RAHEEL.

No sketch of Woman’s Work for Syrian women would be complete which did not give some account of the life and labors of that pioneer in work for Syrian women, Mrs. Sarah L.H.  Smith, wife of Dr. Eli Smith.  She reached Beirut, January 28, 1834, full of high and holy resolves to devote her life to the benefit of her Syrian sisters.  From the first to the very last of her life in Syria, this was the one great object of her toils and prayers.  As soon as April 2, she writes, “Our school continues to prosper, and I love the children exceedingly.  Do pray that God will bless this incipient step to enlighten the women of this country.  You cannot conceive of their deplorable ignorance.  I feel it more and more every day.  Their energies are expended in outward adorning of plaiting the hair and gold and pearls and costly array, literally so.  I close with one request, that you will pray for a revival of religion in Beirut.”  Again she writes, June 30, 1834, “I feel somewhat thoughtful, this afternoon, in consequence of having heard of the ready consent of the friends of a little girl, that I should take her as I proposed, and educate her.  I am anxious to do it, and yet my experience and observation in reference to such a course, and my knowledge of the sinful heart of a child, lead me to think I am undertaking a great thing.  I feel, too, that my example and my instruction will control her eternal destiny.”  This girl was Raheel Ata.  Again, August 16:  “It is a great favor that so many of the men and boys can read.  Alas, our poor sisters! the curse rests emphatically upon them.  Among the Druze princesses, some, perhaps the majority, furnish an exception and can read.  Their sect is favorable to learning.  Not so with the Maronites.  I have one scholar from these last, but when I have asked the others who have been here if they wished to read, they have replied most absolutely in the negative, saying that it was for boys, and not for them.  I have heard several women acknowledge that they knew no more than the donkeys.”

August 23.  A Maronite priest compelled two little girls to leave her school, but the Greek priest sent “his own daughter, a pretty, rosy-cheeked girl” to be taught by Mrs. Smith.  On the 22d of September, 1834, she wrote from B’hamdun, a village five hours from Beirut, on Lebanon, “Could the females of Syria be educated and regenerated, the whole face of the country would change; even, as I said to an Arab a few days since, to the appearance of the houses and the roads.  One of our little girls, whom I taught before going to the mountains, came to see me a day or two since, and talked incessantly about her love for the school, and the errors of the people here, saying that they ’cared not for Jesus Christ, but only for the Virgin Mary.’”

October 8.  She says, “A servant woman of Mrs. Whiting, who has now lived long enough with her to love her and appreciate her principles, about a year and a half since remarked to some of the Arabs, that the people with whom she lived did ’not lie, nor steal, nor quarrel, nor do any such things; but poor creatures,’ said she, ’they have no religion.’”