It all seemed very real as we sat looking down upon the City. So real that we dreaded to read of the days before Him, of the hard way that the rulers of the synagogue, because of their jealous conservatism, the desire to make their own places secure, the fear lest the people should follow Him as prophet and leave them as priests, had already in their hearts condemned Him to go. So we closed the Book. Leaving the carriage again at the Damascus Gate we wandered back past the convents, through Christian Street. The city was becoming a very live thing to us. The children smiled at us as we passed through the narrow arcade to our hotel. Oranges and dainty soft spring flowers from the valley were in our room. “I have lived thousands of years today,” said my friend. “I have been fighting all the battles from the days of King David to the days of King George and I am weary.” I smiled in sympathy, for one does not live in days or years in Palestine but in centuries. The march of events over broken cobblestones, past walls crumbling with age, catches one in its onward sweep and leaves him breathless as he hurries on from what has been to what is, and from what is to what is to be. We took up our American mail. The steady tread of history’s myriad marchers halted for a moment. The clippings from the papers told us of the wedding of a girl whom we love. Across the top of the clipping was written in the girl’s own hand, “Unspeakable happiness. The greatest day of my life!” Names of guests, the most minute details as to flowers and gowns followed. In another clipping we read of the divorce of a girl we had known in school. She had been married twenty years. I remembered the account of her wedding. In the hall we heard laughter. Marie was listening to the extravagant compliments of Alphonse. A letter from a boy of eleven asked for stamps from Egypt and Palestine. “I want them more than anything in the world,” he wrote. The next letter brought a clipping making passing reference in six short lines to a critical misunderstanding in the Far East. While we were reading it, a woman came to tell us a story of great sorrow and desperate need. The wild storm of human wrath and revenge that swept over Russia had left her, who had never known anything but love, happiness and plenty, stranded, utterly alone, with not even a ruble of her vast estates. It is a confusing world. Great events and small jostle each other along its highways. Wrapped securely about with affairs of self, old and young fail to see the momentous hours of human destiny as they pass—pass so swiftly, to leave them on some future day dumb with surprise, aghast at the significance of the things which, having eyes, they saw not and, having ears, they heard not. It is a most confusing and perplexing world, but alas for him who does not love it, pity for him who does not believe in it, shame upon him who will not share the task of saving it. Tomorrow would be Sunday and we would go to the Garden.