From heaths starred with broom; We will gaze from the sand hills At the church on the hillside Singing "There dwells a loved one, She left lonely forever The kings of the sea.' Sonnet on His Blindness BY JOHN MILTON When I consider how my light is spent Ere half my days, in this dark world and wide, And that one talent, which is death to hide, Lodged with me useless, though my soul more bent To serve therewith my Maker, and present My true account, lest He, returning, chide: "Doth God exact day labor, light denied?" I fondly ask; but Patience, to prevent That murmur, soon replies, "God doth not need Bear His mild yoke, they serve Him best. His state Is kingly. Thousands at His bidding speed, And post o'er land and ocean without rest; They also serve who only stand and wait." 5 10 15 20 25 The Valley of Desolation George William Curtis By G. W. CURTIS George William Curtis (18241892): A popular American author and lecturer. Among his works are "Lotus Eating," "The Potiphar Papers," and "Prue and I." He wrote two volumes descriptive of his Eastern travels, "Nile Notes of a Howadji" and "The Howadji in Syria." In the latter work he gives the following account of a journey from Jerusalem to Jericho. You are still likely to fall among thieves, going down to Jericho, and the only safety is in being robbed before you start by purchasing permission 5 of the Arabs. The tribes that haunt the hill country near Jerusalem are not entirely friendly toward each other; but, by retaining a sheik of one of the most powerful among them, you insure tolerable security for the excursion. 10 The Sheik Artoosh, who awaited us at the foot of the Mount of Olives,- for a Bedouin fears to enter the city, whose very walls his stern wilderness chafes, was the ideal Bedouin. He had the arched brow, the large, rich, sad, and tender eyes which are peculiar to the Orient 15 and which painters aim to give to pictures of Christ. It was the most beautiful and luminous eye I have ever seen.. The other features were delicate, but full of force, he olive transparency of his complexion set his -like eyes as evening light the stars. There was xtreme elegance in his face, and in the supple grace - movement, which imagination attributes to nobleand which is of the same quality as the refinement 5 igh-bred Arabian horse. wore, over a white robe, a long mantle of black s hair cloth, and his head was covered with the Bedouin headdress a Mecca handkerchief, or small 1, of cloth of gold, with red borders and a long rich 10 e. This is folded once and laid smoothly upon the . One end falls behind between the shoulders, showg the fringe about the back; and the other is carried ard over the right shoulder, and caught up upon the cheek, so half shielding the face, like the open visor 15 helmet. A double twist of goat's hair cord, binding shawl smoothly, goes around the head, so that the top is covered only with the gold. icture under this that mystic complexion of the desert, p it all in Syrian light, and you have what only the 20 tern sun can show. Mark, too, the sheik's white mare, alued, even there, at purses equal to a thousand dol, and on whom he moves as flexibly as a sunbeam on water. We skirted the Mount of Olives on the way to Beth-25 In a quarter of an hour we were in the hill wil A few olive trees and blossoming vines linger, like fading fancies of greenness and bloom, along the way. A few Arabs pass, with guns and rusty swords. You feel that you are in a wild country, where the individual makes his 5 own laws. Artoosh was accompanied by an older dignitary, a kind of grand vizier, perhaps, or genius of the army. In narrow passes of the road, throats and gorges of the hills, overhung by steep cliffs, the vizier rode forward and sur10 veyed the position, gun in hand and finger on the trigger. Several times he rode back to Artoosh, and, after a low council, they galloped off together, and reappeared upon the hills beyond, riding around corners of the rock and into bushy places where foes might lurk. But it was 15 quite their affair. We were only passengers, and watched their beautiful riding with unmingled delight in its grace, and went musing and singing along in the monotonous noonlight, as in the safe solitude of a city. Sunset showed us, from the brow of the mountains, 20 the plain of the Jordan. Far away, upon the other side, it was walled by the misty range of the Moab. Utter silence brooded over the valley- and a silence as of death. No feeling of life saluted our gaze. From the Alps, you look southward into the humming luxuriance 25 of Italy and northward into the busy toil of Switzerland, and the Apennines are laved with teeming life. But of all valleys that I had ever beheld from mountain tops, this was the saddest. Not even the hope of regeneration into activity dawned in the mind. I was looking down 30 into the valley of the shadow of death. Upon the brow of the mountain where we stood tradition indicates the spot of the Temptation. We descended rapidly into the plain, and the camp was pitched among the green shrubs and trees that overhung a stream. It was Elisha's brook that ran sweet and clear just behind our tent. It was a wild night. The heat was deadly, and the massive mountains rose grimly 5 before us, as if all fair airs were forever walled away. The sky was piled with jagged clouds. Occasional showers pattered upon the tents, and keen lightning angrily flashed, while low, dull thunder was hushed and flattened in the thick air. None of us slept. It was a weird and 10 awful night. A lurid dawn reddened over the valley. The leaden clouds caught the gleam upon their reef-like edges, but folded over again into deeper blackness. They clung affrighted to the mountains, which were only a mysterious 15 darkness in the dawn. A mocking rainbow spanned the blind abysses, and the east was but a vast vapor, suffused with crimson luminousness. The day was fateful and strange, and glared at us vengeful-eyed, like a maniac. We were in a valley a thousand feet below the Mediter-20 ranean. The Dead Sea had infected it with death. This was the spirit and gloom of the sea, without its substance. Thus it would compel the very landscape and atmosphere to its appalling desolation, before it overflowed it with its water. 25 Through the vague apprehension of that supernatural morning, I heard the gurgling song of the little brook of Elisha, flowing clear and smooth out of the dark mountain region, and threading that enchanted silence with pleasant sound. I ran to it, and leaped in and drank of the water. 30 But the red-eyed morning scorned me as I lay in that |