When the American missionaries went to Persia, there was but a single Nestorian female who could read. She was Helena, the sister of the Patriarch, whose superior rank secured her this accomplishment. The rest were not only ignorant, but content to remain so. In addition to this, the poor Nestorians groaned under the bondage of a Mohammedan yoke, whose rule was capricious and tyrannical. In entering on her missionary duties, Miss Fiske writes: “Soon after our arrival, one of the elder members of our circle remarked that he did not know of five in the whole Nestorian nation whom he could look upon as true Christians.” The female seminary, which has done so much for the social, intellectual, and spiritual improvement of woman in Persia, was, during the first five years of its existence, simply a day-school: the pupils boarding at home, and spending only a few hours daily with their teachers in the school-room. From the first, she was very desirous of changing the character of the school, making it a boarding-school, in which pupils might remain several years, and be under the exclusive care and training of the teachers. The very idea of such a school was so repugnant to all the hereditary views of social propriety among the Nestorians, as to seem almost chimerical. Most of the girls were betrothed before they were twelve years of age; and the parents were afraid to give up those who were not, lest they should lose some favourable opportunity of marriage. They were also apprehensive that if their daughters were put to a boarding-school, they would not be able to carry heavy burdens, nor wield the spade so successfully as their companions who had never learned to read. But notwithstanding these difficulties, Miss Fiske succeeded in establishing a flourishing school conformed to her own ideal.
Her efforts to interest the women in the Bible were sometimes amusing. After reading the history of the creation, she asked, “Who was the first man?” They answered, “What do we know? we are women.” Then she told them that Adam was the first man, and made them repeat the name till they remembered it. The next question was, “What does it mean?” Here too they could give no answer; but were delighted to find that the first man was called _red earth_, because he was made of it. This was enough for one lesson. It woke up faculties previously dormant. She was not content with the few women who came to receive religious instruction at the seminary; but visited them at their homes, going from house to house, where filth and vermin would have repelled any woman of refinement whose heart did not glow with love to Christ, and love to perishing souls for whom He died.