immense columns of marble and granite. As I surveyed from this eminence the ruins of Ashkelon and the beautiful gardens that surrounded them, I really begrudged these filthy, degraded Arabs the possession of so lovely a spot. They are not worthy to have our Holy Land under their control.

The ground in places is covered with vegetables of very many species. Pieces of white marble are seen in every direction. But the town is composed of only about fifteen mud huts, with squalid, wretched-looking people to inhabit them. Many kinds of fruit are raised around Ashkelon. I observed two large upright granite columns, and many others prostrate. Some have the ends sticking out of the sand, their bases buried far below. At a hasty view I should say the ruins of Ashkelon cover a mile square or more.

I am now at Gaza in the Greek Convent. When I came into the place, I went to the Khan. Then I looked around for some sun-burnt bricks, which was the errand that brought me here, and easily found them. The people, supposing I wanted a large quantity, said they were worth a napoleon ($4) the hundred. So I left them at once, and in a few minutes met a man in the street who, as soon as he found I spoke Arabic, informed me that the Greek priest of this convent had learned that an American was in town and wanted to see me. I followed him, therefore, to the convent, and here I am. The priest received me politely, gave me a cup of coffee according to universal custom, and appointed me a room for sleeping. I went and fed my horse at the Khan and returned here with my things.

On the way I saw a man fall down and break a jar of olive oil, a serious loss to him. He instantly lay down and drank as much of it as he could hold, lapping it up from the dirt into which it was mingling, seeming to care nothing for the filth that he was swallowing. This is a common illustration of the habits of these people.

Gaza is not so "compact together" as Jerusalem or even Joppa, but covers much more ground than those two cities united. The streets, as usual, are narrow, and, of course, indomitably dirty.

In

When I found the Greek priest was not offering me anything to eat I went out again and bought me some bread and cheese. Most of the dwelling houses and shops have fragments of elegantly-carved marble built into their water, presenting a strange contrast. purchasing my sun-dried bricks, I find that the Gaza currency differs materially from that of Joppa. The bishlick which is five and a half piastres with us (22 cents) is eight piastres here (32 cents). But in almost every town and hamlet the currency is differently reckoned. The napoleon here is 144 piastres. A piece of money worth six and a half in Joppa is worth eleven here, etc.

I had a good deal of trouble to hire two camels to take my bricks and a bag of sand to Joppa. First they wanted 20 bishlicks ($6.40) for each camel, but I got the two for ten. A person must know how to manage with these people, or he will fail in all respects. It requires very great patience and you must never be in a hurry. "Your moderation must be known of all men," as the Apostle justly advises.

A CITY IN RUINS.

BY THE EDITOR.

Many years ago a kind-hearted gentleman of our city built a few houses for the martins, to the gable end of his dwelling. The following spring a number of the birds accepted the generous invitation, and moved into their new houses. The next year the martins demanded more house room, and new dwellings were erected. Thus the city of the martins was annually enlarged, until nearly the whole gable end of the large house was covered with their habitations.

The martins increased and multiplied rapidly, and soon became a strong and numerous people. They were, if not always, a quiet, a peaceable neighborly folk. Many a time I watched them, sitting at their front door, warbling their merry songs, as their human neighbors thronged the busy streets around them. So wisely they seemed to look down from their lofty abode upon the din and drive, the rumbling drays and wagons in the street. Without consulting an almanac, they knew the time of their going and coming. Usually they arrived on the third of April. A day or two before, a few martins could be seen, going from one box to the other, to see if their houses were in a habitable condition. A sort of visiting committee they were, which reported to the tribe, and brought them to town the following day. Then began a general house-cleaning among the martins, which took to their work very good-naturedly, merrily singing as they swept and garnished their homes.

In the fall of the year they always left on the same week, usually on the same day. By some secret agreement they met other tribes at a specified place, where they formed a vast caravan, which gloriously careered away through the air to their undiscovered wintry home.

The day before their departure was always an exciting time in

the martin city. From early morning a boisterous discussion was had, during which, very often, hundreds "had the floor" at the same time, in violation of all parliamentary decorum. Around their house-doors, perched on neighboring house-tops and fluttering through the air, they kept up their boisterous debate, while the more domestic martins were busy setting their houses in order for their departure. Perhaps some discussed routes of travel, others may have had some family feuds to adjust. Some in the wildest excitement flew back and forth, and kept bobbing into their door, most likely trying to tear themselves away from the endearments of a pleasant home. For here children were born to them, and here they grew up from big-mouthed, hungry bird-babies, to glossyfeathered, full-fledged martins. A bird, too, forms home attachments, and feels a pang when it comes to the severing of home ties. It must have been this, that made these martins act so strangely on their autumnal departure. Again and again would some of them leave their box, and hasten away through the air, then rush back again, to sweet, sweet home. They went on as if their wings, if not their hearts, might break.

The past spring they came as usual, on April 3d. It was a cold, "peevish April" day. The advance guard came the day before to see whether their houses were in readiness for them. It was the general moving week in our city. Alas! the poor martins found their homes desolate. All save a few were in ruins. Their usual calculations had misled them. All along their route they found pleasant weather. In Pennsylvania they found "winter lingering in the lap of spring." Moving was bad enough even where people had houses to move into; but for the poor martins after their long and weary journey, to be thus left out in the cold, was a cruelty which neither man, bird nor beast should be subjected to. The next day they arrived in broken bands, and from neighboring house-tops took a last sorrowful look at their ruined homes. Whither they have gone no one knows, save the small band of martins whose homes were spared. The poor birds have no means of redress, and speaking in a foreign tongue, there is not one in our community sufficiently learned to understand their statement of the case. In the name of these unfortunate martins I protest against the wrong inflicted upon them.

I do this, firstly, in the name of our common law. These dwellings were their own property by the right of possession, having occupied them for more than twenty-one years, a term of years necessary to give them a legal right and title to them.

Secondly, I protest in the name of our common humanity. It is inhuman, and, indeed, illegal, too, without previous quit notice, to turn a family out of house and home. Had their homes been

destroyed last summer, when the pleasant weather would have allowed them to seek other quarters, the case would have been less aggravated. The method of their ejectment was in a cruel form.

The reasons for it were not sufficient. They were good neighbors, and gave many a free concert to the passing public; concerts more respectable and meritorious than some which charge a large admission fee. They had become a historical fixture in our city, an ornament to their neighborhood; more of an ornament than some people whose homes were spared; the principal charge against them was a want of cleanliness around their premises. The charge is not without foundation. But, why pry so closely into the domestic arrangements of our neighbors? It is the old trouble, produced by our eagerness to sweep before other people's doors, instead of before our own. Many a home has lost its peace by the efforts of other people to do its sweeping. And many an intruding neighbor has been brought to grief by not using his broom sufficiently before his own door.

A CHAPTER FROM AN UNFINISHED BOOK.

BY THE AUTHOR OF "THE YOUNG PARSON."

Our little rural-gothic chapel, so beautifully situated by the side of the mountain, had not been built as it was, and where it was, without something like a protest. Old John Double wanted it built "in town," by which he meant a point along the mud road three miles away, where he owned a third-class country tavern, a yellow weather-boarded dwelling, and a cooper shop, or, as he termed it, a "bar'l fact'ry." This place he had dignified with the name of Double-ania, and seemed to labor under the impression, that, at no distant day, it would rival some of the sea-board and great lake cities in size and importance.

Some time previously, he had visited a married daughter in Kansas, when laying out cities was all the rage, and he had brought home with him a full determination to transfer the Western mania to the East. So he staked off his fifty acres into town lots, asked the courts to grant a charter erecting the place into a municipality, petitioned the Postmaster General not only to declare the mud road a post route, but also to establish an office at Double-ania, and give the son-in-law of the proprietor, who kept the tavern, charge of the mail bags.

And as he had seen Western speculators in real estate and Chris

tianity display the policy of erecting churches, he thought he would adopt the same pious ruse here. Accordingly, he marked off a plot of ground seventy feet long by fifty wide, which he offered to sell upon certain conditions, for the ruinously low price of five hundred dollars a little more, by the way, than one-fourth of what he had paid for his whole briar farm. The conditions were, that the purchasers were to build thereon a two-story brick building, the upper part was to be for "religious meetins," and the basement of which was to be rented to the directors of the county school, who were to pay to him a ground-rent of sixty dollars a year. But, alas!

"The best-laid schemes o' mice and men
Gang aft a-gley."

No one saw things as Mr. Double did. The court thought, that no one was interested in "the town," except the sole proprietor, and that as he could already have, hold, sue and be sued, plead and be impleaded, there was no use to incorporate him. The letter to the Post-office Department remained unnoticed. The commissioners of public instruction saw no necessity for entering into a contract for a school-house, when there were no children to be accommodated; and Mr. Waldo, the young missionary, besides other objections that presented themselves in the way of the locality and style of the proposed church, to say nothing of the terms, was decidedly opposed to having the gates of Zion up stairs.

Mr. Double professed to be wonderfully aggrieved that his "lib'ral propersitions," as he called them, were treated with such marked indifference by those to whom they were made, and resolved to "interview" the youthful missionary with the hope of converting him to his plans, or rather of making a tool out of him to accomplish his purposes, although the little stone chapel up at the mountain was already in the process of erection.

And so Mr. Double "writ" Rev. Mr. Waldo "an episel" upon a half-sheet of fool-cap paper. The letter was characterized by flaming penmanship and bad grammar, and begged that Mr. Waldo would do Mr. Double the honor to "eat supper" with him the next day-Mr. Double had some "official bisness with his Raver

ence.'

The young missionary saw at once, that there was a scheme in the letter. There was to be an evident attempt to reach the seat of his convictions through his stomach, but what the "official bisness" was, he could not divine. He wrote a note in reply, declining the invitation to "eat supper," on the high moral ground, that it was against the spirit of his mission to go out to a feast, but saying that, as there was some intimation that there would be a call for some exercise of his ministerial functions, he would be at Mr. Double's house the next day at 3 o'clock precisely.