Daisy In The Field

"Studying it all, Daisy?"

"Papa, I am never tired of studying."

"This is a wonderful place."

"Papa, you know little about it yet. Old Jericho was up

there."

"You speak as if I had gone to school in 'old Jericho,' " said

my father, laughing. "I have the vaguest idea, Daisy, that

such a city existed. That is all."

"Sit down, papa, while breakfast is getting ready, and let me

mend your knowledge."

So we read the story there, on the stone by the spring. Mr.

Dinwiddie joined us; and it was presently decided that we

should spend the morning in examining the ground in our

neighbourhood and the old sites of what had passed away. So

after breakfast we sat out upon a walk over the territory of

old Jericho.

"But it is strange," said papa, "if the city was here, that

there are no architectural remains to testify as much."

"We rarely find them, sir, but in connection with Roman or

Saracenic work. Shapeless mounds, and broken pottery, as you

have it here, are all that generally mark our Palestine

ruins."

"But Herod?" said papa. "He was a builder."

"Herod's Jericho was a mile and a half away, to the east. And

moreover, if anything had been remaining here that could be

made of use, the Saracens or Crusaders would have pulled it to

pieces to help make their sugar mills up yonder, or their

aqueducts."

"There is no sugar cane here now?"

"Not a trace of it. Nor a palm tree; though Jericho was a city

of palms; nor a root of the balsam, though great gain was

derived to Judea in ancient times from the balsam gardens

here."

We mounted our horses and rode down to the site of Herod's

Jericho, on the banks of the little stream that issues from

the gorge of the Wady Kelt. How lovely, and how desolate, it

was. The stream overhung with trees and bordered with

oleanders and shrubs of which I have forgotten the names, and

crossed by old arches still; and around, the desolate tokens

of what once was. Foundation lines, and ruined aqueducts. Mr.

Dinwiddie made us remark the pavement of the road leading up

to the Kelt, the old road to Jerusalem, the road by which

Jesus went when the blind men called him, and over which,

somewhere on its way, stretched the sycamore tree into which

Zaccheus climbed. Ah how barren and empty the way looked now!

- with Him no longer here. For a moment, so looked my own path

before me, - the dusty, hot road; the desolate pass; the

barren mountain top. It was only a freak of fancy; I do not

know what brought it. I had not felt so a moment before, and I

did not a moment after.

"Where His feet lead now, the green pastures are not wanting,

-" Mr. Dinwiddie said; I suppose reading my look.