It may be for this reason that on both occasions of our visit to the Wailing Place there were but few present and they were old men, old women, and some very young children. Young manhood was not there, it was hard at work. Many of the older boys and girls were in school. The leader of the group chanting the Lamentations that morning was an old white-haired patriarch with eyes of fire. He was the only one of the group that did not interrupt his wailing to look at us. One tall, strong, impressive specimen of womanhood moved along the line to quiet some women whose wailing had become a piercing shriek or to straighten out a child who irreverently chased a playmate up and down the path. The guide said that her name was Miriam and that she had a son with much money in England. Erect and fine, forceful and devout, she reminded us of that other Miriam who led her people to victory. Here and there one saw women’s strong faces stained with tears and marked with suffering. They leaned against the foundation stones of the old Temple area in an abandonment of emotion and sorrow. Near the end of the line was a very old man leaning tremblingly upon his staff. Jamil said that he was repeating one phrase over and over. “O God, the heathen are come into thine inheritance!” His voice was bitter and full of anguish. A great wave of pity swept over us for these and all they have suffered, and yet survived. Against those massive walls of the past, Babylonian, Assyrian, and Egyptian had hurled their hosts and battered them to earth. They had risen again only to meet the Roman and the Saracen, the brave Crusader and the unspeakable Turk until in very truth they lay “in heaps.” Piled one above another, the various cities lie waiting until the hammer and spade of the excavator shall open up all their secrets for us. Buried deep down in the earth is that early city of the Jebusites, over it the glorious city of Solomon, the city heroically brought again into being by Nehemiah, the city of Herod which Titus hammered into ruins and Hadrian rebuilt, above it the city of the Saracens built after their wave of conquest, the city of the Crusaders, and now the city of the Turks, standing boldly above the ruins of the long past. It stands, the protected property of a new conqueror who loves it, whose army chose the hardest road to victory to save it from the marks of war, whose people have come into it with knowledge that they may overcome its ignorance, a conqueror who bears no malice, who is tolerant of the Jew and the Mohammedan though he worships at the Cross which they hate. As if reading our thoughts, the guide said quietly, “Some day it will be only the wall for the wailing that we shall see. There will be no more need for wailing, and the children will forget. So the young prophets among the Jews say in the markets. We shall see.”