example of its devotees.  We said the Saviour who pitied dumb beasts and taught that the ox must be rescued from the mire even on the Sabbath day, would not have counseled a forced march like this.  We said the “long trip” was exhausting and therefore dangerous in the blistering heats of summer, even when the ordinary days’ stages were traversed, and if we persisted in this hard march, some of us might be stricken down with the fevers of the country in consequence of it.  Nothing could move the pilgrims.  They must press on.  Men might die, horses might die, but they must enter upon holy soil next week, with no Sabbath-breaking stain upon them.  Thus they were willing to commit a sin against the spirit of religious law, in order that they might preserve the letter of it.  It was not worth while to tell them “the letter kills.”  I am talking now about personal friends; men whom I like; men who are good citizens; who are honorable, upright, conscientious; but whose idea of the Saviour’s religion seems to me distorted.  They lecture our shortcomings unsparingly, and every night they call us together and read to us chapters from the Testament that are full of gentleness, of charity, and of tender mercy; and then all the next day they stick to their saddles clear up to the summits of these rugged mountains, and clear down again.  Apply the Testament’s gentleness, and charity, and tender mercy to a toiling, worn and weary horse?—­Nonsense—­these are for God’s human creatures, not His dumb ones.  What the pilgrims choose to do, respect for their almost sacred character demands that I should allow to pass—­but I would so like to catch any other member of the party riding his horse up one of these exhausting hills once!

We have given the pilgrims a good many examples that might benefit them, but it is virtue thrown away.  They have never heard a cross word out of our lips toward each other—­but they have quarreled once or twice.  We love to hear them at it, after they have been lecturing us.  The very first thing they did, coming ashore at Beirout, was to quarrel in the boat.  I have said I like them, and I do like them—­but every time they read me a scorcher of a lecture I mean to talk back in print.

Not content with doubling the legitimate stages, they switched off the main road and went away out of the way to visit an absurd fountain called Figia, because Baalam’s ass had drank there once.  So we journeyed on, through the terrible hills and deserts and the roasting sun, and then far into the night, seeking the honored pool of Baalam’s ass, the patron saint of all pilgrims like us.  I find no entry but this in my note-book: