Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1911-10-01


the use of the dogs.
Among the Seminole Indians of Florida
the children also belong to the mother, tax
ing her name, and being entirely hers in case
of Sc ration. The bridegroom goes to his
bride W gwam, moreover, the wedding &C
complished, while the new home presently
allowed must be built near her family set
Element, not his. The wife rules certain
household matters absolutely, and when on
shopping expeditions carries her own purse.
Extremes In Albania
THE strangest known instance of natural
suffragism," however, comes from High
Albania, that little known world corner so
eagerly desired by several European nations
because, to quote an authoritative traveller,
"Constantinople is the key of the Near East,
and Albania is the key of Constantinople.
The married women of Albania, as many of
their spinster sisters, have neither social nor
political status, rights, privileges, opinions,
nor personal property. They may not
speak, unaddressed, in the presence of men;
widespread feud requires the performance
of all family business by the women, a state
of affairs that sometimes lasts for years.
They may not even eat with their masculine
relatives; SubSiSting upon the cold scraps
left over when the we'll served men have
finished. Bought and sold literally in ear
hest infancy, or even before the marriage of
their parents, they are considered the merest
chattelS.
But for the Albanian maiden who feels that
she simply cannot face the married lot, or
who cherishes irrevocable antipathy to her
paternally selected betrothed, remains
strange way of escape and freedom.
Before fourteen other unmarried women
the girl, seldom beyond her earliest teens,
may Swear virginity," vowing never to
marry. After this ceremony, scorned by the
married women, but usually respected by the
men, the officially recognized "Albanian
Virgin acquires new and unwonted dignity
and honors She may dress, carry arms, and
otherwise comport herself as man, She
may inherit land, farm it, and in all ways
rank as her fathers son.
Mary Edith Durham, an English artist
and traveller who knows Albania from core
to corner, has met many such "Albanian
Virgins, and finds that, though alike in love
of their unusual liberty and political stand
ing, they differ in other things, just as do
their sisters the world over. Helting at
Tapsha to water the horses, Miss Durham
party encountered "a lean, wiry, active
woman of forty-seven, clad in very ragged
garments, breeches and coat.
@She was highly amused at being pho
tOgrapneQ, ana Cne men CnaHeU ner ABOUT
her beauty Had dressed as a boy, she
said, ever since she was quite child, be-
cause she had wanted to- and her father had
let her. Of matrimony she was very derisive
all her sisters were married. but she had
known better. She treated me-" adds Miss
Durham, with all the contempt she ap-
peared to think petticoats deserved, turned
her back on me, and exchanged cigarettes
with the men, with whom she was hail fellow
we'll met. In land where each man wears
a mustache Git is considered disgraceful for
man to be clean shaven), her little, hair
less, wizened face looked very odd above a
masculine garb."
At Han Graboum. on the other hand, was
found an albanian Virgin" of far different
order. This woman, also in male garments,
at heart was true feminine She begged the
envied Englishwoman to take her to Eng
land, since she ardently longed to olive in a
safe place." She worked the family land,
had no money to buy a gun, and, always
having to come home along the Montenegrin
frontier, feared being picked off by Mon
tenegrin sharpshooters Proud of her free
and unhampered condition, exulting in her
high rank as an @Albanian Virgin" She vet,
in common with certain dutiful s,1ffrapettes