A Winter Pilgrimage

Surely Solomon foresaw these days when he set down that famous saying

as to the making of many books. The aphorism, I confess, is one which

strikes me through with shame whenever I chance to be called upon to

read it aloud in the parish church on Sunday. Indeed it suggests to me

a tale which has a moral--or a parallel. Some months ago I tarried at

Haifa, a place on the coast of Syria with an abominable port. It was

at or about the hour of midnight that a crowd of miserable travelers,

of whom I was one, might have been seen cowering in the wind and rain

at the gates of this harbor. There the judge and the officer bullied

and rent them, causing them to fumble with damp hands and discover

their /tezkerehs/ in inaccessible pockets, which they did that the

account given in those documents of their objects, occupations, past

history, and personal appearance might be verified by a drowsy Turk

seated in a box upon the quay. Not until he was satisfied on all these

points, indeed, would he allow them the privilege of risking death by

drowning in an attempt to reach a steamer which rolled outside the

harbour.

At length the ordeal was done with and we were informed that we might

embark. That is to say, we were graciously permitted to leap five feet

from an unlit pier--the steps of which had been washed away in the

gale of the previous night, but will, I am informed, be repaired next

season--trusting to Providence to cause us to fall into a dark object

beneath believed to be a boat. Another Turkish officer watched our

departure suspiciously, though what he imagined we could be carrying

out of his barren land is beyond my guessing.

"Cook, Cook, Cook!" we croaked in deprecatory tones as one by one we

crept past him cowed and cold, fearing that he might invent some

pretext to detain us. Therefore it was indeed that we hurried to bring

to his notice the only name which seems to have power in Syria; that

famous name of the hydra-headed, the indispensable, the world-wide

Cook.

"Cook, Cook, Cook!" we croaked.

"Oh! yes," answered the exasperated Turk in a tone not unlike that of

a sleepy pigeon, "Coook, Coook, Coook! oh yes, all right! Coook,

always Coook! Go to--Jericho--Coook!"

In the same way and with much the same feelings, thinking of the long

line of works before me, I mutter to the reader now, "Book, Book,

Book!"

Can he be so rude as to answer, after the example of the Haifa Turk--

"Oh! yes, all right! Boook, &c., &c." The thought is too painful: I

leave it.