lesson to this rising generation which philosophizes about Thee, now with existence, now with the denial of Thy existence. I summon it to the laboratory of life, in which I have found no sweetness save from Thee and in Thee, for life has no meaning without Thee. Our short minds see but one side of life, and Thou seest all things. Thou art the everlasting, the eternal, the creator of time and of place. O God, I am hanging by a thread above this eternity. I implore Thy mercy, on the day Thou givest leave for it to be cut, that Thou shake me with a gentle shaking, that I may lift my eyes on high, and then close my eyelids upon the last gleam of Thy light."

And Memoirs of a Wounded Man ends with these psalms, radiant with the oneness of God and the tormented man's yearning for His mercy. The most splendid thing in the book is this soul that looks out at you from the valley of pains and tears, of despair and calamity, proclaiming with the certainty of faith the belief in God, the Power from which all things came — and before which all the wonders and inventions and creations and productions that man's mind devises melt away.

And with these Cartesian analyses he spreads before us, as I have said, his understanding of the reality of man and life and the universe, in the garment of a Qurayshite tongue, an eloquent expression, and a marvelous humane literature whose author plucked his quill from his own ribs — those ribs which the surgeons' scalpels have shattered — and took his ink from his blood — that blood which flowed upon the scalpels' blades — all shaded by a creative thought, a wise mind, and a great soul of rare genius. Would that the sons of my country might read this book, that they might grasp the worth of the creative man, and respect for duty in whatever works they perform, and what value belongs to rebellious, emancipated literature, and what signal sacrifice this bedridden man of letters has made in printing every book he produces with whatever he could spare of the piaster he needs to buy his necessary medicine. And let them feel, if only once in the year, with their minds and not their bellies; and let those responsible learn what station literature holds in the land of radiance.

At the home economics school in Sidon her eldest daughter Mona took her training; despite her young age, she is her mother's right hand and her first assistant. Mona's aunt, Miss Wadia Fraiha, attends to the washing, while the hotel's accounts are supervised by Shawqi, the eldest son...

The guests of the Fraiha hotel, thanks to the efforts of its owners and their vigilance over everyone's comfort, will accept no substitute for this hotel. The atmosphere is that of a family, as I have said, and in this atmosphere precious friendships are founded which have their effect — not among the grown-ups only, but among the little ones too, for the number of children in this hotel rivals its like in the other hotels, owing to the good treatment, and to the meeting of the children's requests in particular.

Everything in life has a philosophy, and the philosophy of hotels is gentleness, taste, and forbearance — qualities more abundant in woman than in man. Our women need specialization, and acquaintance with the value of this work and with the good that can be reaped in its field, for ourselves and for our country...