VII. Gymnastics and calligraphy.
VIII. Explanations of the Gospels.
Seven female students obtained their diplomas this year (1877), and were sent into the interior, where in their turn they will be called upon to impart light and knowledge to the girls of some little town or village.
During my travels I have often come across these provincial schools, and found much pleasure in conversing with the ladylike, modest young Athenian women, who had left home and country to give their teaching and example to their less-favored sisters in Turkey. I remember feeling a special interest in two of these, whom I found established in a flourishing Greek village in a mountainous district of Macedonia.
I was invited into their little parlor, adjoining the school. It was plain but very neat, and the scantiness of the furniture was more than atoned for by the quantity of flowers and the many specimens of their clever handiwork. The Chorbadji’s wives, some of them wealthy, doted upon these girls, who were generally looked up to and called Kyria (lady); each wife vying with the other in copying the dresses and manners of these phenomenal beings transplanted into their mountain soil. The children, too, seemed devoted to their teachers, and delighted in the instruction given them, while the men of the village showed them all respect, and seemed to pride themselves on the future benefit their daughters and sisters would derive from the teachings and good influence of these ladies.
Having sufficiently enlarged upon the education of the girls of Salonika, I will now pass on to that of the boys, which is far more advanced.
The highest school for boys is called the Gymnasium. It contains four classes, in which six professors teach the following subjects:
I. Greek: translation of Greek poetry and prose, with analysis and commentary, grammatical and geographical, historical, archæological, etc.
II. Latin: translations from Latin authors and poets, with analysis.
III. Scripture lessons: catechism, with theological analysis and explanations.