It was one of the most delightful phases of our experience in charge of the boys' school to find how closely the ties of love to the boys bound them to our hearts, and to realize that with many of them it was no mere oriental compliment when they called us their father and mother. There are many of those lads, now growing to manhood, in whose successes we take a parental pride, and for whose growth in all that is good and true we pray, with parental earnestness. Among the many preachers and teachers in all the churches and schools, we count many as most truly our brethren and fellow workers for the Master. There are very many Syrians in all parts of America, as well as in this land, of whom we think in terms of truest brotherhood. It is with no sense of disparagement to the multitude that I have selected three of the elders in our churches for special mention. It has seemed to me, as I look back over their lives, that there are some specially suggestive elements in the way the Lord has led them and blessed them, which are worthy of special note. At the same time these experiences have brought all three into specially close relations with myself personally. I shall mention them in the order of the commencement of my acquaintance with them.

In 1885, before I entered the mission, I was for a few months in Syria, merely as a visitor. It happened that the College in Beirut was short-handed that year, and in need of an additional teacher. Dr. Bliss asked me to help them out and so I became for two months a member of the teaching force in the preparatory department. During this time I made the acquaintance of a lad in the senior class of that department, named Towfik Sallum. He was a quiet, studious lad, who made no trouble and was always busy with his books or seeking to increase his English vocabulary. In the brief time of my remaining in the college, my acquaintance was slight and the memory of this boy would have passed from my mind, had there been no subsequent association. When I became a member of the Tripoli Station and made the acquaintance of the various workers in the field, I found that this lad was the brother of the preacher in Hamath. Their father had been the first preacher in that church, and upon his death the eldest son had succeeded to his father's position in the church, as well as to the parental responsibility for the care and training of his younger brothers. Towfik spent some years in the service of the mission as teacher, in intervals of his college course. In 1892 he was graduated with honor, and in 1896 took his degree in medicine also. He settled at once in Hamath, where he was well known personally, and where his family associations made a valuable professional asset. The conditions of life in ancient Hamath are exceedingly primitive and only a small portion of the population have any intelligent appreciation of the value of modern medicine. Perseverance and tact won their way and a valuable practice was built up. With increasing years and widening acquaintance, the doctor became generally known, universally trusted, and highly respected in government circles as well as among the people. In case the governor wished a reliable report on any case of attack or murder, he was sure to send Dr. Sallum to investigate. He was to be trusted to tell the truth.

When the new constitution was promulgated in 1908, it was provided that all religious sects were to be entitled to representation in the local administrative courts in rotation, irrespective of the size of those bodies. Formerly only the largest of the Christian sects had been allowed representation. This provision gave the Protestants a right to civil equality and they put forward Dr. Sallum as their representative. He was accepted, and served most creditably for the term of two years. It was then the turn of the Catholic sect to have a representative, and the heads of the various bodies were summoned by the governor to arrange for the choice of the new member. The governor explained the situation and said that as the Protestants had held the office for two years, it was now the right of the Catholics to choose a representative to succeed the Protestant member. Then, turning to the Catholic priest, he said, "If you have a candidate who is more capable than Dr. Sallum or who is his equal, we shall be glad to welcome him, but if not, I should advise you to ask him to continue in office, acting now as representative of the Catholics." The priest replied most cordially that his sect would be delighted to be represented by Dr. Sallum, if he would consent. In this way the doctor has become practically a permanent member of the governor's council, acting alternately for the Protestants and the Catholics. At the same time the proud member of the large Greek Orthodox sect has to give place every two years to the member chosen by the Jacobite church.

In 1892 I was in Homs for the administration of the sacraments. Among those who came in on Saturday evening was Mr. Rafool Nasser, a young man who had not been long identified with the Protestant church. He told me that he wished to have his little girl baptized the next day. He had been married for several years and this was the first child, so the occasion was one of more than usual joy. The next morning, before the service began, I saw Mr. Nasser come in and take a seat quite at the back of the church, contrary to his usual custom. He seemed depressed and I wondered what had occurred. When the time came for baptisms he made no move to come forward and so I proceeded with the children who were presented. At the close of the service I inquired into the matter, and learned that Mr. Nasser had informed his wife the evening before that the little girl was to be baptized the next day. His wife then informed him that she had already had the child baptized secretly by the priest. This explained the depression I had noticed in the father's face. Two years later the parents stood together while I baptized the second child, and all the others have been presented without question for the rite of baptism. This was the beginning of my acquaintance with Mr. Nasser, with whom I have been somewhat intimate in recent years.

He was a man of prominent family in Homs and has been highly prospered in business, having become one of the most substantial men of the city. Most of the successful men of Homs owe their prosperity to business conducted in Egypt. They spend the winters in Egypt, advancing money to the peasants on their cotton crops and also furnishing them certain classes of imported goods on credit. It has been a profitable business, even to those who have not been led away by the temptation of avarice to impose on the simplicity of the Egyptian peasant. On one occasion I was talking to Mr. Nasser about the high standards of morality obligatory on the true Christian merchant. He then told me the following incident in the simplest manner. As a young man he started with his cousin on a very small capital. They invested their cash capital in stock for their little store, purchasing so far as they could on credit. Mr. Nasser returned to Homs, leaving his cousin in charge of the business in Egypt. Scarcely had he reached home when word came of the complete destruction of their store and all its contents by fire. It was a heavy blow for the young men, and the first impulse was to go through bankruptcy, settle up as well as they could and give up the enterprise. Friends and creditors came to their help and volunteered to scale down their claims and furnish new capital for the two men to start again. They were prospered from the beginning. After some years Mr. Rafool Nasser decided that he was unwilling to have the friends who were so kind to him suffer from the old loss. He wrote to his cousin, saying that he had no wish to control his partner's action, but asking him to pay off his share of those old losses carried by their friends after the fire, and charge the amount against his personal account. The cousin wrote back, "Whatever you do, I shall do also." In the light of this incident, will anyone say that commercial honor is confined to the West?

There was a long period of hesitation, after Mr. Nasser was convinced intellectually of the truth of the evangelical faith, before he joined the Church. He has explained this to me in the following way: He knew that if he gave in his adherence to the Protestant doctrine, his conscience would require him to give far more of his possessions than he had been accustomed to do in the Greek church. It took a long time to bring his will to yield. In fact, his head was reached before his purse was opened. He gave up the conflict at last and then said, in closing the account of his experience, "I've gotten way beyond that now, for I have learned the joy of giving." He is not a millionaire, but the Lord has blessed him with considerable property, and he recognizes his position as that of steward. He has been the leading spirit in the enterprises of the Homs church, spoken of in another place.

About the end of the year 1895, I was sitting one evening in my study when the bell rang, and one of my neighbors, Mr. Yusuf Faris, entered. He laid on my desk a bundle of Turkish silver dollars, amounting to some thirty dollars American money. He said he had been looking over his accounts for the year and found this balance in his tithe account, and so he wished me to use it for him in a way that he indicated, in the furtherance of the Lord's business. This was a little matter, but it was a true index to the man. A few years previous to this he had moved to the city from a neighboring village. Among his motives for this move was to avoid being forced into a political position he felt to be inconsistent with his new position as a Protestant Christian. He decided to open a dry-goods store in the city, but was unwilling to conduct business in the ordinary way of the country. He rented a very small shop and brought his stock of goods from Beirut. He decided upon a fair profit, and set his price on the goods. People were not accustomed to this method and so were slow to buy from the new shop. When they found him unvarying in his prices, they went away to buy elsewhere, getting, perhaps, an inferior article at a slightly lower price. Mr. Faris had his full share of determination and was not to be turned back from the course upon which he had decided. He had an unfailingly pleasant manner with everyone, and showed no resentment at those who bought elsewhere. For months the sales in this little shop were not enough to pay the rent, but there was no change of policy. Gradually people began to compare more carefully and discovered that in no case were they able to buy the same quality of goods elsewhere for less than Mr. Faris' first price. They began to realize that it was a distinct saving of time and temper to avoid the long haggling over prices to which they had been accustomed. By degrees they began to buy from Mr. Faris, and it was not long before some of the country shopkeepers would come to him with a list of goods and ask to have them put up without even asking the prices. Business grew, a larger shop was necessary, two shops, three shops, until at present his goods fill three large storerooms, while a fourth is necessary for his office and bookkeeping. Two months seldom pass, and often less than a month, between trips to Beirut for fresh goods, and he and his three grown sons are kept busy handling the undertaking.

In every good enterprise, in Tripoli, or in presbytery, Mr. Yusuf Faris is a leader, with clear advice and generous subscriptions. When the home mission work of the presbytery was organized, he was one of the leaders, and has continued to be the main support of the work. When the plans for the Tripoli Boys' School were under consideration and there was some danger that lack of money and other considerations might necessitate the removal of the school from Tripoli, Mr. Faris and his sons came forward with a generous offer of financial help, during a period of years aggregating nearly eighteen hundred dollars. This made him the third largest individual donor and we were glad to place his picture among those on the wall of the school reception room. In all the intercourse of these years, while watching the growth and development of character in this man, there has grown in my own heart a strength of personal attachment such as I have seldom felt for any other in America or in Syria.