Thus it came about that there was to be seen the curious contrast of staring Yankee frame houses and a regulation "meeting-house" peeping over the orange-groves of Jaffa. Yankee-built farm-wagons passed along the dusty cactus-hedged lanes in company with panniered donkeys and laden camels, while Yankee forms and voices were daily seen and heard in the filthy narrow streets of the old town itself. I wonder how much these simple, homely people knew of Roman assaults and massacres or of Napoleon's butcheries enacted on the very ground where their hearthstones were laid? Not much, I fancy. And it was hard to get them to talk freely or connectedly on any subject. In fact, their experience had not been happy; and by this time the Plain of Sharon was dust and ashes to them, and "their dolls were stuffed with sawdust." Some of the younger members of the community did confess to a passing knowledge of Jonah and the whale, and of the ships which brought the cedar of Lebanon to the port where their lot was cast; but they seemed as much at sea as Jonah was when the Crusades were mentioned. At any rate, here was this American-born community ploughing this historic soil, most of the members of which had never been fifty miles from home before they took this great blind leap into the dark. I never knew just how much Adams believed in himself and his mission. On a previous visit, while all was still _couleur de rose_ with the colony, I had asked him how he proposed to keep order among his flock and to settle the disputes and difficulties which must inevitably arise. "Why, sir," he answered, "we have no disputes; but should any arise, I, with the elders, will sit and judge them in the gate, just as in Bible times--just as was done right here twenty-five centuries ago."