In this village are a good many shops, but they are not the sort we are accustomed to. Picture the village shop at home with its small glass panes and the post-office on one side. The window crammed with marbles and liquorice and peppermint, and slates and balls and copybooks and hoops and everything that the owner thinks anyone would be in the least likely to buy. In Nazareth the shops sell only one sort of thing, and those that sell the same sort of thing have a general inclination to come together. In one little street, for instance, are the saddlers' shops.
The front of the house is open, but there is no glass to fill it in, and we can see the men working at their trade inside. The harness is extremely gay, painted in all colours, red and blue and yellow, and made up with bits of tinsel and glitter. The more decorated he can afford to have his harness the prouder is the rider. As we stand watching, a number of women steal gently up behind us and offer some embroidery they have made; they do not push or scramble, and when we shake our heads they melt away again.
As we turn a corner, there, right in front of us, is a carpenter's shop with the front quite open to the street, as in the harness-makers' shops. The bearded man who leans over a cart-wheel and handles it with long brown hands might have been Joseph himself. In just such a workshop as this Jesus learnt His trade.
IT MIGHT HAVE BEEN JOSEPH HIMSELF.
The life of a little Jewish boy of those days was carefully ordered, and in his life there was much more saying of prayers and going to church—that is, the synagogue—than you have in yours. At school there was a great deal to be learnt by heart, and what with that and the churchgoing and the workshop there cannot have been much spare time.
We go slowly on to the inn, where we are to pass the night. To-morrow we will go down to the Sea of Galilee and watch the fishermen drawing in their nets as they did in Christ's time when He called them to be fishers of men.
After that we will come back, pass Nazareth once more, and make our way to a port called Haifa, where we can get a steamer to take us down to Jaffa instead of returning to Jerusalem again by three days' journey on horseback.