All Abroad for Jerusalem

       Glad that we came now instead of some years hence, when much of the religious romance will have been banished forever. A banker of Joppa, assisted by others, is about to begin to build a railroad from Joppa to Jerusalem. When this railroad is done, the steam whistle will be heard at Joppa, and the conductor's cry, "All aboard for Jerusalem!" Then branch roads will be built and the cry will be "Twenty minutes for dinner at Nazareth," "Change cars for Damascus," "All out for the Grand Trunk to Nineveh," and camel and mule and dragoman will go their way, and lightning wheel will be substituted for hoof and diligence!

       Now it is Monday morning, and we are on the way to Jerusalem. Along the route I am amazed beyond expression at the boldness and jaggedness of the scenery of the Holy Land. I expected to see it rough, but not Alpinian and Sierra Nevadian in grandeur. The hills are amphitheatres, piled-up galleries of gray rock, with intervals of soil brown and maroon, until the eye and head and heart surrender, and the lips that for a long time were exclamatory become speechless.

       Before sundown we will see Jerusalem. I never had such high expectations of seeing any place as of seeing the Holy City. I found myself singing "Jerusalem, my happy home," while dressing myself this morning. I think my feelings may be slightly akin to that of the Christian just about to enter the Heavenly Jerusalem. My ideas regarding the earthly Jerusalem are bewildering. Have I not seen pictures of it? Oh yes, but they have only increased the bewilderment. They were taken from a variety of standpoints. If twenty artists attempt to picture Brooklyn or New York, they will plant their cameras at different places and take as many different pictures. I must see the city with my own eyes. I must walk around about it, and "tell the towers thereof."

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