Hatsu: A Story of Egypt

LAURA DAYTON FESSENDEN Author of “A Colonial Dame,” “Bonnie MacKirby,” “The Moon Children,” Etc.
CHRISTMAS 1904
Copyright, 1904 By Laura Dayton Fessenden
The Canterbury Press, Highland Park (Chicago), Illinois
I dedicate this Story of Egypt to My Dearest and Best Friend My Husband
LAURA DAYTON FESSENDEN Highland Park, Illinois
“Happiegoluckie” Christmas, 1904

The fifth day of the first month of summer had come, and in a sunset of gold and purple hues, the Nile was glorified; birds had ceased their songs, the air was heavy with the perfume of flowers, and away to the westward the evening star was setting.
Here, and there, along the shore, lithe, tawney-skinned girls filled earthern jars with water, then lifted them to their shoulders, and walked across the greenness, into the deepening night.
On this delta—or plain—of lower Egypt, there stood, three thousand years ago, the city of Abydos; it measured ten square miles in circumference, and was shut in on three sides, by walls of reddish sand-stone and the unwalled side—fronting the Nile—was a pleasure ground, belonging to a Royal residence and named, the “Palace of Tears,” so called because it was occupied by the King or his family only during seasons of personal, or national distress. Entrance into Abydos, was obtainable through three gateways, and over each there were towers, in which night and day, year in, and year out, the priests of Osirus, kept watch and ward with much fasting and many prayers.
The word “SILENCE” was cut into the stone arch above each gate, and within the city, conversation was carried on in whispers; no sound of instruments of music, no peal of bells, was ever heard, only the lowing of cattle in the Royal meadows, and the bellowing of sacred bulls, in the temple grounds, only the singing of birds among the trees, and the never ceasing chant of the priests broke the stillness.