her most cruelly, and a violent persecution was excited against her and her brother Selim.  She was in daily and hourly expectation of being killed by her male relatives, as it had never been heard of in the Druze nation that a young girl should dare to become a Christian, and Mr. Whiting, missionary in Abeih, sent over a courageous Protestant youth named Saleh, who took the Sitt Abla by night over the rough mountain road to Abeih in safety.  But even here she was not safe.  The Druzes of Lebanon at that time were at the height of their feudal power.  Girls and women were killed among them without the least notice on the part of the mountain government.  Abla was like a prisoner in the missionary’s house, not venturing to go outside the door, and in order to be at peace, she went down with her brother to Beirut, where she has since resided.  Selim united with the Church, but was afterwards suspended from communion for improper conduct, and joined himself to the Jesuits, so that Abla has had to endure a two-fold persecution from her Druze relatives and her Jesuit brother.  On her removal to Beirut she was disinherited and deprived of her little portion of her father’s estate, and her life has been a constant struggle with persecution, poverty and want.  Yet amid all, she has stood firm as a rock, never swerving from the truth, or showing any disposition to go back to her old friends.  At times she has suffered from extreme privation, and the missionaries and native Protestants would only hear of it through others who happened to meet her.  Since uniting with the Church in 1849 she has lived a Christian life.  In a recent conversation she said, “I count all things but loss for the excellency of the knowledge of Christ Jesus my Lord, for whom I have suffered the loss of all things ... and I still continue, by the grace of Him Exalted, and by the merits of Jesus Christ my Saviour, awaiting a happy death, and everlasting rest.”

KHOZMA.

Her Christian experience is like that of Khozma Ata.  She is the only female member of the Protestant church in Syria from among the Druzes, except Sitt Abla.  She was born, in Beirut of the Druze family of Witwat, and when quite a child was taken by Dr. Beadle, then by Miss Tilden, living at one time in Aleppo, then in Jerusalem, and finally settled in the family of Dr. De Forest, where she continued until his departure for America in 1854.  For several years she has been an invalid, and is not often able to leave her house, even to go to church.  Two of her little girls are in the Female Seminary.  In 1861 she taught a day school for girls in Beirut, and assisted Dr. De Forest in his work in the Beirut Seminary.  I called upon her a few days since, and she handed me a roll of Arabic manuscript, which she said she had been translating from the English.  It is a series of stories for children which she has prepared to be printed in our monthly journal for Syrian children.