s from Arab writers and orators of
the present day, is to give some idea of the change going on in Syrian
public sentiment with regard to education, the dignity of woman, and the
abolition of superstitious social usages, I cannot do better than to
translate from the official journal of Daud Pasha, late governor of Mt.
Lebanon, an article on the customs of the Lebanon population. This paper
was styled "Le Liban," and printed both in Arabic and French in July,
1867. It gives us a glimpse of the civilizing and Christianizing
influences which are at work in Syria.

"In Mount Lebanon there exist certain customs, which had their origin
in kindly feeling and sympathy, but have now passed beyond the limits of
propriety, and lost their original meaning. For example, when one falls
sick, his relatives and friends at once begin to pour in upon him. The
whole population of the town will come crowding into the house, each one
speaking to the sick a word of comfort and encouragement, and then
sitting down in the sick room. The poor invalid must respond to all
these salutations, and even be expected to rise in bed and bow to his
loving friends. Then the whole company must speak a word to the family,
to the wife and children, assuring them that the disease is but slight,
and the sick man will speedily recover. Then they crowd into the sick
room (and _such_ a crowd it is!) and the family and servants are kept
running to supply them with cigars and narghilehs, by means of which
they fill the room with a dense and suffocating smoke. Meantime, they
talk all at once and in a loud voice, and the air soon becomes impure
and suffocating, and all these things as a matter of course injure the
sick man, and he becomes worse. Then the childish doctors of the town
are summoned, and in they come with grave faces, and a great show of
wisdom, and each one begins to recount the names of all the medicines he
has heard of, and describes their effects in working miraculous cures.
Then they enter into ignorant disputes on learned subjects, and talk of
the art of medicine of which they know nothing save what they have
learned by hearsay. One will insist that this medicine is the best,
because his father used it with great benefit just before he died, and
another will urge the claims of another medicine, of a directly opposite
character, and opinions will clash, and all in the presence of the sick
man, who thus becomes agitated and alarmed. He takes first one