But the people are more interesting than their surroundings or their food. Such gnarled, lined faces, such live eyes, such a patriarchal air. That is the old orthodox generation. The new? Such smartish young semi-Englishmen prospering in trade on an education for which the old generation has starved itself. They can pronounce their w's and their th's. They have an eye on Hampstead or even on the Golden West. The daughters of Israel, powdered and rouged, flit with their dark, and often alluring, eyes from dressmaker's shop to dressmaker's shop, pert and self-assured, well dressed even in their working clothes. This rift between the old and the new generations is the first thing that strikes you. There seem several hundred years between them. What tragedies does it conceal, what human stories? Many an old man nodding over his crowded counter has sent a son to the 'varsity. This is not fiction, and those will not believe it who do not understand that Israel has always given over its heart to its children. If the elements of domestic tragedy are not here, where are they?--for Israel, scattered in its wanderings and oppressed, never lost the Tables of the Law, never forgot the old things, never became quite deaf to the sounds of tents in a wind; but now the old men can say to their children: "My thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways." * * * In a narrow street full of jewellers' shops I saw a bent old patriarch gazing into a window at a nine-branched candlestick; on the opposite side of the road came a young girl in her sand-coloured silk stockings and her tight black coat, swinging a silver bag--very far from the flocks and herds was she! Again I saw a limousine stop at a tiny shop. An old woman ran out, a young man leapt from the car to meet her, and when he kissed her there was joy shining in her eyes. Joseph? The modern Prodigal Son? * * * I caught a penny omnibus back to England with the feeling that I might have spent two hundred pounds and seen less of the East, less of romance, and much less of life. Ships Come Home