little girls are watching and flitting about on
cunning errands as stealthily and swift as
cats. Her father and mother will tell you that
her own cousins never saw her alone or spoke
a dozen consecutive words to her; but I
rather fancy she has some acquaintance of
her own; and she is generally on terms of
rather startling friendship with the young
man servant, who forms almost part of the
family in all Greek houses. On summer
nights too, when good people should be
asleep, you will see closely hooded figures
flitting about noiselessly, like black ghosts.
They are Greek girls. What they are about
nobody knows. Perhaps, looking for the
moon, which will not rise for some hours.
At every dark corner of a wall, also, you will
see young gentlemen sitting in the deep
shadow with wonderful perseverance. If you
go very near and they do not see you, you
may hear them singing songs, but low as the
humming of a bee: so low, that they do not
disturb even the timid owl who sits cooing
amid the ruins of the last fire over the way.
The Greek girl knows an amazing quantity
of songs, and all of the same kind. They
are about equal in point of composition to
the worst of our street ballads: full of the
same coarse wit and low trickery. They are
sung to dreary monotonous airs; and always
through the nose. Never had the national
songs of a people so little charm or distinctive
character. You seek the strong, sweet
language of the heart in vain among them.
They have neither grace nor fancy.

With all this, the Greek girl is pious.
She would not break any of the severe fasts
of her church, even for money; though they
condemn her to dry bread and olives for
six weeks at a time: nor would she neglect
going to church on certain days upon
any account. She has a faith in
ceremonies, and in charms, relics, and saints,
almost touching; but there her belief ends.
She would not trust the word of her own
father or the archbishop. She cannot
suppose it possible that any one would speak the
truth, unless he was obliged; and she judges
correctly, according to her own experience.
She herself would promise, and take an
unmixed delight in deceiving her own mother
on a question about a pin's head; but she
would scrupulously avoid doing anything
she had promised; and the only way
even to prevent her accepting a husband,
would be to make her say she would have
him beforehand. From that moment her
fertile wits would toil night and day to
find means of escape. And find them she
would, to change her mind the day after she
was free.

She has one hope dearer than all the rest.
It is that she may one day wear Frank
clothes, and see the Greeks at Constantinople.
This is no exaggeration; the wrongs of the
rayah have eaten into all classes of society
in Turkey, until even women lisp, and children
prattle vengeance. It is so strong that
it has made the Greeks hate one of the
prettiest remaining costumes in the world,
as a symbol of their most bitter and cruel
servitude.

By and by, the Greek girl will grow old.
From a household servant, she will then sink
into a drudge, and her head will be always
bound up as if she had a chronic toothache.
You will see her carrying water on washing
days, or groaning and squabbling upon others
as she cleans the herbs for dinner. She will
have become so old even at thirty, that it is
impossible to recognise her. Rouge and
whitening will have so corroded her face, that
it looks like a sleepy apple or a withered
medlar. Her eyes are shrivelled into nothing.
Her teeth will have been eaten away by
rough wine, and noxious tooth powders. She
will be bald when she does not wear a
towering wig, that only comes out on
St. Everybody's days. The plump figure
and all its bumps will have shrivelled into
a mere heap of aching old bones, and her
only pleasures in this life will be scandal and
curiosity.

You will find her croaking about, watching
her neighbours at the most unseasonable
times. She has wonderful perseverance in
ferreting out a secret. She will thus know
many more things than are true, and tell
them with singular readiness and vivacity.
She will be the terror of her neighbourhood,
and there is no conciliating her. Kindness,
good humour—even money, which she prizes
as much as she did when a girl, and grasps at
it as eagerly—will have no effect on her. She
must speak evil and hatch troubles, or she
would die. The instinct of self-preservation is
strong; so she will go upon her old course,
come what may. She will be a terror even
to her own daughter.

She has been reduced to this state by having
been a thing of bargain and sale so long, that
she has learned to consider money as the
chief good. She has been subject to insult;
to be beaten; to be carried away into
the harem of a man she has never seen,
and whose whole kind she despises; and
has lost all natural feeling. All grace,
tenderness, and affection, have been burnt
out of her as with a brand. She has been
looked upon as a mere tame animal until she
has become little better. She has been
doubted until deception has become her glory.
She has been imprisoned and secluded until
trickery has become her master passion.
She has been kept from healthy knowledge
and graceful accomplishments, from all
softening influences arid ennobling thoughts,
until her mind has festered. When she is
young, she is shut up until she becomes
uncomfortable from fat; when she is old, she
is worked until she becomes a skeleton.
None have any respect or love for her,
nor would she be now worthy of it, if they
had.