Page:Domestic Life in Palestine.pdf/68

Rh "Be glad, and enter in with joy, for this is to-day a house of rejoicing." We found the carver at his work, seated on the floor. He rose up with evident delight to receive my brother, who had formerly protected him, and helped to establish him in business. He said, "Welcome, O my master! thank God that he has led you back to this land, to see the fruit of your goodness, the work of your hand. You have built up my house, you have made me to rejoice, you have given me a son!" My brother replied, laughingly, "You speak in riddles darkly, make your words plain, O my friend." The carver took up a handful of tools, saying: "O my protector, you gave me these tools these tools brought me gold—the gold brought me a wife, and my wife brought me a son, on the night of the new moon!"

He had once been in my brother's service, and during that time showed decided taste for carving, which my brother encouraged by giving him a little instruction in the art, and some English tools.

Round the room, and hanging on the white-washed walls, were a number of small inlaid mother-of-pearl table-tops, about half a yard square, intended for the stands or stools on which coffee and preserves are placed in Oriental establishments. Carved rosaries, crucifixes, cups, and crosses, of olive-wood, decorated the place. The carver showed us, with especial pride, some large flat shells, on which he had sculptured pictures of sacred subjects and holy places; and some beads carved in bitumen, from the shores of the Dead Sea. During the past Easter he had reaped a goodly harvest, for the pilgrims eagerly buy these objects, and, when they are blessed by the priests, preserve them as relics. The English travelers, too, had bought a great number of paper knives, bracelets, and brooches, made at my brother's suggestion—the original sketches for which the carver had preserved with loving care, and with new expressions of gratitude he showed them to me, saying, "Peace be on his hands." While speaking, he was especially bright and