If it is a little cold and damp, we gather around the camp fire at night, and watch the glowing flames as they crackle and leap into the air, and fling their wild and weird shadows right and left. Ah! what an artist these flames are. With one bold stroke, they draw the outlines of a perfect picture on the black canvas of night. When it is clear and pleasant, as it usually is, we go out in front of the tents, and talk and sing and “consider the heavens.” And often, “as I sit and gaze into the silent sky at night, and see the myriad stars, they seem like camp fires, kindled upon the plains of heaven, to light some wanderer over the wastes and desolations of earth.” It may be wrong, I suppose it is, but somehow I envy the astronomer the pleasure he has in reading the thoughts of God, as written in the language of the stars. I wonder if the stars are inhabited; if so, by men or angels? What becomes of these creatures when a star “falls?” Dr. Broadus would say that this is a good subject for a public debate, as it can never be determined. At ten o’clock, when the others retire to rest, I take up my pen to record what has transpired during the day. Often the swift footed hours pass by before I know it, and I find myself writing on “the other side of midnight.” But I can not help it. In Palestine there is so much to see and think about that one can not afford to sleep more than five hours out of the twenty-four. When at last my eyes grow heavy, I drop my leaden pen and fall asleep; and often I dream about the objects and places I have seen during the day. At six, often at five, o’clock, I am up to hear the morning warbler’s first hymn of praise. I find that morning, rosy-fingered now as in the days of Homer, “has yet a new and distant smile at every rising.” Payne has well said that “no true lover ever yet trysted with Nature in her own woods, and by her own fountains, without seeing some new beauty never seen before.”