Thursday and a part of Friday was taken up with a trip to Jericho, but we got back in time to spend the afternoon in looking around Jerusalem, and we had an interesting visit to the home of Mrs. Schoenecke, a German lady, whose father, named Schick, spent fifty-six years of his life in Jerusalem.  From what information Mr. Schick could gather from the Bible, Josephus, the Talmud, and his personal observations during the time the Palestine Exploration Fund was at work, he constructed large models of the ancient temples that stood on Mount Moriah from the days of Solomon to the time of Herod and Christ.  I was told that the original models were sold to an American college for five thousand dollars.  Mr. Schick then constructed the models shown to us, and explained by Mrs. Schoenecke.  We were also shown a model of the tabernacle used while Israel was marching to the promised land.

The Wailing Place is a rectangle one hundred feet long by fifteen feet wide on the outside of the Temple Area, on the western side, where the wall is about sixty feet high.  Some of the stones in this section are of large size, and authorities admit that they are of Solomon’s time, but the wall in which they now stand may be a reconstruction.  The Jews come here on the Sabbath, beginning at sundown on Saturday, for a service which one author describes as follows:  “Nearest to him stood a row of women clad in robes of spotless white.  Their eyes were bedimmed with weeping, and tears streamed down their cheeks as they sobbed aloud with irrepressible emotion.  Next to the women stood a group of Pharisees—­Jews from Poland and Germany. * * * The old hoary-headed men generally wore velvet caps edged with fur, long love-locks or ringlets dangling on their thin cheeks, and their outer robes presented a striking contrast of gaudy colors.  Beyond stood a group of Spanish Jews. * * * Besides these there are Jews from every quarter of the world, who had wandered back to Jerusalem that they might die in the city of their fathers, and be buried in the Valley of Jehoshaphat, under the shadow of the Temple Hill.  The worshipers gradually increased in number until the crowd thronging the pavement could not be fewer than two hundred.  It was an affecting scene to notice their earnestness; some thrust their hands between the joints of the stones, and pushed into the crevices, as far as possible, little slips of paper, on which were written, in the Hebrew tongue, short petitions addressed to Jehovah.  Some even prayed with their mouths thrust into the gaps, where the weather-beaten stones were worn away at the joints. * * * The congregation at the Wailing Place is one of the most solemn gatherings left to the Jewish Church, and, as the writer gazed at the motley concourse, he experienced a feeling of sorrow that the remnants of the chosen race should be heartlessly thrust outside the sacred inclosure of their fathers’ holy temple by men of an alien race and an alien creed.”  So far as I know, all writers give these worshipers credit for being sincere, but on the two occasions when I visited the place, I saw no such emotion as described in the foregoing quotation.  The following lines are often rehearsed, the leader reading one at a time, after which the people respond with the words:  “We sit in solitude and mourn.”