Graduates of Beirut College for Women
This year an activity we have never known before has been observed in the association of graduates of Beirut College for Women: life has stirred in it, after a long slumber, following the election of the new president, Mrs. Eva Badr Malik.
The first move made by the new administrative board was the invitation, at the end of last February, to a rich dinner held at the institution, gathering some hundred and fifty graduates who came — for the first time in the College's history — in the company of husbands and friends. It was a splendid banquet at which friendships revived, around the small scattered tables, by the light of drowsy candles!
The new administrative committee, with Mrs. Malik at its head, has succeeded in reviving the spirit of enthusiasm and loyalty toward this women's institution, unique in our Arab East, and in reviving the good, friendly relations among colleagues and companions, and the working together for one noble end.
The dinner interval was inter
spersed with a magnificent artistic program, nourished by Miss Samia Saab with her fine ballet dancing and by Miss Samia al-Hajj with her excellent "opera" singing. The president's word made the loveliest impression, after which the jokes flowed and sweet memories were recounted, to general approval and applause.
The Zahle Child Nursery Society sent a telegram, over the signatures of its president, Mrs. Emily Nasrallah, and the president of the Children's Home committee, Mrs. Rose Ghawwa, to the committee for the relief of the earthquake victims, informing them of its readiness to take in ten girls of the stricken families for an unlimited term, and offering likewise to perform whatever services may be asked of it.
The Editors: This is a generous humane sentiment; we could wish that all the women's institutions possessing the means for it would follow the example of the Zahle Child Nursery. God bless such zeal!!
• Mr. Mansur Munsif, proprietor of the Mun Hayim house of dressmaking and fashions, has lately returned from Paris, where he spent a month acquainting himself with the newest tendencies of the spring fashions and bringing them back for his patrons in Beirut, accompanied by his own impressions and personal taste — so welcome home.
And I was somewhat relieved, for I had turned his indignation from death onto people; and I watched him run off with his ball, calling to his brother and challenging him... And I felt my tired thoughts running likewise, leaping across tens of years into the future... and there was the meddlesome little one, a young man of strong mettle, his garments brimming with hopes, the world walking in his train with all it holds — and more than it holds; and yet there, in the depths of his human soul, an insistent question which he strikes off his account hundreds of times a day, and barely succeeds in hiding from his own soul's eye.
He believes in God with the utmost faith; and yet he has a mad need for reassurance — total reassurance, without any restriction of philosophizing, without any condition of philosophy...
Wilt Thou not spare him, O Lord, this rugged darkness in which I am sunk, this engulfing confusion?! Wilt Thou not grant him the grace of a settled mind, that he may bestir himself to the service of humanity, on a foot that no weakness shakes and no unjust doubt sets trembling?!