... The car descends unhurriedly, winding along the roads that overlook the Bekaa plain at the height of its glory!... On its left crouches venerable old Sannine in dignity, bare-headed but for white furrows that fill its gullies driven into the rock. Snow was scarce this winter and crowned its brow only rarely...

On the car's right the carpet of spring spreads out in the freshness of laughing green, folded away

Mr. Hassan Shuman inspects his new chicks

from one splendid face only to unroll before a face more splendid still! Here on this stage the bountiful hand of nature has joined with the hand of believing man; the riddle was solved, and the belly of the earth opened upon the finest of crops — springs of generous fertility! Blessed be the soil... master of the greatest giving after the Lord of Glory!!

The car swings toward the village of Jezzine, leaving the highway that leads to the great temples of Baalbek...

Before you, if you look closely, appears a little red house, around which the poplar trees loom, ranged in

Can Mrs. Nahla be blamed if she loves working in her kitchen? (see photo)

... In the evening, reading is sweet beside the hearth.

their towering heights, and the flocks graze in those pastures, lazy, enjoying the abundant fodder! Stop a moment and breathe the sweetest of air!!

•

Lebanon complains in this age of working hands that disdain the service of the land, and of the migration of country folk to the city in pursuit of the office job. Of late a wave of awareness has stirred among the ranks of the citizens — a sincere call to return to the embrace of nature, and to turn, mind and heart, toward agricultural life and the raising of poultry. Perhaps "Shuman Farm" at Jezzine is an excellent display of the triumph of this call. For it is one of the modern farms established to restore to the countryside some of its former glory, and to turn the attention of educated youth from the crush of the cities to free natural life...

The most delightful thing there, in my view, is the ideal family life lived by the farm's owner, Mr. Hassan Shuman, and his wife, Mrs. Nahla Marwa. They are forever in constant cooperation to accomplish the many tasks inside the house and out — in nothing at all different from the life of farmers in the most advanced countries of the West — helped by the modern equipment provided in that little house. Here the kitchen has material