study embraced the
Arabic language for the whole period, the English language,
geography and astronomy, civil and ecclesiastical history, with
chronology, mathematics, rhetoric,--in the Arab sense, a popular
study,--natural and moral philosophy, composition and translation,
natural theology, and sacred music. The Bible was studied
constantly. In all these departments there was a great deficiency of
books; in some it was entire.

Mr. Hebard and Miss Williams were united in marriage in October,
1836. Mr. Hebard had then the care of the seminary, and the girls'
school was taught by Mrs. Hebard and Mrs. Dodge. The latter was
subsequently married to the Rev. J. D. Paxton, a clergyman from the
United States, then on a visit to Syria.

The mission, as early as 1836, became sensible of a serious
deficiency in their Arabic type. As it did not conform to the most
approved standard of Arabic caligraphy, it did not meet the popular
taste. Mr. Smith therefore took pains to collect models of the
characters in the best manuscripts. These were lost in his
shipwreck, but he afterwards replaced them at Constantinople, to the
number of two hundred; so varied, that the punches formed for them
would make not far from a thousand matrices. These he placed in the
hands of Mr. Hallock, the missionary printer at Smyrna, who
possessed great mechanical ingenuity, and was entirely successful in
cutting the punches. The type was cast at Leipzig by Tauchnitz. Thus
a really great and important work, without which the press could not
have been domesticated among the many millions to whom the Arabic is
vernacular, was brought to a successful issue.

The disastrous shipwreck of Mr. and Mrs. Smith on their way from
Beirut to Smyrna, has been already mentioned. The voyage was
undertaken chiefly for the benefit of Mrs. Smith's health; but the
exposures consequent on the shipwreck, extending through
twenty-eight days until their arrival at Smyrna, aggravated her
consumptive tendencies, and hastened her passage to the grave. She
died on the thirtieth of September, 1836, at the age of thirty-four.
The closing scene is described by her husband. "Involuntary groans
were occasionally muttered in her convulsions. These, as we were
listening to them with painful sympathy, once, to our surprise,
melted away into musical notes; and for a moment, our ears were
charmed with the full, clear tones of the sweetest melody. No words
were articulated, and she was eviden