dignity of woman enters the debased minds of Arab Mohammedans. The
simple fact is that there is no moral purity or elevation among the men,
and how can it be expected among the women. The Moslem idea of woman is
infinitely lower than the old Jewish idea. Woman in the time of Christ
was highly honored. Believing women followed Christ throughout Galilee
and Judea, and although enemies stood watching with hateful gaze on
every side, not one word of insinuation was ever lisped against them. It
is a most sadly impressive fact to one living in Syria at the present
day, that the liberty and respect allowed to woman in the days of our
Saviour would now be absolutely impossible. In purely Greek or Maronite
or Armenian villages, the women enjoy far greater liberty than where
there is a Moslem element in the population. And it is worthy of remark
and grateful recognition, that although Christianity in the East has
sunk almost to a level, in outward morality, with the Islamic and
semi-Pagan sects, there is a striking difference between the lowest
nominal Christian community and the highest Mohammedan, in the respect
paid to woman. Ignorant and oppressed as the Greek and Maronite women
may be, you feel on entering their houses, that the degrading yoke of
Moslem brutality is not on their necks. Their husbands may be coarse,
ignorant and brutal, beating their wives and despising their daughters,
mourning at the birth of a daughter, and marrying her without her
consent, and yet there are lower depths of coarseness and brutality, of
cruelty and bestiality, which are only found among Mohammedans. I once
suggested to a Tripoli Moslem, that he send his daughters to our Girls'
School, then taught by Miss Sada Gregory, a native teacher trained in
the family of Mrs. Whiting, and he looked at me with an expression of
mingled pity and contempt, saying, "Educate a _girl_! You might as well
attempt to educate _a cat_!"

Not two months since, I was conversing with several of the aristocratic