The Good Teacher Is Dead!

A woman's face of the first blessed generation embraced eternal rest on the seventh of last September, after eighty-four years spent in sincere, silent struggle.

With the death of Amelia Badr, Lebanon and the Arab world lost one of their faithful pioneers, a singular model of the good "teacher." She carried the torch of learning from Lebanon to the sister country, Egypt, and at the American College for Girls in Cairo she enlisted herself in raising the daughters of her sex upon the foundations of virtue and goodness; by her drive and her self-denial in work she rose to the post of adviser to the principal and head of the Arabic department of the institute...

Teaching was never for her a trade that brought in money; it was an art to be practiced and a passion to be loved, to which Amelia gave herself for 57 years. She was the link between the administration and the families, and she won the trust of all. With surpassing love she watched over three generations of the girls of Egypt, to whom she was more tender than a mother and closer than a friend, and the finest example of good discipline, uprightness, and diligence.

Eighty overtook her while she was still on the field, going on with her mission, defying the years with a faith and a resolve that knew no weariness; and but for the insistence of those in charge and of her friends, the mighty campaigner would never have consented to lay down her arms and shake the dust of battle from her. At last she bade farewell to the valley of the Nile and came home to her homeland, Lebanon, to spend her final years in contemplation, in the care of her nephew Mr. Fuad Badr, owner of "Dar al-Kitab." She was borne from his house at Dhour el-Choueir in a funeral simple and majestic, and laid to rest beneath wreaths of flowers, amid the true tears of hundreds of her pupils, present and absent. The Egyptian papers mourned her as the great are mourned; for Amelia Badr, though in her own country she remained an "unknown soldier," was in truth a modest, giving human being. She lived great and she died great.

"The Woman's Voice" bows in respect before the noble departed and strews prayers of mercy upon her noble and pure soul.