The Bedouin children have no books nor toys. They play with dead locusts or dried-up camel’s bones; they make whistles out of desert grass, and love to use the sling as David did, with pebbles from the brook when he killed the giant. The girls help in the hard work of drawing water, making butter and driving the camels to and from pasture. Although they cannot read, and have no picture books, they all of them study without ceasing the great picture book of nature, and their little dark eyes, whether watching the sheep at pasture, or counting the stars in the blue abyss from their perch on the lofty camel saddle in the midnight journeyings, are never at rest. In some parts of Arabia, Bedouin women when they travel ride on a camel saddle called a _howdij_, which protects them from the gaze of strangers. Sometimes they play peek-a-boo, as the camel trudges along. In many respects their life is most unhappy. Doughty and other travellers believe that over one-half of the nomad population seldom know the blessing of a full meal. When they hear from the lips of Western travellers of countries where there is bread and clothing and peace, and water in great abundance, they are surprised, and contrast the condition of other nations with their lives of misery. One of them, after listening to Doughty’s description, threw his hands up, and uttered this prayer, “Have mercy, O Allah, upon Thy creature whom Thou createdst! Pity the sighing of the poor, the hungry, the naked. Have mercy, have mercy upon them, O Allah!” Who can help saying “Amen” to the nomad’s prayer? We cannot judge them harshly when we remember that they have never had a fair chance, and that for centuries warfare and plunder have been their daily life. I remember with much interest a Sunday I spent in the black tents of Kedar, with a crowd of nomads sitting around. They were most hospitable, and brought in great wooden bowls of fresh milk, with butter floating in it, dried dates and bread baked on the coals; then, when our appetites were satisfied, they listened, oh, so eagerly, as I told them for the first time the old, old story of Jesus Christ’s birth, and death and resurrection. Some of them were so ignorant that they had never heard of a cross, and I remember taking two twigs from the ground and showing them how our Saviour was crucified for our sins, according to the Scriptures. No one has visited that tribe in Oman since my journey eight years ago. How long must they and others wait for Christian teachers? Shall the Bedouin babies have a better chance than their mothers had?