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- 190 when he was sure she was one of the family he was seeking. For a man to stand by while a woman does such hard work as filling the stone troughs around a well for animals to drink from is not according to our notions, but it is still right in Palestine. Ideas of a girl’s accomplishments vary in different countries. I once asked a Japanese if young ladies in Japan were taught anything—meaning, did they go beyond what they learned as children. “Certainly,” he said, a little indignantly; “every Japanese young lady is taught the arrangement of flowers and the etiquette of making tea.” “What a different world from our own,” was all I could think.
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192 Abraham sent his servant this long journey because he wanted Isaac to have a wife who believed in the true God as he did. The people who were filling up the country where Abraham dwelt, and most of those who lived in Mesopotamia, worshipped idols. We see, further on, in Genesis, when Jacob and Laban separate, that Abraham’s family worshipped God; but
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195 they could not have cared so much for Him, or understood Him so perfectly as Abraham did, for, while he was willing to push forward wherever God led him, they were satisfied to stay behind.
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197 The rich presents the servant brought were really the price he paid for Rebekah, for a bride in the East is bought from her family. When we read, though, that Rebekah's nurse and damsels (meaning her servants) were sent with her, we feel sure that the family gave her all that was suitable to a sister about to marry the son of a great man.
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199 A hardy young woman like Rebekah perhaps did not mind travelling on a camel, but an American who once crossed a desert on one told me that a camel was a terrible beast to ride on. This was his experience. He did not have such a comfortable saddle as we see in the picture. His saddle was like a wooden saw-buck, placed so that the camel's hump, which is only a mass of fat, rose through the opening in the middle. To the four legs that
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202 went downwards were attached the straps that bound the saddle on. In the centre, over the hump, should have been a padded cushion which should have stretched over the four legs that stood up, but there were only the tatters of a cushion, and pieces of old carpets, and whatever rags the Arabs could find, were put together to take its place. Across this improvised cushion was thrown a pair of big saddle-bags which hung down on each side of the camel. These were stuffed full of all the odds and ends of the camp. He once looked into his, and found a lot of old tin pans. When he sat astride the camel, the stretch was dreadful, to say nothing of knocking against the tin pans. When he sat sideways he could not keep on. He could not keep his seat because of the peculiar jolt of a camel’s gait. The camel moves the two legs on one side, then the two legs on the other, and as it has no spring in its motion, the traveller is jerked first to one side, then to the other, and his back and head keep up a continual wob-
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