so many monkeys are born into the world with a red mark behind to remind man of their origin, and of how this terrible disgrace befell as a consequence of the desecration of bread. It is perhaps not wholly unnecessary to point out why, in Scripture, we hear always of the "breaking," never of the "cutting," of bread. The thin cakes baked in the taboon would resist the use of a knife and are always broken. Another story was told me in explanation of the fact that a second wife brought home during the lifetime of the first, is called in many villages a doura. A man seeing his wife allow some doura (millet) to fall upon the ground, told her to pick it up. “Is that a thing to make a fuss about?" she asked, " do you think you will buy yourself a wife with these few grains?"-to buy a wife being perhaps the most expensive luxury a fellah allows himself. Moreover, it is the fellah rather than the townsman who takes more than one wife. "Pick it up," he persisted, "and we shall see." So, to teach her a lesson, he planted the few grains of doura. The doura grows somewhat like Indian corn, with a loose drooping mass of flowers and fruit, very handsome in appearance, but differing from maize in that the grains are in clusters and not upon ears. It is the summer crop of Palestine, and after the other grain is reaped, the hill sides and the plains still show great patches of vivid green, all the more brilliant for the bare earth about them. It needs no water, and is so prolific in the district, as to be known in some places as "Jerusalem corn." Though in Europe it is used mainly for feeding poultry, it serves as an economical adulteration of bread. The first year the handful produced a good patch, the second a sackful, the third a whole field. This the man sold for a good price, and bought himself a second wife, looking about carefully for one who should be less wasteful than the first. "If I had picked it up and kept quiet I should have done better," said the woman. Very elaborate pains are taken in the preparation of bread, and it can be mixed only by those who are ceremonially clean. Hence the lazy woman is described as saying "I want to marry a poor man who eats doura bread. It needs neither time nor skill to make it. I can stir it with my hands and leave it while I go to chat with my neighbour "-much as Armenian refugees want to go to America. "There is no work," they say. "Nobody is a servant. Everything is done by machinery." When two people are dividing anything it is common among the lookers-on to say, "May the blessing of the two brothers be and pare from a defilement. All who knew the 1 have stened with reverence to the cry of the bre hs early round. Aah Karim! Allah Karim! was i is mere!" Bread is recognised as His specia Hess. It is not to be treated as ordina and indeed middle-aged, people have told me remember when bread could not be sold. It given or exchanged-gift for gift. The Jews wer 1844 is sad, who were known to take mon new, every Muslim and many Christians, will pi of bread they may happen to see on the grou fly, and reverently lay it upon some place w trodden upon. Even in Constantinople all t troduced by the Allied Occupation did not this respect from being paid to one of the ess In many sa oriental town, when I have been I have noticed some man, rich or poor, quietl approving, but on the watch that no morsel profaned in the process. On one such occasi was told the story of a black man who reve ste a porce of bread which he had found up the usud invocation Deftur ya Aish (pardon and was rewarded by the fact that the che which be had eaten became perfectly white The people associate the story of the F esting of whest which, as representing l Paradise, and say that the mark down th as that of Adam's thumb where he broke i The history of the monkey is also assoc mess of bread. A woman was one day working near while her child played on the ground b it had become dirty she looked about for clean it, and found nothing but the newly about to break off a piece, with true Ar angel, stricken with horror at such P some mandeels (handkerchiefs). These for the purpose, and, deciding to take continued to wipe the child with people began to notice a chang older it changed by degree man but unable to spea upon you," in allusion to the following story, told variously of the threshing-floor on Mount Sion, and of that known as the Sachra, the great rock which is the Holy Place of the so-called Mosque of Omar, the Harem es Sherif, said to have been the threshing-floor of Araunah, the Jebusite, the spot on which Abraham prepared to offer up Isaac, and the Altar of Burnt Offerings in the Hebrew Temple. The threshing-floor was originally owned by two brothers, Muslims, one married, one single. One August night, after the corn had been threshed out and divided between them, they were sleeping, each by his own heap to guard it. In the course of the night the married brother, lying awake, said to himself, "I am now a rich man. I have a wife and children, and abundant provision, and my brother is alone. Why should I have so much more than he? At least I can make it up to him in corn," and he added liberally from his own heap to that of his sleeping brother. Later, the other awaking reflected, "I have neither wife nor child. My brother needs more provision than I," and he added largely to the store of his brother. In the morning both were surpised to see that there was no change in the amount of either heap. But God saw and remembered. The story is told of Fatmeh, the favourite daughter of the Prophet, that on one occasion when he was lying ill in his room she did not enter, but spoke to him from the doorway. "Why do you not enter, my child?" he asked. "Come and sit by me." For all answer she pointed to some barley which was lying upon the threshold, and then signified by a gesture that she was ceremonially unclean, and might not pollute the precious gift of food by stepping over it. He commended her discretion, but added, Alas! the time will come when men will forget their early teaching and will even tread upon barley and wheat." The march of civilisation and enlightenment has gone far to sweep away old-time reverence. 66 It was part of the Prophet's asceticism that he did not eat fine bread. (Mishkat I, 8, 18). One of his companions testifies, "Fine bread was not made for him. . . I do not know that he ever saw flour that had been twice sifted to the day of his death. We used to clean the barley and blow away the bran from it, make dough with water and then bread, and then eat it. He never found fault with any of his victuals; if he liked what was placed before him he ate it, if not he left it alone." However, one is glad to know that he was so far human as to like the bottom crust. Probably the bread was baked on a hot stone, and those who have travelled among the fellaheen, still |