to call on Mrs. Ellen Rihan, the second woman member of the council. I offer her my greeting and she returns it in kind as she leads me to her private study. I ask her about her hopes and her programs; she smiles and says:

- Allow me to answer in all frankness: I intend to lay down the regulations and apply them with the utmost severity, accepting no intercession and no appeal, for the law must be applied, because our city has become unbearable from the abundance of filth and the foul odors rising in all its quarters.

I feel that my chief task, too, is to strive to beautify the city of Beirut by creating public gardens and promenades for old and young.

I shall also strive to post the municipal police at every corner of the city; and they are to watch over traffic, keep vigil over cleanliness, and prevent the uttering of foul language. All this must be applied strictly, after we have taught our people that they must obey even if obedience should lead to misery and hardship. We must teach our people that they are to care for the streets of their city as they care for the cleanliness of their own homes. And I ask our mothers to help us in this work of ours, for upon them depends the success of our projects.

Here is Mrs. Laure Tabet, receiving me with a cheerful face and a lovely smile, and no sooner do I sit with her in a corner of her elegant salon than I hasten to say:

- Tell me, Madam, what was your feeling when the decree appointing you to the Municipal Council was issued?

- I knew of the matter before it was issued, and so its news did not surprise me at all.

- Go on, Madam, and tell me about the program you intend to carry out.

- I have been appointed to the social and health committees, and then to the finance committee, and every woman can contribute in these two fields. As for my program, it comes down first to

supervising the course of work of the cleaning employees; and it matters greatly to me to confine this work to the working employees alone, after removing those who draw salaries without doing any work. Then I intend to combat begging and to provide the needed shelter for these needy people, so that they may find a safe place to turn to.

- Am I to understand from this that you intend to undertake projects for building shelters and hospitals?

- Not at all, for we have a fair number of them, and we have only to encourage these institutions and work hand in hand with them.

It also matters to me to supervise the distribution of meat, vegetables, and fruit, for these are among the necessities of life, and I do not think they receive sufficient care from those who deal in them.

- What is your word to your sister, woman?

- My one wish is to see her

working with us with her hand and her heart, encouraging us to carry out our projects and drawing our attention to what concerns her. We, for our part, shall work to perform our duty, and I hope we shall live up to her good opinion of us.

I come out of these three interviews with many thoughts contending within me and various pictures passing before me. I see myself in Beirut a year after this declaration which three of Beirut's ladies have spoken in my hearing. Set your minds at ease, my ladies, for Beirut has become free of beggars and loiterers, cleanliness and beauty pervade its streets, and by your zeal and energy we have reached what we were aspiring to; there are no longer any hands idle from work, and the squandering of the municipality's funds has been done away with.

May God fulfill your hope and ours, and bring us to what holds our good and the good of our country.

Gibran Khalil Gibran

Often have you heard yourselves say, in your heedlessness, that he who works in marble, finding in his own soul a shape for the stone, is greater than he who plows the earth; and that he who seizes the rainbow to color garments with it, and gives it the likeness of man, is greater than he who makes shoes.

But I say to you, in my wakefulness at noonday and not in my slumber, that the wind speaks no more sweetly to the mighty oak than it does to the humblest of grasses.

And he alone is able who, by his love, turns the voices of the winds into sweeter melodies. Work is love embodied.

And if you cannot work with love — better that you leave your work and sit at the gate of the temple, begging alms of those who work with joy.

For if you bake bread without caring for it, your bread will come out bitter, feeding but half of man's hunger; and if you grumble as you press your vineyard, your grumbling will drip poison into the wine.

And if you sing with the melodies of angels and do not love the singing, you will deafen the ears of men to the voices of night and day.