"After lingering for a short time to enjoy the prospect, we were led to another room equally large, light, and airy. Here we found about thirty children, under the care of two female teachers. One tiny little creature was learning a Hebrew lesson, and carefully spelling words of two letters. Another child of seven or eight was reading, with very little hesitation, some Scripture history. The other children were seated comfortably, and with perfect ease and freedom, yet without disorder, upon mats, or on the deep-carpeted window seat. There I recognised the happy faces which I had seen from the street below. They looked up at me smiling, as much as to say: 'We know you again; we saw you waiting at the door.'
"They were all at needlework, and I could not help observing the extreme delicacy and beauty of their hands. If, as it is said, this is the distinguishing feature of noble birth, then these young daughters of Israel are of princely race. Some of the little hands were stained with henna, and almost all the nails were tinted, and looked like the delicate rose-coloured shells we find on the sands on English shores.
"The children were uniformly neat and clean, and there was a picturesque variety of costume there that struck us pleasantly, contrasting with our recollections of the ugly uniforms in some of our public schools at home and abroad....
"These two rooms were set apart expressly for the children of parents belonging to the Sephardim congregation, consisting of the Spanish and Portuguese Jews settled in Jerusalem.
"We were now led downstairs again to the open court, which we crossed, and, after ascending another stairway, we found ourselves in the school of the Ashkenazi congregation, formed of German, Russian, and Polish Jews. Here there were fifteen children, and they all seemed to be under seven years of age. They were much more fair, though less beautiful, than those in the other rooms. They were sitting very much at their ease, perched upon the sloping desks, with their little feet resting on the forms. How thoughtful and kind it was to allow them this freedom during the hot weather! There was not a sign of fatigue, or any expression of rebellion against restraint, on any of the young faces around us.
"A little girl of five years of age, with pink cheeks, blue eyes, and hair almost white, was reading aloud from some Hebrew volume, and was evidently interested by it. I cautiously inquired whether she knew by heart all that fell so fluently from her lips. I was assured that I was listening to genuine reading.
"We went downstairs to the second German rooms, where most of the girls were between thirteen and fifteen years of age, and the rest younger. We heard two of the eldest read with emphasis several pages from the life of Moses—a book written expressly for the use of women and children. It is a paraphrase of the Bible history of Moses, in a curious harsh dialect, being a compound of Hebrew and German. It is printed in Hebrew characters, and embellished with quaint and curious woodcuts in the style of the followers of Albert Dürer.
"In these rooms fifty-five pupils generally muster."
Turning again to the administration of the Appeal Fund, the reader will learn that, independently of the several grants made to the respective institutions, a considerable sum was entrusted to the elders of the communities, to be distributed among the necessitous poor of Jerusalem, Hebrew, Jaffa, and other congregations.