they may suppose a living man to be dead, and bury him alive, as has, no doubt, often been done.  Immediately after the burial, the crowd return to the house of the deceased, where a sumptuous table awaits them, and all the relatives, friends, and strangers eat their fill.  After eight days, the wailing, assembling, crowding, and eating are repeated, for the consolation of the distracted relatives.  And these crowds and turbulent proceedings occur, not simply at Syrian funerals, but also at marriages and births, in case the child born is a boy, for the Syrians are fond of exhibiting their joy and sorrow.  But it should be remembered, that just as in civilized lands, all these demonstrations of joy and sorrow are tempered by moderation and wisdom, and subdued by silent acquiescence in the Divine will, so in uncivilized lands, they are the occasion for giving the loose rein to passion and tumult and violent emotion.  How much in conformity with true faith in God, and religious principle, is the quiet, well-ordered and moderate course of procedure among civilized nations!

“So in former times, the man was everywhere the absolute tyrant of the family.  The wife was the slave, never to be seen by others.  And if, in conversation, it became necessary to mention her name, it would be by saying this was done by my wife ‘ajellak Allah.’  But now, there is a change, and woman is no longer so generally regarded as worthy of contempt and abuse, and the progress being made in the emancipation and elevation of woman, is one of the noblest and best proofs of the real progress of Lebanon in the paths of morality and civilization.”

This is the language of the official paper of the Lebanon government.  Yet how difficult to root out superstitious and injurious customs by official utterances!  At the very time that article was written, these customs continued in full force.  A woman in Abeih, whose husband died in 1866, refused to allow her house or her clothes to be washed for more than a whole year afterward, just as though untidiness and personal uncleanliness would honor her deceased husband!

CHAPTER XIV.

BEDAWIN ARABS.

There is one class of the Arab race, of which little or nothing has been said in the preceding pages, for the simple reason that there is little to be said of missionary work or progress among them.  We refer to the Bedawin Arabs.  The true sons of Ishmael, boasting of their descent from him, living a wild, free and independent life, rough, untutored and warlike, plundering, robbing and murdering one another as a business; roaming over the vast plains which extend from Aleppo to Baghdad, and from Baghdad to Central Arabia, and bordering the outskirts of the more settled parts of Syria and Palestine; ignorant of reading and writing, and yet transacting extensive business in wool and live-stock with the border towns and cities; nominally Mohammedans, and yet disobeying