the desk in the office. The Maronite candidate for the church sat
smiling, as if he thought he would now be received at once. Yanni went
on, "I understand the case exactly. This man is a son of a Sheikh in
Dunnîyeh. He is in a deadly quarrel with his father and brothers about
the property, and says that if we will give him the protection of the
American Consulate, he will go home, kill his father and brothers, seize
all the property, and then come down and join the church, and live in
Tripoli!" We were astounded, but the brutal fellow turned to us and
said, "yes, and I will then make all the village Protestants, and if I
fail, then cut my head off!" We told him that if he did anything of that
kind, we would try to get him hung, and the American Consulate would
have nothing to do with him. "Very well," said he, "I have made you a
_fair offer_, and if you don't accept it, I have nothing more to say."
We rebuked him sharply, and gave him a sermon which he did not relish,
for he said he was in haste, and bade us a most polite good morning. He
was what I should call an Adullamite.

A Greek priest in the village of Barbara once took me aside, to a
retired place behind his house, and told me that he had a profound
secret to tell me. He wished to become a Protestant and make the whole
village Protestant, but on one condition, that I would get him a hat, a
coat, and pantaloons, put a flag-staff on his house, and have him
appointed American Consul. I told him the matter of the hat, coat and
pantaloons he could attend to at but slight expense, but I had no right
to make Consuls and erect flagstaffs. Then he said he could not become
Protestant.

In 1866, a man named Yusef Keram rebelled against the Government of
Lebanon and was captured and exiled. The day he was brought into Beirût,
a tall rough looking mountaineer called at my house. He was armed with a