the
food, intending to kill her son, the missionaries, and the other invited
guests, but through the mercy of God none of them were seriously
injured.

Michaiel says that they have only half a crop of corn this year, as the
_locusts_ devoured the other half in the spring. You remember I sent you
some locusts' wings once, in a letter. When they appear in the land, the
Pashas and Mudirs and Kaimakams give orders to the people to go out and
gather the eggs of the locusts as soon as they begin to settle down to
bury themselves in the earth. The body of the female locust is like the
spawn of a fish, filled with one mass of eggs. Each man is obliged to
bring so many ounces of these eggs to the Pasha and have them weighed
and then burned. A tailor of Beirut brought a bag of them, and as it was
late, put them in his shop for the night and went home. He was unwell
for a few days and when he went to his shop again, opened the door, and
thousands of little black hopping creatures, like imps, came like a
cloud into his face. They had hatched out in his absence.

This is a fearful land for lying; in these mountains around us, you
cannot depend on a word you hear. The people say that in the beginning
of the world, Satan came down to the earth with seven bags of lies,
which he intended to distribute in the seven kingdoms of the earth. The
first night after he reached the earth he slept in Syria, and opened one
of the bags, letting the lies loose in the land. But while he was
asleep, some one came and opened all the other bags! so that Syria got
more than her share!

An old man in Beirut once said, "Sir, you must be careful what you
believe, and whom you trust in this country. If there are twenty-four
inches of hypocrisy in the world, twenty-three are in Syria." This man
was a native of great experience. I think he was rather severe on his
countrymen. Yet the people have had a hard training. The Nusairiyeh all
lie. They do not even pretend to tell the truth. The Druze religion
teaches the people that it is right to lie to all except Druzes. The
Moslems are better than either of these two classes, but they lie
without a blush, and you must be very careful how you believe them.

Among the Maronite and Greek sects, their priests tell the people that
they can forgive sins. When a man lies or steals or does anything else
that is wicked, he pays a few piastres to the priest, who gives him what
they call absolution or forgiveness. So the