cook.  After a little while he began to talk about religion, and to read the book, “Little Henry and his Bearer.”  I felt very much ashamed that others who did not have the opportunity to learn about religion had religion, and I, who had learned so much, had none.  That was the blessed evening on which I began to inquire earnestly about my salvation.  I was three months praying and found no answer to my prayers.  Christian friends tried to lead me to Christ, but I could not take hold of Him, till He Himself appeared to my soul in all His beauty and excellency.  Before I found peace Dr. Eli Smith and Mr. Whiting wanted me to teach a day school for them.  That was about three years after I left off learning.  “Oh,” thought I, “how can I teach others about Christ when I do not know Him myself?” However I began the school by opening and closing it with prayer, without any faith at all.  So I began by reading from the first of Matthew, till I came to the 16th chapter.  When I came to that chapter I read as usual, with blinded eyes; but when I came to the (13th) thirteen verse, and from there to the seventeenth, where it says, “Blessed art thou, Simon Barjona, for flesh and blood hath not revealed it unto thee, but my Father which is in heaven,” I felt that this had been said to me, and were these words sounded from heaven I would not have felt happier.  How true it is that no flesh could reveal unto me what God had revealed, because many Christian friends tried to make me believe, but I could not, I felt as if everything had become new and beautiful, because my Heavenly Father had made them all.  I was sometimes with faith and sometimes doubting, and by these changes my faith was strengthened.  After a short time, I asked Mr. Whiting to let me join the Church.  He asked me if I saw any change in myself, and I said, “One thing I know, that I used to dislike Christian people, and now they are my best friends.”  After a short time I was permitted to join the Church.  Then I left off teaching the day school, and was asked to teach in a Boarding school with Miss Cheney, in the same Seminary where I was brought up.  We taught in that school only six months.  Miss Cheney married, and I was engaged to be married.  While I was engaged, I went to Mr. Bird’s school for girls in Deir el Kamr, and taught there for more than a year.  I was married by Mr. Bird in his own house to M. Yusef Barakat, and then we went to Hasbeiya.  I stayed there seven months and then went to Beirut, and thence to Damascus with my husband, because he had to teach there.  I had nothing to do there but to look after my house, my little boy, and my husband.

After some time, the massacre broke out in Damascus, (July 9, 1860,) so we came back as refugees to Beirut.  Soon after my husband was taken ill and then died.  In that same year 1860, dear Mrs. Bowen Thompson came to Beirut.  She felt for the widows and orphans, being herself a widow.  She asked me if I would come and teach