We crowded up and entangled the praying person, who became aware of our presence and turned up his face helplessly. Then he pressed it again to the floor, and tried to go on with his murmurings. It was no use. Habib jostled him, waved his pointing stick over his head, tapped the ornamentation within an inch of his nose. We were told to step up and examine the work closely--to touch it, smell of it. Clearly Habib regarded that devotee no more than if he had been a mile removed instead of being actually against us. The poor pious pilgrim stole another look at us, this way and that, slipped a notch in his prayers, gathered himself and tried again, let go a whole distich, quavered in his attempt to make himself heard, cast another appealing glance at the _Kurfürsters_, broke through, and fled. This is not an exaggeration, but an actual happening. In America there would have been trouble. "He is nothing," said Habib, when I seemed disturbed. "He is only an Arab." Still, he was praying to Habib's God. Many persons do not realize, I believe, that Christianity and Mohammedanism differ mainly in their Messiah. The Jew furnished the Moslem as well as the Christian with a God, patriarchs, and prophets--the Old Testament being common to all. The Moslem goes further than the Jew, for he accepts parts of the New Testament. He recognizes John the Baptist as a holy messenger, even claiming to have his head in this very church, in a shrine which we saw, though I could see that Habib thought the relic apocryphal. Furthermore, the Moslem accepts Christ! To him, Christ is only a lesser prophet than Mohammed, but still a great being--an emissary of God--and on this same mosque is the Minaret of Jesus, where, one day, as they believe, he will stand to judge the world. On the other hand, the average Christian believes that Mohammed was merely a fraud, and it is this difference of opinion that has reddened the East with blood. I am moved to set down this paragraph of rather general information for the reason that it contains some things which I suppose others to be as ignorant of as I was--things which seem to me interesting. We did see one old book, by-the-way--fifteen hundred years old, Habib said, and a member of our party asked if it was printed on a press; though that is nothing--I have done worse myself. Then we ascended the Minaret of the Bride for the view. We climbed and climbed, and got hot, and shaky in the knees, but the view repaid us. There was Damascus spread out in its beauty; its marble courts, its domes and minarets and painted houses--a magic city in the midst of a garden of bloom. Certainly this is fairyland--a mirage whose fragile fabric may vanish in a breath. Oh, our time is all too short! One must have long and long to look upon the East--it has taken so long to build!