It was when we walked out a little from the main road to Bethany to look over into a deep valley that we saw a carpenter at work in his sunny yard, making yokes for the oxen. He worked deftly with his clumsy tools at his primitive bench. The court-yard was swept clean, save for the corner where the shavings fell. There were green things growing in a garden. After a moment a woman appeared in the doorway. She looked curiously at us but answered our smile. “Ing-leesh?” she queried. We shook our heads. “American,” we said very distinctly. The man at the bench turned quickly. A shower of words in the Hebrew tongue and a motion to wait answered us. The woman hurried into the house and was back in a moment with a photograph in her hand—a man, a woman, two children. The photograph was taken in _New York_! She pointed proudly to the word. As we were about to leave, being limited to conversation by means of nods, smiles and gestures only, a boy came from the rear of the house. He had great, dark, dreamy eyes, his head was a mass of thick curls, in his hands he had two irregular blocks of wood which he gave to his father. He smiled at us shyly, but turned to look again with frank interest and curiosity when his mother repeated the word American.
It was hard to tear ourselves away from this picture of the carpenter with his little son and the mother at the door, but there was no excuse for lingering. We could only hope that this young son of a carpenter might sometime know the story of that other Son, of whose early days in the village of Nazareth he served so forcibly to remind us.
It was here that He came to talk with one who seemed to understand—and there were so few.]
It is not a long walk to Bethany, a little over four miles they told us, and we soon saw the low gray stone houses with their roofs of mud not far ahead. As we approached the village, a veritable host of children rushed to meet us, calling, with a score of accents, words supposed to be English. At first we covered our ears then motioned to one child to speak. We learned that they were offering their services as guides. The moment we appeared to understand, the babel began again. “Mary and Martha,” they called. “Simon-Lazarus, I will show.” When we spoke they listened, but only for a moment. “You cannot all be our guides,” I said. “If you all follow we will go back to Jerusalem and no one will have _back-sheesh_—not one. We shall not look at the house of Mary and Martha.” The tallest among them, a lad of fourteen, he told me afterward, evidently repeated our words and he emphasized them with a flourish of a stout cane which he carried. He showed us a soiled card with a name written upon it which he said was his. We chose him and one other guide, a little girl of six who had pointed to herself proudly, saying, “I know—I know, Mary—Martha—Lazarus.” At a word from a villager passing on his donkey the children scattered and it was a great relief.