Chapter 11

(13th) thirteen verse, and from there to the seventeenth, where it says, "Blessed art thou, Simon Barjona, for flesh and blood hath not revealed it unto thee, but my Father which is in heaven," I felt that this had been said to me, and were these words sounded from heaven I would not have felt happier. How true it is that no flesh could reveal unto me what God had revealed, because many Christian friends tried to make me believe, but I could not, I felt as if everything had become new and beautiful, because my Heavenly Father had made them all. I was sometimes with faith and sometimes doubting, and by these changes my faith was strengthened. After a short time, I asked Mr. Whiting to let me join the Church. He asked me if I saw any change in myself, and I said, "One thing I know, that I used to dislike Christian people, and now they are my best friends." After a short time I was permitted to join the Church. Then I left off teaching the day school, and was asked to teach in a Boarding school with Miss Cheney, in the same Seminary where I was brought up. We taught in that school only six months. Miss Cheney married, and I was engaged to be married. While I was engaged, I went to Mr. Bird's school for girls in Deir el Kamr, and taught there for more than a year. I was married by Mr. Bird in his own house to M. Yusef Barakat, and then we went to Hasbeiya. I stayed there seven months and then went to Beirût, and thence to Damascus with my husband, because he had to teach there. I had nothing to do there but to look after my house, my little boy, and my husband.

After some time, the massacre broke out in Damascus, (July 9, 1860,) so we came back as refugees to Beirût. Soon after my husband was taken ill and then died. In that same year 1860, dear Mrs. Bowen Thompson came to Beirût. She felt for the widows and orphans, being herself a widow. She asked me if I would come and teach a school for the widows and orphans, which I accepted thankfully. We opened the school with five children and seven women, and the work, by God's help has prospered, so that now, instead of one school, there are twenty-two schools. Until now I continue teaching in the Institution, and had I known that nearly all my life would be spent in teaching, I should have tried to gain more when I was a child. I can forget father and mother, but can never forget those who taught me, especially about religion. Although some of them are dead, yet still they live by their Christian example, which they have left behind. My whole life will be full of gratitude to those dear Christian friends, and I pray that God himself may reward them a hundred fold.

Yours respectfully,

Sada Barakat.

In the year 1851 the Missionary Sewing Society of the Beirût Female Seminary heard of the interesting state of things in Aintab, and that the women there were anxious to learn to read. The missionaries in Aintab hired an old man to go around from house to house to teach the women to read in their homes, but the women were so eager to learn that the old man was unable to meet the demand. So children were employed to assist. The plan worked admirably, and in 1851, eighty women received instruction and became able to read God's Word. The Arab girls in Mrs. De Forest's school were called together, and it was proposed that they sew and embroider and send the proceeds of their work to pay the little girl teachers in Aintab. There were present, Ferha, (joy,) Sara, Saada Sabunjy, Miriam, Khushfeh, Khurma, Mirta, (Martha) Feifun, Katrina, Hada, Sada el Haleby, Esteer, Helloon, Fetny, Akabir, Hamdy, and Liza. The needles were briskly plied, and in due time, two hundred and fifty piastres were collected and forwarded to Aintab. Mrs. Schneider wrote back thanking the "dear Arab girls." The habits of benevolence thus acquired have continued with the most of these girls until now. The greater part of them are now church-members and the heads of families.

The following letter written by Mrs. De Forest in Feb. 1852, gives some account of Lulu Araman.

Beirût, Syria, _February, 1852_.

My Dear young friends in Thetford:

The quilt you sent came safely, and I thank you much for all the care and trouble you have taken to make and quilt it for me. I at first thought of keeping it for myself, but then it occurred to me that perhaps it might please you better and interest you more if I gave it to Lulu, one of my girls, who is to be married some time this year to Mr. Michaiel Araman, one of the teachers in the Abeih Seminary. You will thus have the pleasure of feeling that you have in one sense done something for the school, as she is an assistant pupil, or pupil teacher. She has been with me now for about eight years, and seems almost like my own daughter. Perhaps you will be interested in knowing something of her.

She was born in a pleasant valley, Wady Shehrûr, near Beirût, celebrated for its fine oranges, and indeed for almost all kind of fine fruits. She lost both her parents early in life. Her brothers (contrary to the usual custom here where girls are not much regarded or cared for) were very kind to her, and as she was a delicate child, they took great care of her, and often used to make vows to some saint in her behalf. At one time, when she was very ill, they vowed to Mar Giurgis (for they are members of the Greek Church, and St. George is one of the favorite saints of the Greeks, and indeed of all the Christian sects here, and they still show the spot where he is said to have killed the dragon) that if she recovered, she should carry to one of his shrines two wax candles as tall as herself and of a prescribed weight. While she was still feeble they provided the candles, and as she was too weak to walk, they carried her and the candles also, to the holy place and presented them.

When she was eight years old, they were persuaded by an acquaintance to place her in one of the Mission families. Here she was instructed in her own language, and especially in the Holy Scriptures. She was allowed, however, to keep her feasts and fasts, and to attend her own church, until she became convinced that these things would not save her and she wished to give them up. One feast day the lady with whom she lived gave her some sewing and told her to seat herself and do her task. She refused, saying it was a feast day, and it was unlawful work. A little while after she asked permission to go and visit her brother's family; but the lady told her, "No, if it is unlawful to work, it is unlawful to visit. I have no objection to your keeping your feast days, but if you do you must keep them as holy time." So she gave her a portion of Scripture to learn, and she was kept very quiet all day, as though it was the Sabbath, and without the day being made agreeable to her like the Sabbath by going to Church and Sabbath School. She did not at all like keeping a feast in this manner, which is very different from the manner in which such a day or even the Sabbath, is kept in this land, and was ever after ready to work when told to do so. When her brothers saw that she was beginning to give up their vain ceremonies, they became anxious to get her away, lest she should become a Protestant; and at one time, when she went home to attend the wedding of one of her relatives, they refused to allow her to return, and it was only through the good management of the native friend who was sent for her, and her own determination to come, that she was permitted to come back.

We hope that she became truly pious six years ago, in 1846, as her life evinces that she is striving to live according to the precepts of the gospel. She has never dared to go home again, although it has been a great trial for her to stay away, because she knew that she should be obliged to remain there, and to conform to the idolatrous rites of the Greek Church. She has assisted us in the School for nearly five years, besides teaching a day school at various times, before the Boarding School was commenced, and we shall feel very sorry to part with her. Still we hope that she will yet be useful to her countrywomen, and furnish them an example of a happy Christian home, of which there are so few at present in this country.

Our school has now nineteen pupils, most of whom are promising. Some we hope are true Christians. The girls opened their box the other day, and found that they had a little more than last year from their earnings. Some friends added a little, and they have now forty dollars. One half they send to China, and the other half give to the Church here.

The hope expressed by Mrs. De Forest in 1852, with regard to the future usefulness of Lulu, has not been disappointed. Her family is a model Christian family, the home of piety and affection, the centre of a pure and hallowed influence. Her eldest daughter Katie, named from Mrs. De Forest, is now a teacher in the Beirût Female Seminary in which her father has been the principal instructor in the Bible and in the higher Arabic branches for ten years. For years this institution was carried on in Lulu's house, and she was the Matron while Rufka was the Preceptress, and its very existence is owing to the patient and faithful labors of those two Christian Syrian women. If any one who reads these lines should doubt the utility of labors for the girls and women of the Arab race, let him visit first the squalid, disorderly, cheerless and Christless homes of the mass of the Arab villagers of Syria, and then enter the cheerful, tidy, well ordered home of Mr. and Mrs. Araman, when the family are at morning prayers, listen to the voice of prayer and praise and the reading of God's word. Instead of the father sitting gloomily alone at his morning meal, and the mother and children waiting till their lord is through and then eating by themselves in the usual Arab way, he would see the whole family seated together in a Christian, homelike manner, the Divine blessing asked, and the meal conducted with propriety and decorum. After breakfast the father and Katie go to the Seminary to give their morning lessons, Henry (named for Dr. De Forest) sets out for the College, in which he is a Sophomore, and the younger children go to their various schools. Lulu's place at church is rarely vacant, and since that "relic of barbarism" the _curtain_ which separated the men from the women has been removed from the building, the whole family, father, mother, and children sit together and join in the worship of God. Her brother and relatives from "Wady" are on the most affectionate terms with her, and her elder sister is in the domestic department of the Beirût Female Seminary.

This change is very largely due to the efforts of Mrs. De Forest, whose name with that of her sainted husband is embalmed in the memory of the Christian families of Syria, and will be held in everlasting remembrance. The _second generation_ of Christian teachers is now growing up in Syria. Three of Mrs. De Forest's pupils have daughters now engaged in teaching. Khushfeh, Lulu, and Sada el Haleby; and Miriam Tabet has a daughter married to Mr. S. Hallock, of the American Press in Beirût.

FRUITS OF DR. DE FOREST'S GIRL'S SCHOOL.

In the autumn of 1852, there was a school of thirty girls in B'hamdûn, a village high up in Mt. Lebanon. Fifteen months before the teacher was the only female in the village who could read, and she had been taught by the native girls in Dr. De Forest's school. Quite a number of the girls of the village had there learned to read, and they all came to the school clean and neatly dressed. They committed to memory verses of Scripture, and it was surprising to see how correctly they recited them at the Sabbath School. At meeting they were quiet and attentive like the best behaved children in Christian lands. It would be difficult to sum up the results of that little school for girls twenty years ago in B'hamdûn. That village is full of gospel light. A Protestant church edifice is in process of erection, a native pastor, Rev. Sulleba Jerawan, preaches to the people, and the mass of the people have at least an intellectual acquaintance with the truth.

The picturesque village of B'hamdûn, where Dr. De Forest's school is established, is on the side of a lofty mountain. It is nearly 4000 feet above the level of the Mediterranean Sea. The village is compact as a little city, the streets narrow, rocky and crooked, the houses flat-roofed, and the floors of mud. One of the Protestants, the father of Miriam Tabet, has built a fine large house with glass windows and paved floors, which is one of the best houses in that part of Lebanon. The village is surrounded by vineyards, and the grapes are regarded as the finest in Mt. Lebanon. The people say that they never have to dig for the foundation of a house, but only to sweep off the dust with a broom. There is not a shade tree in the village. One day Dr. De Forest asked, "Why don't you plant a tree?" "We shall not live till it has grown," was the reply. "But your children will," said the Doctor. "Let them plant it then," was the satisfactory answer.

My first visit to B'hamdûn was made in February, 1856, a few days after my first arrival in Syria. On Sabbath morning I attended the Sabbath School with Mr. Benton, at that time a missionary of the A.B.C.F.M. One little girl named Katrina Subra, then nine years of age, repeated the Arabic Hymn "Kûmû wa Rettelû," "Awake and sing the song of Moses and the Lamb." She was a bright-eyed child of fair complexion and of unusual intelligence. At that time there was no children's hymn book in Arabic, and I asked Mr. B. to promise the children that when I had learned the Arabic, I would translate a collection of children's hymns into Arabic, which promise was fulfilled first in the printing of the "Douzan el Kethar," "The tuning of the Harp," in 1861. Katrina was the daughter of Elias Subra, one of the wealthiest men in the village, who had just then become a Protestant. She had been interested in the truth for some time, and though at the time only eight years old, was accustomed during the preceding summer to tell the Arab children that she was a Protestant, though they answered her with insults and cursing. At first she could not bear to be abused, and answered them in language more forcible than proper, but by the time of my visit she had become softened and subdued in her manner, and was never heard to speak an unkind word to any one. She undertook, even at that age, to teach the Greek servant girl in the family how to read. One day the old Greek Priest met her in the street and asked her why she did not go to confession as the other Greek children do. She replied that she could go to Christ and confess. The priest then said that her father and the rest of the Protestants go to the missionary and write out their sins on papers which he puts into rat holes in the wall! Katrina knew this to be a foolish falsehood and told the priest so. He then asked her how the Protestants confess. She replied that they confess as the Lord Jesus tells them to, quoting to him the language of Scripture, (Matt. 6:6.) "But thou when thou prayest, enter into thy closet, and when thou hast shut the door, pray to thy Father which is in secret, and thy Father who seeth in secret shall reward thee openly." The priest was confounded by the ready truthful answer of the child, and turned away.

Three years later Katrina was a member of the Mission Female Seminary in Suk el Ghurb, a village three hours distant from Beirût, under the instruction of Miss Temple and Miss Johnson, and continued there until the Seminary was broken up by the massacres of May and June, 1860. I remember well the day when that procession of girls and teachers rode and walked down from Suk el Ghurb to Beirût. All Southern Lebanon was in a blaze. Twenty-five villages were burning. Druze and Maronite were in deadly strife. Baabda and Hadeth which we passed on our way to Beirût, were a smoking ruin. Armed bodies of Druzes passed and saluted us, but no one offered to insult one of the girls by word or gesture. Dr. and Mrs. Bliss gave us lunch at their home in the Suk as we came from Abeih, and then followed a few days later to Beirût. Miss Temple tried to re-open the school in Beirût, but the constant tide of refugees coming in from the mountains, and the daily rumors of an attack by Druzes and Moslems on Beirût, threw the city into a panic, and it was found impossible to carry on the work of instruction. The girls were sent to their parents where this was practicable, and the Seminary as such ceased for a time to exist. Katrina, was married in 1864 to M. Ghurzûzy, a Protestant merchant of Beirût, who is now secular agent or Wakil of the Syrian Protestant College. In 1866, she united with the Evangelical Church in Beirût. She has had repeated attacks of illness, in which she has manifested the most entire submission to the Divine will, and a calm and sweet trust in her Lord and Saviour. Her home is a Christian home, and her children are being trained in "the nurture and admonition of the Lord."