A spring evening in the heart of Beirut's autumn: souls broke loose in it from the tether of study and work; the gaiety of youth rang out, and spirits swayed with delight to the echo of the music, amid exhilarated airs, dancing boughs, and echoes mingling and rising — in their strutting, magic; in their mingling, rapture!

By his nature man inclines to slip free of the fetters of society and its "formalities" for a while, for he is the son of nature before he is the son of civilization and refinement; and how sweet a release it is in which youth seethes, its flocks fluttering like birds among the dew-moist boughs!

On a knoll defying autumn's pallor with its verdure the fête was held, by the efforts of the College — its administration and its girls, who took their part in the publicity, the distribution of tickets, the acting, then the selling and the display of the handwork woven by small fingers. And how many treasures remain buried, to dissolve in the current of neglect, ignorance, and privation!

The College makes a point of teaching the girl by trial and practice; and behold, she is responsible; behold, she attends to her duties, managing her affairs with tact and self-confidence, her breast open wide, so that when, in the near tomorrow, she presses forward with the procession of life, she will march at a run, with awareness and daring, her experience and practice her best weapon!

The girls wished for variety in the kinds of amusement, and the two ends of the courtyard might have been carried over from the desert of the Arabs: at one crouched the tent of "the fortune-teller, the star-reader," and the other was the playground of a small donkey and a she-camel, which bore with patience and long-suffering the mounting of small and grown alike... A droll game, in an age whose children have all but forgotten that animals exist!