Around the World with Josiah Allen's WifeHolley, Marietta
General
Around the World with Josiah Allen's Wife
Holley, Marietta
Women travelers -- Fiction
Oh, sacred place! to be thus honored. What emotions I felt as my own
feet trod these roads, my own eyes looked on these sacred places.
The next morning after our arrival we went up to the Mount of Olives,
and from a tower two hundred feet high looked down on Jerusalem. The
Mount of Olives is a long, low ridge on the east of the city. The
Garden of Gethsemane is down on the foot of Olivet near the brook
Kedron. Here eight great olive trees much larger than the rest form a
sacred grove from whose melancholy shadows might well come that
agonizing cry to his disciples for human sympathy and love:
"Could ye not watch with me one hour?"
Here did Judas come over the brook Kedron with the hungry, cruel mob
and betray Him with a kiss. It wuz in this place that our Lord give
that glorious promise that lightens life and death:
"After I be risen I will go before you."
Every leaf of the old olive trees seemed trembling and full of
memories of that hour. To the west was the valley of Jehosiphet,
beyend is the city of the King. Back of you is Bethany, the home of
the friends of Jesus where he tasted sometimes the human sweets of
friendship, in the home of Lazarus and his sisters, Mary and Martha. A
beautiful soul Mary wuz, and Martha, poor creeter! I've always been
sorry for her, workin' away doin' the housework when she would much
rather, no doubt, set and listen as Mary did, but somebody had to be
cookin'. So she jest drouged round the house.
You can see the Dead Sea and the river Jordan, where our Lord wuz
baptized and the Dove descended out of the gardens of heaven and lit
on him, whilst the voice of the father God spoke, "This is my beloved
Son in whom I am well pleased."
Not far away from there is Jericho. On the southwest rises the Hill of
Zion, one of the four hills on which Jerusalem stands. As I looked on
it I spoke to my pardner almost onbeknown to me, "Oh, Josiah! how
many times we've sung together:
'The Hill of Zion yields a thousand sacred sweets,
Before we reach the heavenly fields or walk the golden streets.'
"But," sez I, "did you ever expect to set your mortal eyes on't?" He
wuz affected, I could see he wuz, though he tried to conceal it by
nibblin' on some figs he had bought that mornin'.
Miss Meechim wuz all carried away with the seen as the guide pinted
out the different places. Robert Strong and Dorothy didn't seem to
want to talk much, but their faces wuz writ over with characters of
rapt and reverential emotion.
Arvilly for once seemed to forgit her canvassin' and her keen bright
eyes wuz softened into deep thought and feeling. Tommy, who had heard
us talkin' about Herod walling in that part of the city, wonnered how
any man could be so wicked as the cruel king who killed all the little
children, and he wonnered if there ever wuz another king in the hull
world so wicked.
And my Josiah soothed his childish feelings by assuring him that all
such wicked rulers wuz dead and buried ages ago.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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