Here comes Im Isbir.  Poor woman, she is a widow now.  Her husband died and left her with these little children, and last night her valuable cow died, and she is in great distress.  Yusef, the preacher, says she is the most needy person in Safita.  You would think so from the ragged appearance of the children.  They are like the children in Eastern Turkey, whom Mr. Williams of Mardin used to describe, whose garments were so ragged and tattered that there was hardly cloth enough to make borders for the holes!  They dig up roots in the fields for food, and now and then the neighbors give them a little of their coarse corn bread.  The Greeks tell her to turn back to them and they will help her, but she says, “when one has found the light, can she turn back into the darkness again?” Yusef wishes us to walk in and sit down, as the people are anxious to see us.  He lives in the church from necessity.  He cannot get a house in the village, excepting these dark cavern-like rooms with damp floors, and so the missionaries told him to occupy one half of the church room.  A curtain divides it into two rooms and on Sunday the curtain is drawn, his things are piled up on one side, and the women and girls sit in that part, while the men and boys sit on the other side.  All sit on mats on the floor.  Is that cradle hanging from the ring in the arch between the two rooms, kept there on Sunday?  Yes, and when I preached here last June, Yusef’s baby was swinging there during the whole service.  One of the women kept it swinging gently, by pulling a cord, which hung down from it.  It did not disturb the meeting at all.  No one noticed it.  They have calves and cows, donkeys and goats in their own houses at night, and sleep sweetly enough, so that the swinging of a hanging cradle in the inside of the church is not thought to be at all improper.

Do you see that shelf on the wall?  It reminds me of a little girl named Miriam who once came to your Aunt Annie in Deir Mimas to ask about the Sidon school, whither she was going in a few weeks.  She told Miriam that she would have to be thoroughly washed and combed every day, and would sleep on a bedstead.  Then Miriam asked permission to see a bedstead, as she did not know what it could be.  The next night, about midnight, Miriam’s mother heard something drop heavily on the floor, and then a child crying.  She went across the room, and there was Miriam sitting on the mat.  “What is the matter, Miriam?” she asked.  Miriam said, “mother, the Sit told me I was to sleep on a bedstead in Sidon school, and I thought I would practice beforehand, so I tried to sleep on the shelf, and tumbled off in my sleep!”