Around the World with Josiah Allen's WifeHolley, Marietta
General
Around the World with Josiah Allen's Wife
Holley, Marietta
Women travelers -- Fiction
Tommy wanted to know what that meant, and Robert told him that "jot"
wuz the smallest letter in the Hebrew alphabet, and "tittle" meant the
little horn-shaped mark over some of the letters.
And I sez: "I never knew what that meant before." But Miss Meechim
said she did--she always duz know everything from the beginning,
specially after she's hearn some one explain it. But to resoom: We
went to the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, where many different
religious sects come to worship. The place where many think the body
of our Lord wuz lain when he wuz taken down from the cross is covered
with a slab worn down by the worshippers, and in the little chapel
round it forty-three lamps are kep' burning night and day.
But I felt more inclined to think that the place where the body of our
Lord wuz lain wuz outside the city where the rocky hill forms a
strange resemblance to a human skull, answering to the Bible
description. Near there a tomb, long buried, has been found lately
that corresponds with the Bible record, which sez: "Now in the garden
was a new tomb wherin no man had been lain." There wuz places in this
tomb for three bodies, but only one had been finished, and scientists
say that no body has ever crumbled into the dust that covers this
tomb. Ruins show that ages back an arched temple once covered this
spot. But what matters the very spot where his body lay, or from where
he ascended into the heavens. Mebby it can't be told for certain after
all these years; but we know that his weary feet trod these dusty
roads. And as we travelled to Bethlehem and Bethany and Nazareth, his
presence seemed to go before us.
It wuz a lovely morning when we left Jerusalem by the Jaffa gate and
went down acrost the valley of Hinnom, up acrost the hill of Evil
Council, and acrost the broad plain where David fought many a battle
and Solomon went about in all his glory.
We stopped a few minutes at the convent of Mar Elias to see the fine
view. From here you can see both places where the Saviour wuz born and
where he died. It is a very sightly spot, and I hearn Josiah tell
Tommy:
"This is a beautiful place, Tommy; it wuz named after Miss Elias; her
children built it to honor their Mar; and it ort to make you think,
Tommy, that you must always mind your Mar."
"Mar?" sez Tommy inquirin'ly, "Do you mean my mamma or my grandma?"
I wuz glad the rest of the party wuz some distance away and didn't
hear him. Josiah always jest crowds his explanations, full and runnin'
over with morals, but he gits things wrong. I hated to hurt his
feelin's, but I had to tell Tommy this wuz named, I spozed, from the
prophet Elijah, who wuz, they say, helped by angels on this very spot
as he flowed away from Jezabel; they gin him water and food, such good
food that after eating it he could travel forty days and forty nights
without eating agin.
Jezabel wuzn't a likely woman at all; I wouldn't been willin' to
neighbor with her.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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