Central. The road itself is not able to stand alone.

It is a well-settled principle of law that a railroad cannot divide its capital among its stockholders; it must apply its moneys to the purpose for which those moneys were subscribed. A court of equity can at any time follow that money into the pockets of the stockholders, order its return, and see that it is applied to the purpose for which it was intended. If the law has this power, when stockholders divide their own money among themselves, how much more can a Government that has loaned a very large amount for the construction of a public highway, see that its money be applied to this purpose. The Crédit Mobilier subscribed fifteen millions to the stock of the Pacific Railroad; Congress now proposes to make it pay its subscription.

At the Fail term of the District Court of Connecticut, the case came up for argument. The numerous defendants filed their demurrers that the act was unconstitutional in summoning them from all parts of the United States to attend at one Court. They were scattered from Texas to California, and were now summoned to appear

at one Court in Connecticut. They also contended that the suit was multifarious in grouping together in one action so many who had no common connection. If Government had a legal claim on any one of them, let him be sued in his own district; but let not other debtors in other districts be joined in the same suit. Nor had there been any breach of contract with Government. The Pacific Road had loaned certain large sums of money, payable thirty years hence; if that money, with all accrued interest, was not repaid at the end of thirty years, then would be the time to commence the suit.

The Court decided that Government had no interest in the case, and could not, therefore, bring any action. From this decision of a single judge, the AttorneyGeneral has appealed to the Supreme Court of the United States, sitting at Washington. This appeal will probably be reached by the winter of 1875-6; and if decided in favor of Government, will be sent back to Connecticut for a trial on the facts. It is somewhat to be feared that those who borrowed the money, may not live long enough to be sentenced to repay it.

THERE is an Arabic proverb which says: "A man can bear anything but the mention of his women.' Perhaps in no language on the face of the earth has hard public opinion been more densely crystallized, or more sparklingly expressed, than in this single utterance. If any true Moslem is obliged to allude to a female, he invariably prefaces her name with the deprecation, which is chosen as the title of this article. "Ajellak Allah" means-May God elevate you! That is, in this connectionMay divine grace or power put you out of reach of being contaminated by what I am now going to say! Hence it resembles that quaint Celticism, employed when one has a disagreeable subject to mention : "Saving your presence, sir!"

It is related that there once came to the study of Dr. Van Dyck in Beyroot, a Mohammedan Mufti. One of his wives was ill, and he wished for medical advice. But all the conventional good-breeding he possessed was at risk, if he should insult the good physician by alluding to a female. So he commenced with the usual innumerable salutations, multiplying them all the more copiously by reason of the peril : "Good morning-may your day be happymay God grant you help "-until he thought he had by compliment sufficiently paved the way to business. Then he proceeded: "Your Excellency must be aware I have a sick man in my house. May God give you blessing! Indeed; peace to your head! Inshullah, it is only a slight attack!" The amused missionary inquired what was the matter. "He has headache, pain in his back, and he will not eat." Of course immediate attendance was engaged: "I will come and see her this afternoon; who may it be?" The man fumbled, and out with it: "Ajellak Allah, it is my wife! May God increase your good! Good morning, sir!"

The concentration of fastidious contempt could seemingly go no farther than this. I am informed that it would not be genteel Arabic for one to begin, without using the same apologetic formula, if he intended to speak of a shoe, a dog, a hog, a donkey, or a woman. The whole notion of the female sex in Egypt and Palestine is degrading and ignoble. Fathers rejoice if a son is given them to keep up the family name; but one of their poets has

559

sung, what the people contentedly repeat: "The threshold weeps forty days whenever a girl is born."

A RECOGNITION AT LAST.

Just now there has been issued from the press a most admirable volume, written by Rev. Henry Harris Jessup, D. D., for nineteen years an honored and useful American Missionary in Syria. It is entitled The Women of the Arabs, and is published by Dodd & Mead of New York. It contains, within the compass of a duodecimo of nearly four hundred pages, a singularly interesting and valuable account of the actual condition of females among the Arabicspeaking races of the East, as well as of the worthy and efficient efforts, which from time to time have been made to relieve it.

It is hard to say which makes most impression in this book, its information or its pathos. So long have these poor, downtrodden women been without a defender or a friend, that now when one appears, the sensibilities are touched with the sincerity of championship. Day by day, in those desolate lands, the maiden bears her pitcher, and the matron turns the heavy stone of the mill. Nobody knows them; nobody cares for them. Uneducated, and without a chance, an opening, or a hope, they cannot get in an appeal. It makes one think of the amended verse about the stars: "No speech, no language—their voice is not heard." All that toil can attain, all that thrift can save, goes to the inevitable taskmaster to pay taxes, or is iniquitously seized by the Bedouins. Beaten, impoverished, worn and weary, this part of the Sultan's empire is the basest of kingdoms, and there the women are slaves.

It is interesting to know, as one of the most significant of all illustrations, that some years ago the attempt was made, by a famous musician in Europe, to represent in an orchestral composition what he intended to call "Souvenirs of the East." He introduced the many sounds which he heard in those countries. But so unutterably sad and wild were the strains, that the piece was rejected. One lonely and unchanging creak was evermore present in the windings of the harmony, the sound of the terrible instrument in Egypt for the

lifting of water, as the rude wheel turned upon its unoiled axle; and with it another, low and murmuring, from Palestine, as the mill bruised the corn for the thin loaf.

If one listens as he journeys, out in the fields where the men would be likely to be most jocund, and the women feel freest, he might at times hear the fellahin singing. The best tune they have is one called "The Song of the Harvest." But even this is a mere plaintive melody, the intervals of which are all minor. It is impossible for our voices, trained to the musical scale, to catch the strains so as to reproduce it. Digging, planting, rowing, the laborers will chant roughly; but the sound is like that of grown people crying. The land seems to weep and wail, as if under a divine visitation.

THE COMMON HUMANITY.

I once spent some curious and industrious days in Beyroot. I met the multitudes of common people face to face, at the exact point where they came most closely in contact with our forms of Christian civilization. We heard the daughters of heathen. parents sing our American Sunday-school songs in their own language, to our tunes, and repeat the same prayers we had taught our little ones on the other side of the world. Of course, we had to rely on others much for interpretation, but we certainly saw with our own unbiased eyes.

I

I instituted somewhat diligent and extensive inquiries, seeking explanations of what I could not myself understand. made frequent visits to the Christian schools there. And I feel quite ready to pronounce that men, women, and children are there, precisely as here, singing all the music of ordinary life with eight notes to the octave. They are debased, as all bad people are debased; they can be uplifted, as all enlightened good people are uplifted.

The countenances of the children are at times full of sprightliness and intelligence. Many of the girls in the schools had learned to speak English fluently, and so were accessible to conversation. I say soberly, there appeared no reason why these creatures in human form should not be considered human, precisely like the rest of Degraded they are, but degraded they need not remain. A wealthy native merchant in that city once remarked: "The Europeans have a thing in

our race.

their country which we have not; they call it ed-oo-ca-shion, and I am anxious to have it introduced into Syria."

Some few little touches of nature interested me very much in the children. They have some of the same games we have in our own land. The girls play "puss, puss in the corner," and "pebble, pebble, (button) who's got the pebble?" and the boys play leap-frog, and the ordinary rings of marbles, as well as "tag" and base-ball.

But they seem deplorably poor, and it is a fact that they defy all description as to filthiness. It is a sage comfort sometimes to hear a missionary make a facetious remark. Good Mr. Williams, of Mardin, is recorded as having said that some of the children who came to him were so ragged and tattered that there was hardly cloth enough to their garments to make borders for the holes! And my own eyes can bear witness that the type of utter dilapidation in garments certainly resides somewhere in Egypt or Northern Palestine.

The very first effect of this wild, half vagrant life is to destroy self-respect. We do not need to cross the ocean to find that out; for do we not know what "street Arabs" are? Add to this the notion of abandoned hopelessness which the women have, and one can see where it leads the girls. One of the most pathetic instances of pure Orientalism that ever came to my knowledge is related as a positive fact. While the children of the Abeil school were playing together one day at recess, two small girls fell into pleasant dispute as to the size of a certain object-plaything, perhaps. One said, "Oh, it was so very little!" and the other asked, "How little?" Then the missionary looked out of the window, and heard her answer, " Why, a little wee thing." Then the other pressed her still further, "Well, how little?" to which the girl replied, unconscious of the poetry or the pathos of her comparison, "As little as was the joy of my father on the day I was born!"

THE VICES OF THE PEOPLE.

The general thriftlessness of all the aborigines in Oriental countries is noticeable to everybody who passes through. On our first visit to Jerusalem we were most surprisingly benefited by an instance of this sort. The entrances of the city are closed at sunset; we had been around on the Mount of Olives, and were belated. But we remembered that the Jaffa gate had

BLIND MEN BEGGING BY THE WAYSIDE.

experienced some affliction or other, so that it would not shut. Four years later, while we stood waiting in the rain, disconsolate and damp, for a most provoking season of delay, trying to get passage out to our tents, we recalled the preparations for repairs we had noticed so long ago. Now the trouble was that the old portal would not open on the new hinges only on one side. We drew the innocent conclusion that it might be possible this triumph of eastern enterprise would be witnessed at its full completion by some one even of this generation of old beggars sitting there to watch for alms in their pails.

For that is exactly the way in which they do sit--by generations. We know, for instance, that Bartimeus means "Son of Timeus," and some people say Timeus means blind; and it is very easy to make out three degrees of the Timeus descent, with the one Jesus healed for a start; he was "Son of Timeus, son of Timeus;" and so it would seem that they had the family stand a good while there at the gate of Jericho.

VOL. VII.-36

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There is a laziness indescribable which controls everybody. The white footpaths through Syria are hedged in often with a dense growth of cactus and young pomegranate trees, beneath the scanty shade of which the inhabitants sit, squat like the letter N inverted, their knees drawn up till they fairly touch their chins, precisely as if their lean bodies were roughly hinged at only two points, and would fold up in the shape of what printers call "condensed type."

Of course the filthiness of some of these creatures matches their indolence. Men, not rarely, wear a single garment for six months. without so much as removing it for even a night. And by that time one can conjecture its population is. beyond census.

We saw more than once a line of human beings in single file along the narrow way, headed by three or four stalwart men, carrying only their long pipes, while behind them came as many women, young and old, having on their heads such loads of brush-wood, which they had somewhere gathered for fuel, that they actually staggered under the weight; and not one of these lords of creation even so much as cast a glance behind him. We frequently passed the ploughmen in the furrow, scratching the surface with the point of their mere stick for a share. And once we saw a camel and a cow yoked together; and once a woman and a donkey, while a man drove them with a sharpened goad.

How these wives can abide such cruelty, or ever stick to such brutes for husbands, passes ordinary comprehension. Yet there is at times some sort of real affection among them. They take a curious way of showing it also. A suddenly bereaved widow, in a village near Lebanon, refused to allow her house or her clothes to be washed for more than a whole year afterward. It was her own peculiar method of mourning. But one is ready to believe that it proved effective, and