Page:On the Desert - Recent Events in Egypt.djvu/292

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THE MOSLEMS OF GAZA.

found him employment to keep him from starving. "And yet that man," he said, "would come behind me when walking in the street with my wife, and thinking we did not hear him, mutter the most horrible curses on our heads."

But, remembering how the Divine Master would do good even to those who reviled Him, this devoted missionary has sought to imitate that blessed example, and by his kindness to the children, whom he has gathered into his schools, has made some impression on their parents. In the same spirit of trying to save those for whom others have abandoned hope, he has gone literally into the wilderness to the fierce tribes, who, if more ignorant than the dwellers in cities, are less bigoted. Their mouths are not so full of cursing and bitterness. They preserve at least somewhat of the kindly instincts of nature, which have not been killed by religious fanaticism. And so, when discouraged, as he often is, and disheartened, by the ingratitude, of the Moslems of Gaza, he flies to the Bedaween of the desert. Of course he does not go with an ostentatious display of his condition as better than theirs, or anything which can excite their cupidity. They see him coming among them, a plain, simple man, and poor almost as themselves, with hardly more than a staff in his hand, certainly with little money in his purse. He goes to their black goats-hair tents, and claims their hospitality. He does not despise their homely fare; he dips his hand with them into the dish; and when they gather round their camp-fire, he sits with them as their guest, and leads their thoughts to things of which his own mind and heart are full He told me of his experience. At first he tried to read to them the Bible, but they yawned and almost went to sleep. He found that to persuade them to listen, he must not read out of a book; and so he laid aside the