land, and he too contributes to the nourishment of those projects... Mrs. Loreen said that the Lebanese emigrant — praise God — does honor to us all...

•

From talk of the American woman and her life — and woman's talk has many branches — Mrs. Rihani passed to a subject basic and important in her eyes: the American village and countryside. She is, as many know, president of the Village Revival Society in Lebanon — not the one at the American University, of course!... She works with diligence and energy to enlighten the peasants and to train them in certain practical scientific methods in their agricultural life, and she has founded several centers in various Lebanese villages — most of which, truth to tell, I had never heard named before... and the confession of ignorance is a virtue...

Mrs. Loreen attended the rural improvement conference in Canada, where she profited greatly and acquainted herself with the newest methods of preserving fruit, vegetables, and meat; of caring for animals and guarding them from deadly diseases... of preparing delicious jams, of cleaning the animals' quarters and ridding them of every harmful insect, and so forth...

Mrs. Loreen has promised us that she will carry all this basic and useful knowledge to our Lebanese peasant... and the promise of the free is a debt... She mentioned that she had brought with her numerous models of looms, for teaching the village women to weave cloth quickly and well...

Mrs. Rihani profited much from her journey, and she gave much

too — for life is taking and giving... She delivered several lectures on Lebanon, of which the American knows very little — he may even imagine that it lies in the land of Waqwaq!! And she reviewed the Palestine question, describing to them the calamities and disasters that have befallen the Palestinians, whose details the Americans had never learned... their eyes blinded by lying Zionist propaganda...

Mrs. Rihani's talk was enjoyable and delightful. Between its

lines we read that she loves travel and a change of air, but cannot bear to be far from her Freike... from her nest, where three nestlings awaited her with longing and eagerness, and a faithful partner, and a tender mother who performed all the duties of her daughter the mother throughout her absence. The first thing that mother said upon Mrs. Loreen's return was: "We thank God, Mama... my captivity is ended... so welcome home..." It was enough for her to have lived the life of motherhood once...

Talk of the Heart: Companion of the Morning

... As if you and the dawn kept a tryst with me, O bulbul! I outstrip you by a step, or you outstrip me by a step... and I steal out onto the balcony and rise up on the tips of my bare feet, straining my ear toward the returning rounds of your melody: in its plaintive release, in its questioning and its hopefulness — gazing at you: a coquettish fluttering, a swaying on the rims of the boughs, weaving with your neck the threads of the virgin rays, teasing with your downy beak the hidden feathers of two wings brushed with dew-moist color!... And O God, how my heart is wrung when you choke upon the melody and send it forth, an impassioned cry, with pain in it... and with joy in it! And the moment your throat breaks loose upon the open air, you are like the king upon his throne!

For whom is your song, O bulbul — for the dawn, or for me — your two only companions?!

•

Send it forth, O bulbul — a limpid, rippling note, undulating with the violet veils of the dawn, with the whispers of the slumbering stillness, and pouring, all of it, into my heart!! For I need you, companion of the morning; I need your consoling note to quiet sensitive nerves shattered by the sleeplessness of nights!

Send it forth, O bulbul... sing to me, for our companion the dawn is heedless of you and of me, flooding the far worlds and the near with his white veil, to wash them all in his sea of light... And at every red twilight, the songs of the bulbuls and the goldfinches delight him in the thickets and by the pools... So sing, you, to me... to me alone... and wipe with your tender note the wounds of my heart...

Aphrodite