Hadeth Summer Home 75 Abu Maroon, the Hadeth Carpenter 75 Homs--_Boys' School_ 104 Tripoli Boys' School--_First Home_ 150 Tripoli Boys' School--_Second Home_ 150 Homs 164 Heathen Temple and Mount Hermon 164 Hamidiyeh Mosque--_Tripoli_ 169 Old City Gate--_Tripoli_ 169 SILVER CHIMES IN SYRIA CHAPTER I ARRIVAL IN SYRIA Every individual makes a new personal discovery, as with the passage of years, he realizes the difference between the long look forward over a given period, and the look backward over the same period, when it is completed. To the new arrival on the field the veteran of twenty-five years' experience appears to have spent a very long time in the service; but as he looks back over his own life, at the end of a similar period, he wonders that he ever entertained such an opinion. Looking back to the year 1888, the events of that time do not seem at all remote, and it is hard to realize that to anyone that year can appear a very long way in the past. On the last day of October, in the early morning, a steamer of the Austrian-Lloyd Line cast anchor in front of Beirut. That was long before the building of the harbor, and all vessels tossed in the open roadstead, at the mercy of wind and wave, only slightly sheltered by the long headland of Ras Beirut, where the tall lighthouse rears its slender shaft, and where the Syrian Protestant College stands, as a more important symbol of light-giving. The anchor was scarcely dropped before the little boats from the shore crowded about the ladders and the boatmen came swarming over the sides of the vessel, to take possession of the passengers and carry them ashore. It is always a perplexing but interesting scene to the newcomer. The curious costumes of many colors give an appearance of gayety to the crowd; the shouting of the guttural Arabic makes one think of Babel; the wild gesticulating of the excited people suggests the possibility of a riot; the seizing of baggage and pulling of passengers by eager boatmen make one think that the day of personal liberty and private property is passed. As a rule, however, it is all good-natured, and the noise is more bantering than quarreling. In fact, one soon becomes accustomed to the turmoil as an indication of lack of orderly proceeding in the Orient.