The Newberry herald and news. (Newberry, S.C.) 1884-1903, 1888-12-27
Touches OF Nature.
lNn. &. Prime, in New York Jour
nal Of Commerce


wax tablets, looking not unlike school
boys states Of our day. They were
the tablets Serving the same purposes
with modern slates) Of the school-boys
in az Egyptian school in the Ptolemaic
period. How they came to be placed
IL tomb We have no time to conjec-
ture. Perhaps they were an offering
to a dead schoolmate. They are the
record of many interesting things; but
am writing now about the perpetual
ton of records of little things, of small
thoughts, trifiing and unimportant
mental actions. One of the boys mad
a copy, line of Greek, set by the mas
ter across the top Of the tablet. young
readers may need to be told that the
tablet was wood, covered with black
waNen composition, in which the boy
could could make marks with sharp
stick, like a pencil; and he would
erase mark by smoothing down the
wax with the blunt or fatened end of
his stick
This boy had worked along just as
modern boys work in their copy-books.
Probably he got to be weary. At all
events, he came to point, as many
boy has done, when the pencil would
go wrong in spite of him. He mis-
spelled word. He carefully erased it,
smoothing down the wax, wrote it
again, and it was again wrong. He
smoothed the wax and wrote the word
once more, and once more his wearied
brain and his pencil went wrong.
What did he do? Just what you, my
boy, might have done, 1 fancy. Some
of you would exclaim 'Confound it ~
Some boys in the up country might
say Darn it ~ The small Egyptian
not only said, but with his pencil
scratched, a Greek word (pbthazesthe,
it seems to be- which means just about
what one means who says "Duce take
itn' And there it is to-day, the record
of school boys little quarrel with his
own pervsrse brain in the days before
Cleopatra was born.
Many yeals ago, before crowds Of
travellers went to Egypt, there was
land I doubt not there still Isl away up
among the Theban hills, in ravine
once crowded with temples and sculp-
tured monuments, one tomb which the
Arab reSurectioniSts for many years
had used as a convenient place for
breaking up mummies found i'll other
tombs. In the course of years this
tomb, consisting of two rock-hewn
chambers in the side of the mountain,
had become filed to within few feet
of the ceiling with fragments Of mum
mics and masses of mummy cloth. I
have, from time to time, spent hours
in overhauling this accumulation,
chiefly for the purpose of finding speci-
mems of the cloth Of ancient Egypt.
Here I once found an old garment, a
linen shirt, of coarse fabric and much
worn. 1t had belonged to poor man.
How it came to be part Of his burial
dress could only be conjectured. AS I
first saw it in the dim light coming IN
from the top of the doorway, [ was
about to throw it down as worthless,
when my eye fell on something which
seemed to be an interesting relic of
poor mans home and home surround
.ngs. A thin place in the old shirt,
where, indeed, it had once given way
entirely, was carefully darned with
coarse thread. You can read the record
in what way you please. To me. it
made the Egyptian hut Of the
ancient ages to have very close SINH
larity, in some respects, with the mod
ern home of a poor man, in which you
have doubtless seen, as / often have,
the wife mending the ragged clothes of
her husband.
Let me tell of one more little record
which speaks of personal affections. If
have told Of it before it will DO no
harm to repeat the story: [ once
opened an Egyptian coffin which con-
tanned the body Of a woman who bad
lived somewhere about 1900 or 400 B.
C. The body was enveIoped in the
usual way, with linen bands. Wound
around the head, and trailing down on
the chest, was a wreath of leaves and
flowers. 1t was simply made. Spin
ters of palm branch formed contin-
uous cord. The fresh green leaf Of
some Egyptian plant, pointed leaf,
was folded over this cord, point to the
stem, and pinned with a splinter
through the folded leaf. Another lea
was folded and pinned, tapping little
over the first one. Then another and
another; so that the cord, more than
two yards long, was covered with
continuous row of folded leaves, the
points hanging downward. At the
place where each leaf Tapped over the
next one was pinned a flower, making
thus a row Of flowers all along the
wreath. All this was dead now, and
leaves and flowers alike were Of dark
brown color. When I was a boy, in
the up country, have a thousand
times made baskets in which to gather
respberries and blackberres in just this
way, by pinning leaves together with
splinters, stiffening the rim by folding
the points Of the leaves over flexible
stem. In younger days l can remem-
Der making wreaths closely like the
Egyptian wreath, on which dande-
lions were pinned like great buttons.