THERE is no warm nor bright color here; all is grim and gray except the blue tiles in the Mosque of Omar. The shadow of the Crucifixion rests on the place forever; a strange stillness reigns, and laughter would seem like laughter beside an open grave. Women, veiled in white, glide thru the dark, crooked alleys like tenants of a city of specters, and even the children, subdued by the overwhelming gloom, are silent beyond the wont of Orientals. Ruins, ruins at every hand! Well has the prophecy been fulfilled, “Jerusalem shall become heaps.” The very stones of the streets are dismal, worn away with burdens borne since they rang with the tramp of legions and glittered with the brassy armor of the masters of the earth. Men may come and men may go, but never since the Omnipotent Hand stretched the north over the empty space and hung the world upon nothing has there been a race like the race descended from that wolf brood on the Tiber. Outside the walls—saddest sight where all is sadness—are ancient Jews come merely to die in the land of their love. A few in whom there is much guile, offer for sale talismans, gems of magic, rings of occult power. The greater number sit in the sun, motionless as statues, without the dignity that should accompany age, in poverty past telling, dreaming away the day and night, apparently without hope, except to have a little holy dust laid on their eyelids when they shall have closed them to sleep with patriarchs and seers in the valley of Jehoshaphat.—Ladies’ Home Journal.