Page:Domestic Life in Palestine.pdf/354

From Wikisource
Jump to navigation Jump to search
This page has been proofread, but needs to be validated.
LIFE AND SOCIETY.
347

of the past, and threw new light for me on Hebrew chronicle and Gospel story. I had seen and entered into the spirit of human life in all its progressive stages. I had found shelter in the tents of lawless wanderers, and claimed sisterhood with Bedouin girls. I had lingered among more peaceful tribes, who dwell in patriarchal simplicity in stationary tents, surrounded by flocks and herds. I had lodged with the fellahîn, in their rude villages of mud and stone, encircled by orchards, gardens, fields of grain, and pasture-land, and had associated with the townspeople, the great men, the law-makers, and the governors of the land. In the mean time I had occasionally enjoyed the society of some of the most highly cultivated and noble representatives of the civilized nations of Europe. I could find some meeting-point of sympathy with all, and I truly felt that "one touch of nature makes the whole world kin."

My desire to make my friends in England share my pleasures, and to enable them to see, as far as possible, a true reflex of all that I saw, led me to look carefully and earnestly on all things. I seemed to possess unusual strength and power of resisting fatigue, and acquired habits of ceaseless and minute observation. My pen and pencil were almost always in use. Friendly voices often said, "You are working too hard; you do not take sufficient rest;" or, "Unless you work with less intensity you will suffer sooner or later. In this country, at this season, it is absolutely necessary to have a little sleep or perfect repose at midday."

I did not take warning, and at last sleepless nights came, and were followed by weary days and loss of appetite, and my almost unnaturally-excited and overtaxed strength suddenly gave way. I remember one hot night, after in vain trying to sleep, I rose and sat in one of the eastern windows of the Consulate on Mount Zion, and watched for the rising of the sun over the Mount of Olives. I waited for a long time before there was any