Democratic Sentinel, Volume 8, Number 38, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 17 October 1884 — The Egyptian Peasantry. [ARTICLE]

The Egyptian Peasantry.

The agricultural fellah is an admirable style of man. With good cerebral development and much aptitude and intelligence, with an agile and muscular frame, he is a typical farm laborer, and as he patiently works his shadoof or waters his fields with tiny rills of the water it has raised, or diligently weeds or hoes his crops, he presents an example of untiring industry and quaint yet ingenious contrivance. He has also a love of education, and desires that his children should learn all that can be taught in the schools to which he has access. He will often pay the village teacher what for him is a very large sum in exchange for a village education, and he is anxious when he can to take advantage of European schools. He reads, too, when he can get books, and loves to know something of the great world beyond him. The dweller in a mud hut, almost roofless and destitute of furniture, is often for. his circumstances a .somewhat intelligent and even learned man, and he is quick of apprehension, and readily acquires or imitates Anything brought under his notice by His family affections are strong, and his cheerfulness and goodnature are almost invincible. He is, it is true, deficient in some of the harder virtues of more northern climates, and is less self-reliant and less truthful than he should be, but it must be remembered that his race has suffered oppression from a period long antecedent to the rise of our modern nations. The Egyptian must not be supposed to be represented by the rabble that howl for backsheesh at places frequented by travelers. Vagrants and beggars exist more or less everywhere, and in Egypt the observant tourist can easily see the difference between these and the men and boys diligently watering and weeding their crops from morning to night, and the women busily employed in household work. Too often, however, all are treated alike by strangers and their employes, and it is frequently painful to see decent and orderly people plying some humble trade or offering some legitimate service, involved in the same hard treatment which falls on idle beggars.—Leisure Hours.