The City of Delight

"I have been thinking," he said, "about Jerusalem. I was there once

upon a time."

"Once!" the Maccabee said. "You are old enough to attend the

Passover."

"But our people do not attend the feast. We are Christians."

The Maccabee moved so that he could look at the boy. He might have

known it, he exclaimed to himself. It was just such an extreme act of

mercy, this assuming the care of a stranger in a wilderness, as he had

ever known Christians to do in that city of irrational faiths,

Ephesus.

"Well?" he said, hoping the boy would go on and spare him an

expression on that announcement.

"I can not forget Jerusalem."

"No one forgets Jerusalem--except one that falls in love by the

wayside," the man said.

Again the boy detected a ring of unexplained melancholy in his

patient's voice, and talked on as a preventive.

"Urban, the pastor, took me there. It was in the days of mine

instruction for baptism. He went to Jerusalem to trial, but there was

disorder in the city about the procurator, who was driven out that

day, and Urban was not called. But he remained, lest he be accused of

fleeing, and then it was he took me over the walks of Jesus."

"Jesus--that is the name," the Maccabee said to himself. "They are

born, given in marriage, fall or flourish, live and die in that name.

Likewise they pick up a wounded stranger and care for him in that

name. They are a strange people, a strange people!"

"They would not let us into the Temple," Joseph went on, "because I am

an Arab, born a Christian. So I could not see where Jesus was

presented, in infancy. But we went to the synagogues where He taught;

we went out upon Olivet to Gethsemane where He suffered in the Garden;

we climbed that hill to the south from which He looked upon the City

and wept over it, and prophesied this hour. Then we sought the ravine

where Judas betrayed Him with a kiss, and afterward Urban led me over

the streets by which He was taken first to Annas and to Caiaphas and

thence to Pilate and to Herod. After that, by the Way of the Cross to

Golgotha; from there to His Tomb. And when we had seen the

Guest-chamber and stood upon the Place of the Ascension, I needed no

further instruction."

The boy had forgotten his guest. By the rapt light in his eyes, the

Maccabee knew that the boy was once more journeying over the stones of

the streets of the Holy City, or standing awed on the polished

pavements of its lordly interiors, or on the topmost point of her

hills with the broad-winged wind from the east flying his long locks.