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 



