Page:Domestic Life in Palestine.pdf/345

338 into a Christian Church. Consequently, the little ones were confined nearly all day in the close, ill-ventilated, small rooms of the Jewish quarter, till this school was established. Here they assembled early in the morning, and, taking proper hours for rest, recreation, and for meals, returned home at sunset. Already a great improvement was observed in their appearance; they looked more healthy, and their lives were happier.

A little girl of five years of age, with pink cheeks, blue eyes, and hair almost white, was reading aloud from some Hebrew volume, and was evidently interested by it. I cautiously inquired whether she knew by heart all that fell so fluently from her lips. I was assured that I was listening to genuine reading.

We went down-stairs to the second German room, where most of the girls were between thirteen and fifteen years of age, and the rest younger. We heard two of the eldest read, with emphasis, several pages from the Life of Moses—a book written expressly for the use of women and children. It is a paraphrase of the Bible history of Moses, in a curious, harsh dialect, being a compound of Hebrew and German. It is printed in Hebrew characters, and embellished with quaint and curious wood-cuts, in the style of the followers of Albert Dürer.

In these two rooms fifty-five pupils generally muster. The housekeeper, who had guided us from room to room, then led us to her own, and exhibited some shirts, which she and the elder pupils had been making to order. They were stitched and hem-stitched, and neatly finished off. She seemed delighted with our approval and praise; for this shirt-making was quite a new accomplishment, as the Jews of the East wear much more simple under-garments than these.

We took leave of her, and I returned to the Consulate, very tired. My friends went on to the Rothschild Schools, of which they afterward gave me a very favorable report.

When I was in Jerusalem, in 1859 I made inquiries