A precious book. It comprises forty speeches and ten articles, holding sincerity, counsel, and guidance of benefit to all. The author, Mrs. Rose Atallah Shahfa, selected them from her many speeches in the clubs of Damascus, Beirut, and Egypt, and from her various articles in the newspapers of Syria and Lebanon.
The breathings of a heart whose evening companion was love of the homeland. The feeling of a virtuous wife and a noble mother. A devout humanity, a national patriotism. Desiring reform and improvement. Calling for advancement and independence, for sacrifice in the cause of the common good.
Her song: the home and the family, the equality of the two sexes in rights and duties, regard for time and place, the seizing of opportunities to strengthen the standing of the human being. She demands and she struggles, with gentleness and firmness together, with persistence and insistence. Her subjects are of consequence. She takes them up briefly or at length, never tiring of repeating them, out of a desire to persuade and a hope to be of use, in deference to a general feeling that wishes to benefit people, to strengthen good works, and to honor people of merit, as a spur to those who labor for good.
"The Inspiration of Motherhood": a struggle of the mind carried on through a quarter of a generation. The years scattered it through various newspapers and in hidden corners, in manuscript scraps, until this opportunity arose, and the writer gathered it into a single volume — for greater benefit, and in keeping with the inspiration of motherhood.
