Page:On the Desert - Recent Events in Egypt.djvu/190

 these mountains. Indeed I was told that several of them had not been outside the Convent in twenty years. All the affairs of the household are managed by themselves. Some of the menial offices are performed by Arab servants, but every species of handicraft is wrought by the monks. Dr. Post, who had the case for his plants broken, found here a very good tinsmith. Any one whose garments are torn, or whose shoes are worn out in scrambling over the rocks, may find a tailor and a cobbler to patch them up again.

But all this is apart from, and subordinate to, their one great vocation, which is to pray. They tinker a little and cobble a little, but they pray a great deal. Their lives are spent in prayer. Seven hours out of the twenty-four are given to devotion. Several times in the day we hear a stroke, as with a hammer, on a nakus [a bent iron bar] — a sound which, like the voice of the muezzin from the minaret, calls the faithful to prayer. The reception-room is near the chapel, so that the voices of the monks come to us distinctly through the open windows; and we should be dull indeed if we could sit unmoved at the chanting of the songs of the ages, and of prayers which in different tongues are repeated in all the communions of Christendom. Nor are these hours of devotion confined to the day-time: fully one-half are taken from the night. At three o'clock in the morning the bell of the church awakes every sleeper in the Convent. It is now Lent, and there are more hours of prayer and special services, which are always open to strangers. To one of these, on Sunday morning, I was particularly invited, and was quite disposed to accept; although, to confess the truth, the service was a little early and a trifle late, commencing an hour after midnight, and ending at seven o'clock! In such a case I did as many do: I came late and went early — that