Salmagundi; or, The whim-whams and opinions of Launcelot Langstaff, esq. [pseud.] and others. By William Irving, James Kirke Paulding and Washington Irving. Printed from the original ed., with a preface and notes by Evert A. Duyckinck.

THE LADIES. 361
LETTER FROM MUSTAPHA RUB-A-DUB KELI KHIAN,
TO' ASEM HACCHEM, PRINCIPAL SLAVE-DRIVER TO HIS HIGHNESS
THE BASHAW OF TRIPOLI.
THOUGH I am often disgusted, my good Asem, with the
vices and absurdities of the men of this country, yet the
women afford me a world of amusement. Their lively prattle is
as diverting as the chattering of the red-tailed parrot; nor can
the green-headed monkey of Timandi equal them in whim and
playfulness. But, notwithstanding these valuable qualifications,
I am sorry to observe they are not treated with half the attention bestowed on the before mentioned animals. These infidels
put their parrots in cages and chain their monkeys; but their
women, instead of being carefully shut up in harems and seraglios, are abandoned to the direction of their own reason, and
suffered to run about in perfect freedom, like other domestic
animals. This comes, Asem, of treating their women as
rational beings, and allowing them souls. The consequence of
this piteous neglect may easily be imagined; they have degenerated into all their native wildness, are seldom to be caught at
home, and, at an early age, take to the streets and highways,
where they rove about in droves, giving almost as much annoyance to the peaceable people as the troops of wild dogs that
infest our great cities, or the flights of locusts that sometimes
spread famine and desolation over whole regions of fertility.
This propensity to relapse into pristine wildness, convinces me
of the untamable disposition of the sex, who may indeed be partially domesticated by a long course of confinement and restraint,
but the moment they are restored to personal freedom, become
wild as the young partridge of this country, which, though
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