ground.  Close by is the Golden Gate, in the Temple wall—­a gate that was an elegant piece of sculpture in the time of the Temple, and is even so yet.  From it, in ancient times, the Jewish High Priest turned loose the scapegoat and let him flee to the wilderness and bear away his twelve-month load of the sins of the people.  If they were to turn one loose now, he would not get as far as the Garden of Gethsemane, till these miserable vagabonds here would gobble him up,—­[Favorite pilgrim expression.]—­sins and all.  They wouldn’t care.  Mutton-chops and sin is good enough living for them.  The Moslems watch the Golden Gate with a jealous eye, and an anxious one, for they have an honored tradition that when it falls, Islamism will fall and with it the Ottoman Empire.  It did not grieve me any to notice that the old gate was getting a little shaky.

We are at home again.  We are exhausted.  The sun has roasted us, almost.  We have full comfort in one reflection, however.  Our experiences in Europe have taught us that in time this fatigue will be forgotten; the heat will be forgotten; the thirst, the tiresome volubility of the guide, the persecutions of the beggars—­and then, all that will be left will be pleasant memories of Jerusalem, memories we shall call up with always increasing interest as the years go by, memories which some day will become all beautiful when the last annoyance that incumbers them shall have faded out of our minds never again to return.  School-boy days are no happier than the days of after life, but we look back upon them regretfully because we have forgotten our punishments at school, and how we grieved when our marbles were lost and our kites destroyed—­because we have forgotten all the sorrows and privations of that canonized epoch and remember only its orchard robberies, its wooden sword pageants and its fishing holydays.  We are satisfied.  We can wait.  Our reward will come.  To us, Jerusalem and to-day’s experiences will be an enchanted memory a year hence—­memory which money could not buy from us.

CHAPTER LV.

We cast up the account.  It footed up pretty fairly.  There was nothing more at Jerusalem to be seen, except the traditional houses of Dives and Lazarus of the parable, the Tombs of the Kings, and those of the Judges; the spot where they stoned one of the disciples to death, and beheaded another; the room and the table made celebrated by the Last Supper; the fig-tree that Jesus withered; a number of historical places about Gethsemane and the Mount of Olives, and fifteen or twenty others in different portions of the city itself.