e, and in March you can buy five
oranges or ten sweet lemons for a cent. Huge watermelons are about eight
or ten cents a piece. We buy so many pounds of milk and oil and potatoes
and charcoal. The prickly pear, or subire, is a delicious fruit,
although covered with sharp barbed spines and thorns. It is full of hard
large woody seeds, but the people are very fond of the fruit. Sheikh
Nasif el Yazijy was a famous Arab poet and scholar, and a young man once
brought him a poem to be corrected. He told him to call in a few days
and get it. He came again and the Sheikh said to him. "Your poem is like
the Missionary's prickly pear!" "The Missionary's prickly pear?" said
the young poet. "What do you mean?" "Why," said the Sheikh, "Dr. ---- a
missionary, when he first came to Syria, had a dish of prickly pears set
before him to eat. Not liking to eat the seeds, he began to pick them
out, and when he had picked out all the seeds, there was nothing left!
So your poem. You asked me to remove the errors, and I found that when I
had taken out all the errors, there was nothing left."

It is about time for us to start. We will ride through the orange
gardens and see the rich fruit bending the trees almost down to the
ground. Steer your way carefully through the crowd of mules, pack
horses, camels and asses loaded with boxes of fruit hastening down to
the Meena for the steamer which goes North to-night.

Here is Yanni, with his happy smiling face coming out to meet us. We
will dismount and greet him. He will kiss us on both cheeks and insist
on our calling at his house. The children are glad to see you, and the
Sitt Karimeh asks, how are "the preserved of God?" that is, the
_children_. Then the little tots come up to kiss my hand, and Im
Antonius, the old grandmother, comes and greets us most kindly. It was
not always so. She was once very hostile to the Missionaries. She
thought that her son had done a dreadful deed when he became a
Protestant. Although she once loved him, she hated him and hated us.
She used to fast, and make vows, and pray to the Virgin and the saints,
and beat her breast in agony over her son. She had a brother and another
son, who were like her, and they all persecuted Yanni. But he bore it
patiently without an unkind word in return for all their abuse. At
length the brother Ishoc was taken ill. Im Antonius brought the pictures
and put them over his head and called the priests. He said, "Mother,
take away these id