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 people can do what they please without fear, as the priest is ready to forgive them for money.  These sects call themselves Christian, but there is very little of Christianity among them.  A Greek in Tripoli once told me that there was not a man in the Greek church in Tripoli who would not lie, excepting one of the priests.

Leaving Safita, we will go back on a different road, crossing directly to the sea-shore, and then along the coast to Tripoli.  Here is a little abject village, and the people look as abject as the village.  Their neighbors laugh at them for their stupidity, and tell the following story:  They have no wells in the village, and the little fountain is not sufficient for their cattle, so they water them from the Ramet or pool, which is filled by the rains and lasts nearly all summer.  One year the water in the Ramet began to fail, and there was a quarrel between the two quarters of the village, as to which part should have the first right to the water.  Finally they decided to divide the pool into two parts, by making a fence of poles across the middle of it.  This worked very well.  One part watered their cattle on one side and the other part on the other side.  But one night there was a great riot in the village.  Some of the men from the north side saw a south-sider dipping up water from the north side and pouring it over the fence into the other part of the pool.  Of course this made no difference, as the fence was nothing but open lattice work, but the people were too stupid to see that, so they fought and bruised one another for a long time.

In another village, Aaleih, near Beirut, the people were formerly so stupid that the Arabs say that once when the clouds came up the mountains and settled like a bank of fog under the cliff on which their village is built, they thought it was the sea, and went to fish in the clouds!

So you see the Syrians are as fond of humorous stories as other people.

PART IV.

But here we are coming upon a gypsy camp.  The Arabs call them Nowar, and you will find that the Arab women of the villages are careful to keep an eye on their little children when the gypsies are around.  They often steal children in the towns and cities, when they can find them straying away from home at dusk, and then sell them as servants in Moslem families.  Last year we were all greatly interested in a story of this kind, which I know you will be glad to hear.