ISKANDER EFFENDI. 41 



sepulchre, with his head thrown back, and his face up- 

 turned to the blue and serene sky that shone over the 

 open dome. As I looked at him, I for the moment for- 

 got the place in which I was, and remembered the scenes 

 of a long-gone and, perhaps I should add, a long-forgot- 

 ten boyhood. 



" I could not, without some awe and reverence, stand 

 on the spot that had received so many bended knees and 

 penitential tears for fifteen centuries ; and, while that feel- 

 ing of awe and reverence was taking possession of me, I 

 caught sight of the face of the kneeling Moor, and the 

 memory of my old home in America came over me with 

 a gush of tenderness, and I felt the tears on my cheek, 

 and wiped them away with the silken sleeve of my caftan. 



"Just at that moment I was aware of another person 

 kneeling close by my side. This was a female, but her 

 face was not visible. She was dressed in the Arab cos- 

 tume, and that of the poorer class. A long blue cotton 

 gown, without belt, fell from her shoulders, and covered 

 her kneeling form ; a head-dress of the same blue stuff 

 which you, perhaps, might call a veil was over her 

 head, and drawn tight around her face. I supposed her 

 to be a Christian woman of the city, or possibly from Jaf- 

 fa or Kafr-el-Eniab, and I would have taken no further 

 notice of her but for the convulsive sobs which shook her 

 frame, and which now became painfully audible. 



"The monks and others around paid no attention to 

 this. I afterward learned to know that such sobs and ev- 

 idences of agony are too common just there to attract 

 the attention of any .frequenter of the place. Daily many 

 hundreds, women mostly, kneel weeping there, as daily 

 for a thousand years pilgrims have knelt and wept. But 

 I was a stranger, and I did not understand that the 



