for no further comment. But there is
another story to consider; my critics accused me of ignoring the three
R's of Hebrew love--Rachel, Rebekah, and Ruth. "The courtship of Ruth
and Boaz is a bold and pretty love-story." Bold and pretty, no doubt;
but let us see if it is a love-story. The following omits no essential
point.

HOW RUTH COURTED BOAZ

It came to pass during a famine that a certain man went to sojourn in
the country of Moab with his wife, whose name was Naomi, and two sons.
The husband died there and the two sons also, having married, died
after ten years, leaving Naomi a widow with two widowed
daughters-in-law, whose names were Orpah and Ruth. She decided to
return to the country whence she had come, but advised the younger
widows to remain and go back to the families of their mothers. I am
too old, she said, to bear again husbands for you, and even if I could
do so, would you therefore tarry till they were grown? Orpah thereupon
kissed her mother-in-law and went back to her people; but Ruth clave
unto her and said "Whither thou goest, I will go; and where thou
lodgest, I will lodge.... Where thou diest, will I die." So the two
went until they came to Bethlehem, in which place Naomi had a kinsman
of her husband, a mighty man of wealth, whose name was Boaz. They
arrived in the beginning of the barley harvest, and Ruth went and
gleaned in the field after the reapers. Her hap was to light on the
portion of the field belonging to Boaz. When he saw her he asked the
reapers "Whose damsel is this?" And they told him. Then Boaz spoke to
Ruth and told her to glean in his field and abide with his maidens,
and when athirst drink of that which the young men had drawn; and he
told the young men not to touch her. At meal-time he gave her bread to
eat and vinegar to dip it in, and he told his young men to let her
glean even among the sheaves and also to pull out some for her from
the bundles, and leave it, and let her glean and rebuke her not. And
he did all this because, as he said to her,

"It hath been shewed me, all that them hast done to thy
mother-in-law since the death of thine husband: and how thou
hast left thy father and mother, and the land of thy
nativity, and art come unto a people which thou knewest not
heretofore."

So Ruth gleaned in the field until even; then she beat out what she
had gleaned and took it to Naomi and told her all that had happened.
And Naomi said unto her