Do you believe it? Does it seem at all real or possible to you? Look up at this tall pillar above us. See how the wild marjoram has thrust its roots between the joints and hangs like "the hyssop that springeth out of the wall." See how the weather has worn deep holes and crevices in the topmost drum, and how the sparrows have made their nests there. Lean your back against the pillar; feel it vibrate like "a reed shaken with the wind"; watch that huge capital of acanthus leaves swaying slowly to and fro and trembling upon its stalk "as a flower of the field." * * * * * All the afternoon and all the next morning we wander through the ruins, taking photographs, deciphering inscriptions, discovering new points of view to survey the city. We sit on the arch of the old Roman bridge which spans the stream, and look down into the valley filled with gardens and orchards; tall poplars shiver in the breeze; peaches, plums, and cherries are in bloom; almonds clad in pale-green foliage; figs putting forth their verdant shoots; pomegranates covered with ruddy young leaves. We go up to see the beautiful spring which bursts from the hillside above the town and supplies it with water. Then we go back again to roam aimlessly and dreamily, like folk bewitched, among the tumbled heaps of hewn stones, the broken capitals, and the tall, rosy columns, soaked with sunbeams. The Arabs of Jerash have a bad reputation as robbers and extortionists; and in truth they are rather a dangerous-looking lot of fellows, with bold, handsome brown faces and inscrutable dark eyes. But although we have paid no tribute to them, they do not molest us. They seem to regard us with a contemptuous pity, as harmless idiots who loaf among the fallen stones and do not even attempt to make excavations. Our camp is in the inclosure of the North Theatre, a smaller building than that which stands beside the South Gate, but large enough to hold an audience of two or three thousand. The semicircle of seats is still unbroken; the arrangements of the stage, the stairways, the entries of the building can all be easily traced. There were gay times in the city when these two theatres were filled with people. What comedies of Plautus or Terence or Aristophanes or Menander; what tragedies of Seneca, or of the seven dramatists of Alexandria who were called the "Pleias," were presented here? Look up along those lofty tiers of seats in the pale, clear starlight. Can you see no shadowy figures sitting there, hear no light whisper of ghostly laughter, no thin ripple of clapping hands? What flash of wit amuses them, what nobly tragic word or action stirs them to applause? What problem of their own life, what reflection of their own heart, does the stage reveal to them? We shall never know. The play at Gerasa is ended. _A PSALM AMONG THE RUINS_ _The lizard rested on the rock while I sat among the ruins; And the pride of man was like a vision of the night._