This message of good motherhood was written by our departed woman of letters some eight years ago, when her only son, Mr. Nadim Dimashqiyah, resolved to marry; at that time he held a good post in the Lebanese embassy in London. This letter will remain, however long the years pass over it, a solid foundation and a reference for everyone who embarks upon a new life and stands at the crossroads in perplexity and confusion. What sound, disinterested wisdom this message of

motherhood has held between its two covers!

O Mama's Life, I ask you to read this in cold blood, like the blood of the English among whom you have lived for a year in their own home ground. The subject before us is the gravest subject we have discussed together thus far. Hence keeping our nerves calm will make it easier for you to listen,

and for me to examine the matter with deliberation, without bias toward any particular view, emotional or intellectual. Most people, as you well know — and I do not say the young, for in my eyes all people are alike in this respect — enter upon marriage either from the impulse of sexual inclination, or from the impulse of interest. It is emotion, then, that generally takes over the direction in this field: it draws up its plan for those who seek marriage in the color it wants and craves, whether that color be love, or passion, or money, or standing, or a splendid motorcar, or an impregnable palace, or, or.. etc... So the two partners, the man and the woman, proceed to the contract and the compact for the making of this house which, as soon as they have founded it, adds to the society to which they belong a workshop — one of