Jericho has always had an ill name. Weak walls, weak hearts, weak morals were its early marks. Sweltering on the rich plain of the lower Jordan, eight hundred feet below the sea, at the entrance of the two chief passes into the Judean highlands, it was too indolent or cowardly to maintain its own importance. Stanley called it "the key of Palestine"; but it was only a latch which any bold invader could lift. The people of Jericho were famous for light fingers and lively feet, great robbers and runners-away. Joshua blotted the city out with a curse; five centuries later Hiel the Bethelite rebuilt it with the bloody sacrifice of his two sons. Antony gave it to Cleopatra, and Herod bought it from her for a winter palace, where he died. Nothing fine or brave, so far as I can remember, is written of any of its inhabitants, except the good deed of Rahab, a harlot, and the honest conduct of Zacchaeus, a publican. To this day, at the _tables d'hote_ of Jerusalem the name of Jericho stirs up a little whirlwind of bad stories and warnings. Last night we were dining with friends at one of the hotels, and the usual topic came up for discussion. Imagine what followed. "That Jericho road is positively frightful," says a British female tourist in lace cap, lilac ribbons and a maroon poplin dress, "the heat is most extr'ordinary!" "No food fit to eat at the hotel," grumbles her husband, a rosy, bald-headed man in plaid knickerbockers, "no bottled beer; beastly little hole!" "A voyage of the most fatiguing, of the most perilous, I assure you," says a little Frenchman with a forked beard. "But I rejoice myself of the adventure, of the romance accomplished." "I want to know," piped a lady in a green shirt-waist from Andover, Mass., "is there really and truly any danger?" "I guess not for us," answers the dominating voice of the conductor of her party. "There's always a bunch of robbers on that road, but I have hired the biggest man of the bunch to take care of us. Just wait till you see that dandy Sheikh in his best clothes; he looks like a museum of old weapons." "Have you heard," interposed a lady-like clergyman on the other side of the table, with gold-rimmed spectacles gleaming above his high, black waistcoat, "what happened on the Jericho road, week before last? An English gentleman, of very good family, imprudently taking a short cut, became separated from his companions. The Bedouins fell upon him, beat him quite painfully, deprived him of his watch and several necessary garments, and left him prostrate upon the earth, in an embarrassingly denuded condition. Just fancy! Was it not perfectly shocking?" (The clergyman's voice was full of delicious horror.) "But, after all," he resumed with a beaming smile, "it was most scriptural, you know, quite like a Providential confirmation of Holy Writ!" "Most unpleasant for the Englishman," growls the man in knickerbockers. "But what can you expect under this rotten Turkish government?"