“I wish I had strength to do more, but my school and my studies draw upon my energies continually.”  Even at that early day Moslem girls came to be taught by Mrs. Smith.  She writes June 2, “A few days since, one of my little Moslem scholars, whose father was once an extensive merchant here, came and invited me to make a call upon her mother.  I took Raheel and accompanied her to their house which is in our neighborhood.  I found it a charming spot and very neatly kept.  Hospitality is regarded here as a religious act, I think, and a reputation for it is greatly prized.”

In July she wrote of what has not ceased to be a trial to all missionaries in Beirut for the past forty years, the necessity of removing to the mountains during the hot summer months.  The climate of the plain is debilitating to foreigners, and missionary families are obliged to spend three months of the hot season in the Lebanon villages.  “My school interests me more and more every day, and I do not love to think of suspending it even for a few weeks during the hot season.  Day before yesterday a wealthy Jewish lady came with her two daughters to the school, and begged me to take the youngest as a scholar.”

July 19.  “At our Sabbath School to-day were twenty-eight scholars, twenty-one girls and seven boys.”

July 31.  “To-day I closed my school for the month of August by the distribution of rewards to thirty little girls.  The American and English Consuls and a few Arab friends were present, and expressed much pleasure at the sight of so many young natives in their clean dress.  A few of the more educated scholars read a little in the New Testament.”

August 8.  “On Saturday I closed my school for the month of August.  It was increasing every day in numbers and I would gladly have continued it.  Last Sabbath we had at the Sabbath School forty-six scholars, a fourth of whom were Moslems.”

September 29.  “Yesterday I commenced my school again with twenty scholars; which, for the first day, was a good number.  Mrs. Whiting has ten little Moslem girls in Jerusalem, and the promise of more.”

December 14.  “On Saturday, our native female prayer-meeting consisted of twenty, besides two children.  Fourteen were Arabs, more than were ever present before.  We met in the girls’ school room, where we intend in future to assemble.  We sung part of a psalm, as we have begun to teach music in our school.  We find the children quite as capable of forming musical sounds as those in our own country; but alas, we have no psalms or hymns adapted to their capacities.  The Arabic cannot be simplified like the English, without doing violence to Arab taste; at least such is the opinion now.  What changes may be wrought in the language, we cannot tell.  Of this obstacle in the instruction of the young here, you have not perhaps thought.  It is a painful thought to us, that children’s literature, if I may so term it, is incompatible with the genius of this language:  of course, infant school lessons must be bereft of many of their attractions.”