I had gone from Jerusalem to Bethany with a young friend late from Harrow, great in athletics, and full of fun and good spirits. We were on foot—for who would care to go to, or return from, Bethany otherwise? and, having arrived at the village, were inquiring for what is shown as the tomb of Lazarus. The women of the place soon collected round us. One of them, in the first bloom of youth, looked like a visitant to Earth, come to enable hapless mortals to dream of the perfectness of Paradise. Her figure would have given Praxiteles new ideas. Her face was slightly oval; her features fine and regular; and her complexion such as must be rare in an Arab girl, for her lips were of a rich, if of a dusky, coral, and the rose envermeiled her nut-brown cheeks. Her eyes thought. Her beauty was about her as a halo of light. To look upon her was fascination. My admiration was speechless. Not so, however, my young friend’s; for, turning to our dragoman, he said, ‘Ask that young lady if she is married?’ My breath went from me at the sudden indignation with which she fired up. As she walked away, giving utterance, as she went, to some angry Arabic, I looked into the faces of the women about us. It was evident that they were impressed with, and approved of, the propriety of her conduct. It will, I thought, be long remembered, and quoted, in the village as an example of the promptitude, and decision, with which an Arab girl should guard her reputation. And now, I said to myself, we are in for it. She will go and fetch her father, or a brother, or some relative assumed for the occasion, and there will be a row. I suggested, therefore, to my young friend, ‘that the tomb was a transparent imposture; that it could only be an excavation in the rock, made by some mediæval monk; and that we should do better to go on, and look at something else.’ And so we got away. As we left the party of women, I gave them a little more backsheesh than usual; and then told the dragoman that we would leave the place at once, but not by the road by which we had come. We had just cleared the village, and I was congratulating myself on our having got off so speedily, when we encountered a flight of locusts. I soon became absorbed in observing their ‘numbers numberless.’ They gave me, I thought, a new idea of multitude. They blurred the sunlight almost like a cloud. I began to capture some of them, which I now have preserved in spirits.