THE STORIES OF NOTED PAINTINGS/ 



REBECCA AT THE WELL. 



She is admiring the presents that have been given to her by 

 Eliezer. Original, supposed to be by TINTORETTO (1512-1594), 

 is in the Gallery at Parma. Abraham, when quite a young man, 

 emigrated to the west, and became very rich. But he was among 

 strangers and did not desire his boy Isaac, who had now come to 

 the marriageable age of forty, to take him a wife not of his kin- 

 dred ; so he loaded up ten of his camels with valuable presents, 

 and told his chief steward to go down into Mesopotamia among 

 his relatives, and look up a wife for the lad. After a journey of 

 about a thousand miles the old servant arrived near his destination 

 and stopped by the well where the family of Nahor, who was 

 Abraham's brother, were wont to go for water ; and he said to 

 himself, the first damsel that comes and who, when I ask to 

 drink, shall offer to draw also for the camels, shall be the one 

 whom the Lord has chosen ; and while he was yet speaking, 

 there came out a damsel very fair to look upon, and went down 

 to the well and filled her pitcher. Then he ran to her and asked 

 her for some water to drink, and she made haste to give him to 

 drink and also to draw for the camels. And it came to pass as 

 the camels had done drinking that the man took a golden earring, 

 of half a shekel weight (a shekel is about half an ounce), and 

 two bracelets for her arms, of ten shekels weight of gold ; and 

 he said " Whose daughter art thou ? Tell me I pray thee ;" and 

 she said, " the daughter of Bethuel, Nahor's son, whom Milcah 

 bare unto him ;" and he put the earrings upon her face and the 

 bracelets upon her arms. Is there need to say, after this, that 

 when those camels returned to the land of Canaan, they carried 

 back the fair Rebekah and her damsels ? 



Written in 1875 for the Catalogue of Powers Art Gallery, Rochester, N. Y. 



