these hoary traditions—­that when Titus sacked Jerusalem and slaughtered eleven hundred thousand Jews in her streets and by-ways, the Wandering Jew was seen always in the thickest of the fight, and that when battle-axes gleamed in the air, he bowed his head beneath them; when swords flashed their deadly lightnings, he sprang in their way; he bared his breast to whizzing javelins, to hissing arrows, to any and to every weapon that promised death and forgetfulness, and rest.  But it was useless—­he walked forth out of the carnage without a wound.  And it is said that five hundred years afterward he followed Mahomet when he carried destruction to the cities of Arabia, and then turned against him, hoping in this way to win the death of a traitor.  His calculations were wrong again.  No quarter was given to any living creature but one, and that was the only one of all the host that did not want it.  He sought death five hundred years later, in the wars of the Crusades, and offered himself to famine and pestilence at Ascalon.  He escaped again—­he could not die.  These repeated annoyances could have at last but one effect —­they shook his confidence.  Since then the Wandering Jew has carried on a kind of desultory toying with the most promising of the aids and implements of destruction, but with small hope, as a general thing.  He has speculated some in cholera and railroads, and has taken almost a lively interest in infernal machines and patent medicines.  He is old, now, and grave, as becomes an age like his; he indulges in no light amusements save that he goes sometimes to executions, and is fond of funerals.

There is one thing he can not avoid; go where he will about the world, he must never fail to report in Jerusalem every fiftieth year.  Only a year or two ago he was here for the thirty-seventh time since Jesus was crucified on Calvary.  They say that many old people, who are here now, saw him then, and had seen him before.  He looks always the same—­old, and withered, and hollow-eyed, and listless, save that there is about him something which seems to suggest that he is looking for some one, expecting some one—­the friends of his youth, perhaps.  But the most of them are dead, now.  He always pokes about the old streets looking lonesome, making his mark on a wall here and there, and eyeing the oldest buildings with a sort of friendly half interest; and he sheds a few tears at the threshold of his ancient dwelling, and bitter, bitter tears they are.  Then he collects his rent and leaves again.  He has been seen standing near the Church of the Holy Sepulchre on many a starlight night, for he has cherished an idea for many centuries that if he could only enter there, he could rest.  But when he approaches, the doors slam to with a crash, the earth trembles, and all the lights in Jerusalem burn a ghastly blue!  He does this every fifty years, just the same.  It is hopeless, but then it is hard to break habits one has been eighteen hundred years accustomed to.  The old tourist is far away on his wanderings, now.  How he must smile to see a pack of blockheads like us, galloping about the world, and looking wise, and imagining we are finding out a good deal about it!  He must have a consuming contempt for the ignorant, complacent asses that go skurrying about the world in these railroading days and call it traveling.