and that has been final. Lady Ann Blunt, who has travelled
among the Bedouins, says, 'In more than one sheikh's tent it is the
women's half of it in which the politics of the tribe are settled.'

"In regard to their religion they believe what they have been told or
have heard read from the Koran and other religious books. They do not
travel as much as the men, and do not have the opportunity of listening
to those who do, hence their ideas are not changed by what they see and
hear. All the traditions of Mohammed and other heroes are frequently
rehearsed and implicitly believed.

"Although the Arab race is considered a strong one, we find among the
women every ill to which their flesh is heir, unrelieved and oftentimes
even aggravated by their foolish native treatment. A mother's heart
cannot help but ache as she hears the Arab mother tell of the loss of
two, three, four, or more of her children, the sacrifice perhaps to her
own ignorance. The physical need of the Arab women is great and we pray
that it may soon appeal to some whose medical training fits them to
administer to this need in all parts of Arabia.

"In the towns in which there are missionaries there are comparatively
few houses in which they are not welcomed. In our own station there are
more open houses than we have ever had time to visit. Wherever women
travellers, of whom there have been two of some note, have gone, they
have been met with kindness; hence it will be seen that the open door is
not lacking."

Ignorance, superstition, and sensuality are the characteristics which
impress themselves most strongly at first upon one who visits the Arab
harem, but there are those, too, among the women who are really
attractive. It is a dark picture, and we do not urge the need of more
workers because the fields are white to harvest. We ask that more offer
themselves and be sent soon, rather, that, after they have learned the
difficult language, they may be able to begin _to prepare the ground for
seed-sowing_. It is a work that can only be done by women, for while the
Bedouin women have greater freedom to go about and converse with the men
than the town women have, and while some of the poorer classes in the
towns will allow themselves to be treated by a man doctor, and sit and
listen to an address made in the dispensary, the better class are only
accessible in their houses. Their whole range of ideas is so limited and
so far below ours that it will require "lin