It was late in the afternoon of October ninth when we got off the train at the Jerusalem station, which is so situated that the city can not be seen from that point.  By the time we had our baggage put away in a native hotel outside the city walls it was dark.  We then started out to see if there was any mail awaiting me.  First we went to the Turkish office, which was reached by a flight of dark stairs.  Mr. Ahmed went up rather slowly.  Perhaps he felt the need of caution more than I did.  According to my recollection, they handed us a candle, and allowed us to inspect the contents of a small case for the mail.  We found nothing, so we made our way down the dark stairway to the German office, situated on the ground floor, nicely furnished and properly lighted, but there was no mail there for me, as mail from America goes to the Austrian office, inside the Jaffa gate.

The next day was Lord’s day, and for the time being I ceased to be a tourist and gave myself up mainly to religious services.  I first attended the meeting conducted by Bro.  Joseph at the mission to Israel.  It was the first service I had attended, and the first opportunity that had come to me for breaking bread since I left London, the last of August.  After this assembly of four persons was dismissed, I went to the services of the Church of England and observed their order of worship.  The minister was in a robe, and delivered a really good sermon of about fifteen minutes’ duration, preceded by reading prayers and singing praise for about an hour.  By invitation, I took dinner with Miss Dunn, an American lady, at whose house Bro.  Joseph was lodging.  As she had been in Jerusalem fifteen years and was interested in missionary work, I enjoyed her company as well as her cooking.  After dinner I went to a little iron-covered meeting-house called the “tabernacle,” where a Mr. Thompson, missionary of the Christian Alliance, of Nyack, New York, was the minister.  At the close of the Sunday-school a gentleman asked some questions in English, and the native evangelist, Melki, translated them into Arabic.  By request of Mr. Thompson, I read the opening lesson and offered prayer, after which he delivered a good address on the great, coming day, and at the close the Lord’s Supper was observed.  I understood that they did this once a month, but it is attended to weekly at the mission where I was in the morning.  At the tabernacle I made the acquaintance of Mr. Stanton, a Methodist minister from the States; Mr. Jennings, a colored minister from Missouri, and Mr. Smith, an American gentleman residing in Jerusalem.  There was another meeting in the tabernacle at night, but I staid at the hotel and finished some writing to be sent off to the home land.