“For a moment there was perfect silence.  They all looked startled, and as if they felt that they were in the presence of some unseen power.  Then Helweh said, ‘What more did you say?’ I continued the Lord’s Prayer, and when I came to the words, ‘Give us day by day our daily bread,’ they said, ‘Cannot you make bread yourself?’ The passage, ’Forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us,’ is particularly forcible in the Arabic language; and one of the elder women, who was particularly severe and relentless-looking, said, ’Are you obliged to say that every day?’ as if she thought that sometimes it would be difficult to do so.  They said, ‘Are you a Moslem?’ I said, ’I am not called a Moslem.  But I am your sister, made by the same God, who is the one only God, the God of all, my Father and your Father.’  They asked me if I knew the Koran, and were surprised to hear that I had read it.  They handed a rosary to me, saying, ‘Do you know that?’ I repeated a few of the most striking and comprehensive attributes very carefully and slowly.  Then they cried out, ‘Mashallah, the English girl is a true believer’; and the impressionable, sensitive-looking Abyssinian slave-girls said, with one accord, ‘She is indeed an angel.’

“Moslems, men and women, have the name of Allah constantly on their lips, but it seems to have become a mere form.  This may explain why they were so startled when I said, ‘I was speaking to God.’” She adds that if she had only said, “I was saying my prayers,” or, “I was at my devotions,” it would not have impressed them.”

Next morning, on awaking, Miss Rogers found the women from the neighborhood had come in “to hear the English girl speak to God,” and Helweh said, “Now, Miriam, darling, will you speak to God?” At the conclusion she asked them if they could say Amen, and after a moment of hesitation they cried out, “Amen, amen!” Then one said, “Speak again, my daughter, speak about the bread.”  So she repeated the Lord’s Prayer with explanations.  When she left, they crowded around affectionately, saying, “Return again, O Miriam, beloved!”

After this pleasant little picture, we may hear something on the other side.  Two recent travellers, Mr. Palgrave and Mr. Vambery, have described the present state of Mohammedanism in Central Arabia and Turkistan, or Central Asia.  Barth has described it as existing among the negroes in North Africa.  Count Gobineau has told us of Islam as it is in Persia at the present day[397].  Mr. MacFarlane, in his book “Kismet, or the Doom of Turkey,” has pointed out the gradual decay of that power, and the utter corruption of its administration.  After reading such works as these,—­and among them let us not forget Mr. Lane’s “Modern Egyptians,”—­the conclusion we must inevitably come to is, that the worst Christian government, be it that of the Pope or the Czar, is very much better than the best Mohammedan government.  Everywhere we find arbitrary will