struction in the English language,
giving lessons also in French and Music to those who were willing to
pay for these branches.

Mr. Michaiel Araman, for many years a teacher in the Abeih Seminary with
Mr. Calhoun, and for some time a native preacher in Beirut, was
appointed instructor in the Biblical History and the Higher Arabic
branches; his wife Lulu, the Matron, and Miss Rufka Gregory, the
Preceptress. Rufka was an orphan, as already stated, and was trained
with her sister Sada in the family of Mr. and Mrs. Whiting for many
years. As a teacher and a disciplinarian she had not an equal among the
women of Syria, and under the joint management of this corps of
teachers, aided by competent assistants in the various branches, the
Seminary rose in public esteem, until it became one of the most
attractive and prosperous institutions in Syria.

In March, 1862, Rufka's day school of seventy girls held a public
examination in the Chapel. The girls were examined in Arabic reading,
geography, grammar, catechism, arithmetic, Scripture lessons and
English, with an exhibition of specimens of their needle work. In the
fall it was commenced as a Boarding School, with two paying pupils and
four charity pupils. The funds for commencing the boarding department
were furnished by Mr. Alexander Van Rensselaer, Mrs. Henry Farnum, Col.
Frazer, H.B.M. Commissioner to Syria, and others. The Seminary not being
under the direction of the Mission as such, nor in connection with the
American Board, was placed under the care of a local Board of Managers,
consisting of Dr. Thomson, Dr. Van Dyck, Consul J.A. Johnson, and Rev.
H.H. Jessup. Dr. Thomson was indefatigable in his efforts to place it on
a firm and permanent foundation, as a purely Native Protestant
institution, and the fact that such a school could be carried on for a
year without a single foreign instructor, was one of the most
encouraging features in the history of the Syria Mission. It was the
first purely native Female Seminary in Western Asia, and we hope it will
not be the last.

It will continue to be the aim of the Mission, and of the present able
faculty of the institution, to train up Native teachers qualified to
carry on the work in the future.

At the same time in the fall of 1862, a school for Damascene girls was
opened in an upper room of my house, under the care of one of Dr. De
Forest's pupils, Sada el Haleby, who carried it on successfully with
seventy girls until A