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snow and chilling wind had passed, leaving the atmosphere extremely clear. Mt. Sinai is 7,363 feet above sea-level, and the topmost peak is 2,400 feet above the monastery. The steep ascent would be a severe test of even a giant's strength were it not for the Pilgrim's Steps. These lead upward from the monastery to the very top of the mountain; they are not a finished work by any means, not very easy to climb, as

SIDE VIEW OF THE ROUTE.

we learned from the close acquaintanceship we made with some of the rough corners and cruel angles. It is said that St. Helena caused them to be built; if this be true, not one of the many churches built by her has been of such service to pilgrims as have these rough, rocky steps. Among the many chapels that line this stone pathway is one, dedicated to Mary,

that is very quaintly placed on a kind of natural platform in a wild, picturesque gorge. Just beyond it, the road narrows so that two can scarcely walk abreast, and passes under a roughly-made natural arch. Here, earlier pilgrims went to confession and had their sins forgiven them. No doubt the road upward had engendered holy thought and disposed the soul to sincere contrition. Another remarkable chapel is that dedicated to St. Elias. If a popular Oriental devotion is an index of the religious character of one of God's servants, then the prophet Elias is one that is very dear to God; Jews and Christians, and most particularly the Arabs, have the greatest reverence for Elias, a feeling of awe for him that is almost superstitious.

A visit to that mountaintop is a shining event in one's life. It is hard to realize that this is Sinai, the most sacred of places; that here Moses communed with God, while the lightnings flashed and the thunders rolled; that here the Eternal Law gave His commandments to the Jewish lawgiver; that from here has flowed the jurisprudence that civilized and civilizes the world. Though it is not an article of Faith that this or any other mountain is the Sinai of the Old Testament, though one may be a saint. even while doubting any of these identifications, still the pious pilgrim feels only pity for those who deny this to be the Sinai of the Old Law. It does not require heroic faith to believe that this is the real Sinai; nothing could be more plausible. No other mountain possesses the features required by history. If this is not the true Sinai, it is hard to fix upon another as the true no other mountain hereabouts has the open space at its foot where a multitude, a whole people, could camp, and from their camp behold the summit. The peculiar valleys of the mountain and the wide sweep of the plain suit the case perfectly. These impor

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tant formations are strong with evidence, as the Bible proves. Tradition confirms the belief; the early Christians were cool reasoners and were not moved by whims and fancies. Moreover, the Jewish traditions, most tenacious traditions they are, too, endorse the opinion, although it must be admitted that it is strange that the Jews visited so little this mountain, which meant and still means so much for them.

A gaping chasm, a thousand feet in depth, divides the mountain in two parts, both parts rising upward into peaks that appear all the more prominent by reason of the gigantic sword cut that separates them. The higher of the two is pointed out as the place where Moses held communication with the Most High, and, after the graven tablets of Law had been given into his hands, Moses made his way to the part of the mountain called Ras-Safsaf, and drew to himself the attention of all the people gathered below. When he beheld the idol and the revelry of those who worshipped it, his hands could not hold the stone of the Decalogue and it dashed

to pieces on the rocks. Then his vigils and visions were renewed and repeated. The vast plain, a natural amphitheatre, invites the mind to a fanciful reconstruction of that wonderful occurrence.

The admirable view from Sinai was something to linger upon with keen enthusiasm. The perfection of the atmospheric conditions multiplied the power of vision, and enabled the unaided eye to take in a vast circle of the vista before us. The central portion,

the whole nine thousand square miles of the peninsula, seemed very small as it stretched away from where we stood, the mountains of this magnificent waste decreasing in height as they advanced toward the sea. The peninsula reached. southward and on one flank lay the gulf of Suez, on the other the gulf, or bay of Akaba, the waters of both shining with blue and gold of sun and sky. Westward, the view ended with the faroff African mountains that shut in the fertile valley of the Nile. The entrancing view is that toward the east: the dim, distant mountains seem to dissolve, as they touch upon the realms of mystery and silence, the land of Ishmael, the

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GROUP OF CAMELEERS.

land of dreams and fables and poetryArabia. What fancies the mind may revel in, with no fear of contradiction, as it pictures the cities and peoples that are beyond that mountain barrier! The imagination shared largely in the primitive spirit of the human race, and, as we stand here cut off from European and American civilization, the primitive spirit takes hold of us and enlivens the imagination to an intoxicating degree. Let us have simple food, liberty to wan

der where we will, freedom from the conventions of twentieth century civilization that hamper the strong and debilitate the weak. Let us be free to dream as we will to dream even of that land of mystery over there, the land of spices and narcotics, the land of magic and witchery-Araby the Blest.

Hunger puts an end to dreams, and we had to leave for such a material rea

son as food. The repast ended, our journey downward began. Soon a point was reached where, according to an unwritten law, camels had to be changed. As the transfer to our new mounts was being made, we had a chance to learn of an injustice that had been done: the tent-laden camels bore a load that remained always the same, while those which carried the food and drink for the party saw their burden grow less and less every day. I suppose we were to blame for the injustice since we con

sumed the provisions. At last the baggage was on the fresh camels and off they went with their slow stride. As we mounted and as our camels raised themselves to full height, the bells of Sinai rang out their good-bye. It was in truth a good-bye, not a dirge or a knell, but the "God be with you" of an angel. Once the sound of that bell would be taken up by another, then another, and its message wafted from convent to convent all the way to Jerusalem; now there are no convents or monasteries to pass on the sweet-sounding peal. But we were going to Jerusalem; we would carry the message. Even now when memory lovingly recalls these glimpses of Sinai, the sound of that bell vibrates with joy through all the recollections. Onward went our caravan. We turned for a last view of the convent, a momentary one. Then a narrow pass snapped us up and we were again, in many things, like the Israelites of old.

Home

By Mary Allegra Gallagher

EMORY'S picture-book has but one page. I could find no
golden leaves equally beautiful to bind with it, so I made

its dear sketch the first and last.

"Home" is the title of the sacred painting. Love was the amiable landlord of the sweet little tenement and he took his rent in smiles and blessings.

All the gay June buds, all the happy summer flowers, in a word, all the grandeur of the earth could be found in its humble garden. I know of no temple more holy than that angel-haunted sanctuary. I could feel God in its kindly atmosphere. Its saint images were copies of Himself, His Own exquisite Handiwork.

I never meditate on this vision of beauty but, somehow, a tear or two will fall and add a little more silver to its wealth of pigments. From the ivied porch I hear familiar conversations. The sweet-burdened swing that holds my youngest sister seems to dart forward and backward to the rhythm of my heart-beats. I almost fancy I can lift the pictured latch and "go in."

Lest affection's leaping flame ignite the precious parchment, let me kiss it and put it by.

By AUGUSTINE GALLAGHER

HAT will become of us if the

W Irish keep on gaining control

of affairs?"

Recently a bigoted enemy of the Celt asked this question through the public prints. The retrograde scion of a pampered house was alarmed, and thus gave voice to his fear. There was no question of ability or fitness; no recognition of the human qualities that win; no hint of public peril or social menace, but merely the lamentation of a weakling outdone in the race for the loftier and bolder achievements of life.

It is not designed in this limited appreciation of the Irishman in free America to commit the folly of lauding all Irishmen because of their nationality and regardless of personal worth and conduct. Such wholesale estimates of a people, however praiseful, cannot fail to ultimately redound to their injury. While the Irish have survived a scheme of tyranny that would have doubtless crushed any other civilized race, and while the saviours of Erin have at the same time won for themselves undying fame, honors and riches in foreign lands, having forged, unaided, their way to the very forefront of the affairs of progressive mankind, yet not every man of Irish birth or Irish ancestry is worthy of the

name.

For the traitor and apostate who, in the darkest days of intolerant ostracism, rendered life the more miserable for those brave Irish souls ever loyal in their love of the mother country, ever steadfast in the faith of their fathers, Irish gentlemen have only loathing and contempt. And thus they hold the renegades of this day and generation who traffic on the name and the honor of Irishmen. For human frailties the

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Irishman owns a matchless wealth of charity; for the rest he is resolute, resourceful, vigilant and unafraid, as the account he has given of himself during the past century goes to show. And as the public estimate of a people is measured by their yield of the things that are useful for good, the Irish-American has made a record of which the race may be forever proud.

But a little while ago, in the reckoning of years, the Irish immigrant was barely tolerated in the United States; and in many enlightened(?) sections his religion was not tolerated. It was the fashion in those dark days for the bigoted leaders of society, especially intolerant New Englanders and English sympathisers in other sections, to deride the "Paddys" and "Biddies;" and on every hand the struggling sons and daughters of Erin were forced to face suspicion and abuse. These hard terms. but mildly tell the truth of those times.

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Not content with her unspeakable carnival of carnage and desolation in the mother country, her monstrous deavor to destroy the race by cruelty, coercion and dishonor unmatched for infamy in modern times, England's goyernment, and Englishmen, must pursue the fleeing fugitives to these shores, here to harass them anew with the poison of falsehood and misrepresentation. A righteous role, truly, for a nation and a people boasting Christian charity as an attribute. But so it was. The Irishmen who came early to America landed upon an inhospitable shore. They came among a people prepared to doubt and distrust them; ready to deny them an equal chance; anxious to see them fall beneath the atrocious ostracism and injustice of inherited prejudice and intolerance.

Huddled in mean lodgings; crowded like sardines in a box because of their poverty of better dwelling places; segregated and anathematized because of their faith; denounced because in their terrible homesickness those forlorn foreigners chose to beguile the dragging hours in the dance-is it much wonder that, at times, the weaker of those heartsick refugees turned to the rum and gin of commerce-(the foundation of so many princely Puritan fortunes) for the forgetfulness, the folly of the times? But, alas, they were Irish-not of the soil nor of the social saintly class. They might enrich the hypocritical Puritan masters of the traffic by their unwise potations, and for their greater edification were thrust into prison to be later beggared by tyrannical courts, which, together with their spoliation, uttered the edicts of social ostracism.

No one may tell the infinite acts of cruelty and injustice heaped upon the Irish immigrants in this land of liberty. They were rated at the very lowest notch of the social scale. And this notwithstanding the fact that in their Irish. homes it were criminal to gain an education; and despite the fact that they had been despoiled until poverty had all but lost its sting. And yet these same poor immigrants were as steadfast in the faith of Christianity as the needle to the pole, and matchless in works of charity. Ignoring these virtues, the enlightened and cultured citizens of early America. denounced the fathers and mothers of Irish-America as low, ignorant, shiftless, superstitious Papists.

We call up these things not in a spirit of rancor, not to blame too harshly the thoughtless heartlessness of the people of those times; rather to point to what stupendous folly false pride leads, and to what immeasurable conquests industry and charity point the way; and, too, to point the moral that, ultimately that race which absolutely believes in

liberty and in God must triumph in a land like ours.

The early Irishmen to reach these shores were not all paragons of virtue; nor will it be admitted that even the most reckless, rollicking lads among them were, as their detractors would have had them known, devoid of virtue. Every true Irishman had courage and he had industry and intellect to recommend him—and faith and hope. That he had learned how to suffer in silence and to endure great wrongs without the show of lamentation, no doubt worked him a hardship; since the silent sufferer in the noisy multitude is too often ignored, whilst the scandal of the noisy, lesser scourged, moves hypocrites to set him free.

But the Irishman was not long in learning to have his say. Nor was he long in gaining the knowledge that, although personally held in disrepute, as a toiler he was held in high esteem. The Irish were good and faithful servants. Irishmen were willing, resolute and honest laborers. Irishwomen were chaste, industrious and faithful. In time their virtues came to be whispered by those who hoped to profit by them; but who published their sins, magnified by bigotry and venom, to the world.

But all the while the Irish immigrant was learning. He had begun to take his own measure, and to locate and measure the enemy. Here was freedom in name, servitude and ostracism in fact. Why? He would learn why; and he did. These were his assets: industry, intellect, integrity, courage, and faith, hope and charity. And what forces were there in a free land that might hope to oppose these, plus health? Were they intolerance, hypocrisy and race hatred? Yes, these were his adversaries, his constant and ruthless persecutors; but in these there was no peril that might not yield to fortitude and time. What more, then, had he to fear? Aye, sure enough here was the peril so long overlooked,

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