you find any such teaching as this in the gospel? It is time for us to
give up such superstitions." The old woman asked, "Where did that girl
learn these things? Truly she is right. These things _are_
superstitions, but they will not die until _we old women die_." It
required a great deal of courage in A. to speak out so boldly, when her
own brother had died, but all felt that she spoke the truth, and no one
rebuked her.

Near by the house of A. is another beautiful house surrounded by
gardens, and ornamented in the most expensive manner. A little girl from
this family was attending the school in 1867. Her name was Fereedy. She
was a boarder and the best behaved girl in the school. One day during
vacation, her mother came to Rufka and said, "What have you done to my
little daughter Fereedy? She came home last Saturday with her sister,
and at once took the whole care of the little children, so that I had no
trouble with them. And when night came she put her little sisters to bed
and prayed with them all, and then in the morning she prayed with them
again. I never saw such a child. She is like a little angel." The mother
is of the Greek sect, and the little girl was only twelve years old.

And here is a story about another of the superstitions of the fellaheen,
and what a little girl taught the people about them. This little girl
named L. went with her father to spend the summer in a mountain village,
where the people had a strange superstition about an oak tree. One day
she went out to walk and came to the great oak tree which stood alone on
the mountain side. You know that the Canaanites used to have idols under
the green trees in ancient times. When L. reached the tree, she found
the ground covered with dead branches which had fallen from the tree.
Now, wood is very scarce and costly in Syria, and the people are very
poor, so that she wondered to see the wood left to rot on the ground,