Soon after our removal to Abeih, October, 1844, we established a day-school for girls in the village on the Mission premises, of which Salome and Hanne had the entire charge under my superintendence.  When the Station at Mosul was established, Salome was appointed by the Mission to assist Mrs. Williams in her work among the women, in which work she continued until her marriage with Rev. John Wortabet.  Melita was afterwards appointed by the Mission to the Aleppo Station to assist Mrs. Eddy and Mrs. Ford in the work, and so they were employed at various stations in the work of teaching, until I left the Mission.  I have kept up a continual correspondence with them, and have learned from others to my joy, that they were doing the work for which I had trained them.”

The above deeply interesting letter from Mrs. Whiting is enough in itself to show what an amount of patient Christian labor was expended through a course of many years, in the education of the five young Syrian maidens who were entrusted in the providence of God to her care.  I have been personally acquainted with four of them for seventeen years, and can testify, as can many others, of the good use they have made of their high opportunities.  The amount of good they have accomplished as teachers, in Abeih, Jerusalem, Deir el Komr, Hasbeiya, Tripoli, Aleppo, Mosul, Alexandria, Cairo, Melbourne, (Australia,) and in the Mission Female Seminary and the Prussian Deaconesses’ Institute in Beirut, will never be known until all things are revealed.  I have received letters from several of them, which I will give in their own language, as they are written in English.  The first is from Salome, now the wife of the Rev. Prof.  John Wortabet, M.D., of the Syrian Protestant College in Beirut.

“I do not consider my history worth recording, and it is only out of consideration of what is due to Mrs. Whiting for the labor she bestowed upon us, that I am induced to take up my pen to comply with your request.  I was taken by Mrs. Whiting when only six years old, together with Hannie Wortabet, who was five years old, to be brought up in her family, she having no children of her own.  Owing partly to the nature of the religious instruction we received, and partly to my own timid sensitive nature, I was, from time to time for many years, under deep spiritual terrors, without any saving result.  When I was about sixteen, a revival of religion took place, under whose influence I was also brought.  Mr. Calhoun was my spiritual adviser, and although my mind groped in darkness, and bordered on despair for many weeks, I hope I was then led to put my trust in Jesus, and if ever I am saved, my only hope now is, and ever shall be, in the merits of Jesus’ blood and His promises.”

The next letter is from Melita Carabet, daughter of the Armenian Bishop Dionysius Carabet, who became a Protestant in 1823.  She writes as follows: