a crystal case, was attached. His mother wore a long blue linen shirt, rather scanty, and opening in front to the waist, a straight short pelisse or jacket, of crimson and white striped silk, and a shawl girdle. A long thick white linen vail hung over her head and shoulders, and partly concealed her stiff tarbûsh or cap, which was ornamented with a row of small gold coins, and a few bunches of everlasting flowers. The elder woman wore a heavy shirt or smock of blue linen, the wide hanging open sleeves of which exposed a tattooed and braceleted arm. Her long white linen vail fell from her head over her shoulders, in graceful folds to her feet, which were naked. In such a vail as this Ruth, the young Moabitish widow, who three thousand years ago gleaned in the fertile fields of the broad valley below, may have carried away the six measures of barley, which her kinsman, Boaz, the then mighty man of wealth of Bethlehem-Judah, had graciously given to her, saying, "Bring the vail that thou hast upon thee, and hold it; and when she held it, he measured six measures of barley, and laid it on her, and she went into the city." Ruth iii, 15.
I asked the young mother her name; she answered, "Miriam is my name;" but her mother said, "Not so, she is no longer Miriam, but 'Um Yousef' [mother of Joseph,] for a son is born unto her, whose name is Joseph."
It is the universal custom in the East, for a mother to take the name of her first-born son, with the prefix of "Um"—mother—such as Um Elias, mother of Elias; or Um Elia, mother of Eli, whence perhaps came such names as Emma, Emily, and Amelia. On the same principle the father's name is changed as soon as he has a son, whose name he adopts, with the prefix of "Abu"—father. It is a source of great distress and disappointment to parents if they are, for want of a son, obliged to retain their respective names.
The little mummy-like figure in my arms began to show signs of life, by uttering a feeble sound, in the universal language of babyhood. The mother took it from me, and
