With Joys and Sons!

... To the pealing of the bells of the Greek Orthodox Church of Saint Nicolas, the invited guests gathered on the afternoon of the fourth of last July to attend the wedding of Miss Mona, daughter of Mr. Najib Liyan, chief of the bureau of the Ministry of Information, to the young man of letters Nicolas Shamsham.

The bride appeared, splendid in elegance and beauty, in her gleaming white gown, ringed round with baskets and bouquets of roses of every color and fragrance.

Some days after the wedding, and the young couple's honeymoon journey, the father — the poet Mr. Najib Liyan — felt a desolation close upon his breast at parting from his daughter "Mona," to whose love he had been bound while she was a child, a girl, and a young woman; and there came to his tongue these splendid verses:

Mona — and the garden laments its desolation:
no fragrance in it now, and no nightingale.
You left it forlorn and thirsting,
saying: where are the blossoms? Where the sweet scents?
Is this how we are, we and our hearts' own darlings?
Is this how the world of hearts must live?

Mona — you have gone far indeed in forsaking us:
you have exchanged us, your own kin, for an unfamiliar mate.