Excerpt from Hassan a Fellah; A Romance of Palestine

Shall wait till she returns, he said. My hope is as the first-fruits in harvest. My heart is lifted up for joy because of her. Surely love comes of its own accord! How can a man help it? Who shall say it nay? And he settled himself with a complacent air under the shelter of a great rock, in a position from which he could watch his sheep while they cropped the early and still meagre herbage of the hillside. Below, in the hollow of the valley, was the principal well of the village, to which the women, from long dis tances, came to draw water; for the well was noted for the abundance and purity of its supply of the precious liquid. And the words which the stalwart young shep herd had spoken to himself had reference to a childlike girl who had just tripped by, with nicely-balanced kulleh, or water-jar, on head, on her way to the ain, or fountain. The young man, Hassan, his shepherd's crook in his hand, sat partly in the shade of the rock, partly in the clear penetrating blaze of the Palestine sun, and, except that he was of unusually noble stature, was a perfect type of the native fellah or peasant.

He had not quite completed his eighteenth year, and was as handsome, after his kind, as he well could be. The single scanty garment of the country, of coarse white cotton, clung here and there to him, barely saving him from the divine nudity of a Greek statue. On the right side the polished round of the shoulder protruded; and from there, downward, over the well-turned flank and thigh, to the tip of the toe, the full sweep of his contour was absolutely beyond criticism.

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