rnal for Syrian children. The name of
the journal is "koukab es Subah," or "Morning Star." She has been
confined to her bed a part of the summer, and when she gave me the
manuscript, she apologized for the handwriting, on the ground that she
had written the most of it sitting or lying on her bed. She has not
forgotten the example and instructions of Dr. and Mrs. De Forest, and
speaks of them with enthusiastic interest. Her husband failed in
business some years ago, and she is in a constant struggle with want,
but her old friends and loving sisters, Raheel and Lulu, who are among
her nearest neighbors, are unremitting in their kind attentions to her.

What a difference between the faithful Christian nurture her little
children are receiving at home, and the worse than no training received
by the children of her Druze relatives at Ras Beirut, who are still
under the shadow of their old superstitions. She never curses her
children nor invokes the wrath of God upon them. She is never beaten and
spit upon and tortured and threatened with death by her husband. It is
worth much to have rescued a Khozma and an Abla from the degradation of
Druze superstition! These two good women, with Abdullah in Beirut, and
Hassan, Hassein, Asaad and Ali, in Lebanon, are among the living
witnesses to the preciousness of the love of Christ, who have come forth
from the Druze community. They have been persecuted, and may be again,
but they stand firm in Christ. Not a few Druze girls are gathered in our
schools in Beirut, Lebanon, and the vicinity of Hermon, as well as in
other schools in Damascus, Hasbeiya and elsewhere, and some of their
young men are receiving a Christian education.

CHAPTER IV.

NUSAIRIYEH.

To the North of Mount Lebanon, and along the low range of mountains
extending from Antioch to Tripoli, and from the Mediterranean on the
West to Hums on the East, live a strange, wild, blood-thirsty race
called the Nusairiyeh numbering about 200,000 souls, and now for the
first time in their history coming within the range of Missionary
effort.

The Druzes admit women to the Akkal or initiated class, but not so the
Nusairiyeh. The great secret of the Sacrament is administered in a
secluded place, the women being shut up in a house, or kept away from
the mysteries. In these assemblies the Sheikh reads prayers, and then
all join in cursing Abubekr, Omar, Othman, Sheikh et-Turkoman and the
Christians and others. Then he gives a