Formerly the Christian and Hebrew families gave their girls little schooling, but instead taught them to do embroidery and crochet work. Among even relatively poor families there exists a certain pride that causes housework to be regarded as degrading, and only those will become servants who are forced to do so by straitened circumstances. In late years there is a tendency to give the girls some education, which the Christians and Jews receive at the mission establishments of the Americans, French, English, Italians, Germans, Swiss, etc., while a very limited number of Mohammedan girls attend local public schools conducted exclusively for them. Contrary to the custom prevailing among the Arabs, Kurds, and Fellaheen, the Christians and Jews greatly prefer to have boy babies, and it is considered a great misfortune if most or all of the children of a family are girls. The boys are sent to the respective community and foreign mission schools, and some of the more enlightened and progressive families afterwards send their boys to the colleges at Beyrouth, Syria, to complete their education. It is the main object of every such family to marry off the girls as soon as possible, for it is considered a great shame to the girl if she is left unmarried until after twenty or twenty-two years of age. Marriage is the most important event, and the only one in which she is in any way prominent in all her life. Her great object in life is to become a wife and be the mother of a boy, the latter event always raising her in the estimation of her acquaintances and friends, and giving her considerable importance for the time being, whereas it is the contrary if the baby is a girl. In many families the young wife is not permitted to speak aloud in the presence of strangers or of the father-in-law until a boy is born to her. Parents generally engage their children at very early ages, in which little attention is paid to the wishes or dislikes of the prospective bride and groom. In fact, unborn children are sometimes provisionally engaged to each other by their parents, either for sentimental or financial reasons. Perhaps three-fourths of the girls of the country are married before they reach the age of sixteen, and many are married between twelve and fourteen. The consideration paid on the occasion of the marriage of non-Mohammedan, or Christian and Jewish girls, goes the other way from that paid at the marriage of an Arab girl, it being the desire of the groom to have as large a dowry as possible for his wife, and which goes to help make up the family exchequer. It consequently results that if a family that is not well to do has many girls it is very difficult to marry them well.