“go ahead.”  His friend asked him if he had used the latter word much on the way.  He said certainly, he had used it all the way.  His friend answered, Professor, you have been swearing all the way through the Holy Land.  Of course he did not know it and meant no wrong.  But it shows that such words are used so commonly in Syria that strangers do not think them bad language, and it also shows that travellers ought to be careful in using the words they learn of muleteers and sailors in Arab land.

In some parts of the country the little boys and girls swear so dreadfully that you can hardly bear to be with them.  Especially among the Nusairiyeh, they think that nothing will be believed unless they add an oath.  Dr. Post once rebuked an old Sheikh for using the word “Wullah” so often, and argued so earnestly about it that the man promised never to use it again.  The old man a moment after repeated it.  The doctor said, “will you now pledge me that you will not say ‘Wullah’ again?” He replied, “Wullah, I will.”

Sometimes a donkey-driver will get out of patience with his long-eared beast.  The donkey will lie down with his load in a deep mud-hole, or among the sharp rocks.  For a time the man will kick and strike him and throw stones at him, and finally when nothing else succeeds he will stand back, with his eyes glaring and his fist raised in the air, and scream out, “May Allah curse the beard of your grandfather!” I believe that the donkey always gets up after that,—­that is, if the muleteer first takes off his load and then helps him, by pulling stoutly at his tail.

I told you that one of the girls who bring us milk, is named “Lokunda,” or Hotel.  She is a small specimen of a hotel, but provides us purer and sweeter cow’s milk than many a six-storied hotel on Broadway would do.  You will say that is a queer name for a girl, but if you stop and think about many of our English names you would think them queer too.  Here in Syria, we have the house of Wolf, the house of “Stuffed Cabbage,” Khowadji Leopard, the lady “Wolves,” and one of our fellow villagers in Abeih where we spend the summer is Eman ed Deen “faith-of-religion,” although he has neither faith nor religion.

Among the boys’ names are Selim, Ibrahim, Moosa, Yakob, Ishoc, Mustafa, Hanna, Yusef, Ali, Saieed, Assaf, Giurgius, Faoor, and Abbas.  I once met a boy at the Cedars of Lebanon, who was named Jidry, or “Small-Pox,” because that disease was raging in the village when he was born.  It is very common to name babies from what is happening in the world when they are born.  A friend of mine in Tripoli had a daughter born when an American ship was in the harbor, so he called her America.  When another daughter was born there was a Russian ship in port, so he called her Russia.  There is a young woman in Suk el Ghurb named Fetneh or Civil War, and her sister is Hada, or Peace.  An old lady lately died in Beirut named Feinus or Lantern.  In the Beirut school are and have been girls named Pearl, Diamond, Morning Dawn, Dew, Rose, Only one, and Mary Flea.  That girl America’s full name was America Wolves, a curious name for a Syrian lamb!