A lad of twelve or fourteen was our guide to the Advent settlement; he was an early polyglot, speaking, besides English, French, and German, Arabic, and, I think, a little Greek; a boy of uncommon gravity of deportment and of precocious shrewdness. He is destined to be a guide and dragoman. I could see that the whole Biblical history was a little fade to him, but he does not lose sight of the profit of a knowledge of it. I could not but contrast him with a Sunday-school scholar of his own age in America, whose imagination kindles at the Old Testament stories, and whose enthusiasm for the Holy Land is awakened by the wall maps and the pictures of Solomon's temple. Actual contact has destroyed the imagination of this boy; Jerusalem is not so much a wonder to him as Boston; Samson lived just over there beyond the Plain of Sharon, and is not so much a hero as Old Put.
The boy's mother was a good New Hampshire woman, whose downright Yankeeism of thought and speech was in odd contrast to her Oriental surroundings. I sat in a rocking-chair in the sitting-room of her little wood cottage, and could scarcely convince myself that I was not in a prim New Hampshire parlor. To her mind there were no more Oriental illusions, and perhaps she had never indulged any; certainly, in her presence Palestine seemed to me as commonplace as New England.
“I s'pose you 've seen the meetin' house?”
“Wal' it's goin' to rack and ruin like everything else here. There is n't enough here to have any service now. Sometimes I go to the German; I try to keep up a little feeling.”
I have no doubt it is more difficult to keep up a religious feeling in the Holy Land than it is in New Hampshire, but we did not discuss that point. I asked, “Do you have any society?”
“Precious little. The Germans are dreffle unsocial. The natives are all a low set. The Arabs will all lie; I don't think much of any of 'em. The Mohammedans are all shiftless; you can't trust any of 'em.”
“Wal, sometimes I think I'd like to see the old place, but I reckon I could n't stand the winters. This is a nice climate, that's all there is here; and we have grapes and oranges, and loads of flowers,—you see my garden there; I set great store by that and me and my daughter take solid comfort in it, especially when he is away, and he has to be off most of the time with parties, guidin' 'em. No, I guess I sha'n'. ever cross the ocean again.”