it is applied in the Hammam to a perspiring skin, and it must be washed off immediately the hair is loosened or it burns and discolours. The rest of the body-pile (Sha'arat opp. to Sha'ar=hair) is eradicated by applying a mixture of boiled honey with turpentine or other gum, and rolling it with the hand till the hair comes off. Men I have said remove the pubes by shaving, and pluck the hair of the arm-pits, one of the vestiges of pre-Adamite man. A good depilatory is still a desideratum, the best perfumers of London and Paris have none which they can recommend. The reason is plain: the hair bulb can be eradicated only by destroying the skin.
- ↑ Koran, ii. 64: referring to the heifer which the Jews were ordered to sacrifice,
