1 — "Listen, Rida": a book that appeared last month by our teacher Dr. Anis Frayha; and "Rida" is none other than his little boy, who demands of his father a story from the village to fall asleep on...

The book, then, is a series of tales with which the father lulls his child to sleep, told in simple language, revealing a side of our life that has now taken on new meanings in our understanding. The author is a skillful painter who knew how to draw for the child living pictures of village life as it was in his own childhood, comparing it with the opportu-nities and freedoms our present generation enjoys in the city, and not concealing his own opinion on each sketch: now he grieves for something beautiful that has passed, and now he rejoices at the passing of what once was. He is candid, enumerating for his child the merits and the faults alike, and leaving the judgment to him...

"Listen, Rida" is a book new of its kind, and it has filled a great gap in our national heritage; it is "evergreen" material that one generation will pass on to the next with relish, and it does not grow old!... Our congratulations to our dear teacher, "Abu Rida!"

2 — "Teaching the Rudiments of Reading": A book issued by the Education Department of the American University of Beirut, by Mrs. Sabiha Akkash Faris — the book being the thesis, or study, for which the author was awarded a master's degree in education.

During her early studies, and then while teaching her three children, Mrs. Faris was appalled by the faulty methods followed by the authors of children's readers, and by the poverty of our Arabic libraries in sound reading books. So the educator produced her study, surveying and criticizing these books, and then laying down the correct foundations for the teaching of reading, together

with personal guidance gained from her experience and her wide reading. Her book has thus come forth as a volume valuable of its kind, which those in charge of teaching the rudiments of reading would do well to consult and to draw upon.

Sabiha Faris is a brow held high in the world of women. And she is a sound testimony, on behalf of the daughters of her sex, against whoever denies them the ability to reconcile their responsibility in the home with the pursuit of their studies and their work...

she fulfilled the meanings of her tyrannous inwardness as no girl had fulfilled them before. And thus four years of her young, rich life slipped away as serpents slip away to their dens, without noise and without hiss And life grew calm again upon her thick, weary lashes

that she might rest and gather herself for another such leap — but no: that she might wake, little by little, from a long, long dream... upon a dun reality, holding bitterness at its bitterest, and, of the story, the tears and the sobbing.. Was it, then, a thing decreed for her, that such truths should overwhelm her as did over-whelm her, until she disbelieved after having believed?!!!

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— Conclusion — Knowledge leads beyond its own meaning — and philosophy... that merry sprite, gray-haired and chatter-ing... Did she gain at its hands what could satisfy her burning questioning and her overmaster-ing longing?! Did it grant her to comprehend the universe with insight and guidance?

There is, there — beyond exis-tence — something that cannot be known, and cannot be divined

something that overwhelms the whole of her thought, until life has for her neither taste nor color.. Ah, would that she had remained unlettered, unskilled in inquiry, and probing, and com-parison — would that she had stayed ignorant, not stirring for an obscure answer, nor kindling for a question that has no answer — nay, would that that surging vitality had remained within bounds, half-veiled Then its owner would have had warrant to turn her life in another direction, one that might have been more profitable to her, and a straighter path

And then this soul would not have been worn out as it was worn out by thinking and sleeplessness And then her life would not have been futility, nor a futility against her, nor vanity or obsession — but something simple, artless, easeful, as on those long tranquil evenings sighing forever with poetry leaping and spacious, in musings and flashes — miracles dancing light and pulsing to melodies from a string a string whose sighing spreads through the soul a world of abundant hopes stamped with goodness

(To be continued in the next issue)