The hope expressed by Mrs. De Forest in 1852, with regard to the future
usefulness of Lulu, has not been disappointed. Her family is a model
Christian family, the home of piety and affection, the centre of a pure
and hallowed influence. Her eldest daughter Katie, named from Mrs. De
Forest, is now a teacher in the Beirut Female Seminary in which her
father has been the principal instructor in the Bible and in the higher
Arabic branches for ten years. For years this institution was carried
on in Lulu's house, and she was the Matron while Rufka was the
Preceptress, and its very existence is owing to the patient and faithful
labors of those two Christian Syrian women. If any one who reads these
lines should doubt the utility of labors for the girls and women of the
Arab race, let him visit first the squalid, disorderly, cheerless and
Christless homes of the mass of the Arab villagers of Syria, and then
enter the cheerful, tidy, well ordered home of Mr. and Mrs. Araman, when
the family are at morning prayers, listen to the voice of prayer and
praise and the reading of God's word. Instead of the father sitting
gloomily alone at his morning meal, and the mother and children waiting
till their lord is through and then eating by themselves in the usual
Arab way, he would see the whole family seated together in a Christian,
homelike manner, the Divine blessing asked, and the meal conducted with
propriety and decorum. After breakfast the father and Katie go to the
Seminary to give their morning lessons, Henry (named for Dr. De Forest)
sets out for the College, in which he is a Sophomore, and the younger
children go to their various schools. Lulu's place at church is rarely
vacant, and since that "relic of barbarism" the _curtain_ which
separated the men from the women has been removed from the building, the
whole family, father, mother, and children sit together and join in the
worship of God. Her brother and relatives from "Wady" are on the most
affectionate terms with her, and her elder sister is in the domestic
department of the Beirut Female Seminary.
This change is very largely due to the efforts of Mrs. De Forest, whose
name with that of her sainted husband is embalmed in the memory of the
Christian families of Syria, and will be held in everlasting
remembrance. The _second generation_ of Christian teachers is now
growing up in Syria. Three of Mrs. De Forest's pupils have daughters now
engaged in teaching. Khushfeh, Lulu, and Sada el Haleby; and Miriam
Tabet has a daughter married to Mr. S. Hallock, of the American Press in
Beirut.
FRUITS OF DR. DE FOREST'S GIRL'S SCHOOL.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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