“In the reformation of a nation, then, the first step in the ladder is the education of the women from their childhood.  And those who neglect the women and girls, and expect the elevation of the people by the mere training of men and boys, are like one walking with one foot on the earth, and the other in the clouds!  They fail in accomplishing their purpose and are barely able, by the utmost energy, to repair that which woman has corrupted and destroyed.  They build a wall, and woman tears down a castle.  They elevate boys one degree, and women depress them many degrees.

“Perhaps I have now said enough on a subject never before written upon by any of our ancestors of the sons of the Arabs.  My object has been to prove the importance of the education of woman, based on the maxim, that, ’she who rocks the cradle with her right hand, moves the world with her arm.’”

The next article I have translated from Mr. Bistany’s Semi-monthly Magazine, called the “Jenan,” for July, 1870.  It was written by an Arab woman of Aleppo, the Sitt Mariana Merrash.  She writes with great power and eloquence in the Arabic; and her brother, Francis Effendi, is one of the most powerful writers of modern Syria.  The paper of the Sitt Mariana is long, and the introduction is most ornate and flowery.  She writes on the condition of woman among the Arabs, and refutes an ancient Arab slander against women that they are cowardly and avaricious, because they will not fight, and carefully hoard the household stores.  She then proceeds:—­

“Wo to us Syrian women, if we do not know enough to distinguish and seek after those qualities which will elevate and refine our minds, and give breadth to our thoughts, and enable us to take a proper position in society!  We ought to attract sensible persons to us by the charm of our cultivation and refinement, not by the mere phantom of beauty and personal ornament.  Into what gulfs of stupidity have we plunged!  Do we not know that the reign of beauty is short, and not enough of itself to be worthy of regard?  And even supposing that it were enough of itself, in the public estimation, to make us attractive and desirable, do we not know assuredly that after beauty has faded, we should fall at once into a panic of anxiety and grief, since none would then look at us save with the eye of contempt and ridicule, to say nothing of the vain attempts at producing artificial beauty which certain foolish women make, as if they were deaf to the insults and abuse heaped upon them?  Shall we settle down in indolence, and never once think of what is our highest advantage and our chiefest good?  Shall we forever run after gay attire and ornament?  Let us arise and run the race of mental culture and literary adornment, and not listen for a moment to those who insult us by denying the appropriateness of learning to women, and the capacity of women for learning!