The native Christian is a shrewd business man. He is courteous even to self-effacement. He can work hard, bargain shrewdly, save much, take disappointment and persist. He loves his family dearly. He is humorous, philosophic, a voluble fellow, non-secretive. He respects the Western style of education, largely perhaps because it seems to lift people into an easy life. Ease and grace are Eastern ideals of superiority.
If the Moslem and the Christian could be put on the same political footing and justice done to each impartially in court practise and taxation, I firmly believe that they would draw together, that Palestine would in time be a country with a people and that it would be well equipped from among its own with men of ability, competent to do its political and social work.
In general it may be said that where the Palestine peasant has not come into relationship with the tourist business in any form, and where he is some little distance from any city, he is naturally simple in his tastes and requirements, interested in novelty, sociable, hospitable, fun-loving, hard-working, though not steady in effort.
A lone walker on the road will often sing. Whistling is almost unknown. Peasants make a twenty-mile journey on foot with considerable ease, and half that distance is done very commonly. Distances are always reckoned by them in hours or days, never in miles. They often walk behind their laden animals. Sometimes it is a donkey, bearing the plow and seed-bag or loaded with fagots, grain, sheaves, dried figs or grapes, according to the season. Or it may be a camel similarly laded or carrying stone; or a mule. Seldom are horses used, except by a village shaykh or a city official on the highway. When groups of peasants are on the road there is much talk, often laughter, horse-play, joking, chaffing; sometimes bickering and quarreling.
The peasant stands in awe of learning, especially of learning in the Arabic language. He is sensitive to ridicule, and therefore loath to make such a change in customs as would bring it on him. He is eager in discussion, inquisitive, strong in memory and at imitating, but slow to adopt strange ways not tested by the conditions of life to which he is accustomed. You seldom or never find him nervous, fretful or discontented. He never questions the wisdom of Providence. He seldom mentions weather probabilities. He, like his Old Testament countryman, refers all things to a First Cause. Divine cause or permission is prominent in his explanation of any phenomena.