Charles Dudley Warner

In the Levant Charles Dudley Warner

Mr. Warner landed in Jaffa, and made his way through Jerusalem and other localities of the Holy Land, to Syria, thence journeyed by the Archipelago to Constantinople, and from Constantinople made his way to Athens and Corinth. It will thus be seen that he travelled over very familiar ground, nor did he meet with any striking adventures, yet his narrative has always a fresh interest about it. Of the quiet kind of American humour it is an excellent example. Take, for instance, the dialogue which we find in the first chapter, held between the author and a New-England woman, whom he found at Jaffa, relic of a colony called the "Adams Colony," which attempted to work out a fulfilment of the prophecies of Isaiah in the plain of Sharon, a spot which, as Mr. Warner remarks, "has for some ages been pre-empted: "- " I sat in a rocking-chair in the sitting-room of her little wood cot- tage, and could scarcely convince myself that I was not in a prim Now- Hampshire parlour. To her mind, there were no more Oriental illu- sions, and perhaps she had never indulged any; certainly, in her pre- sence Palestine seemed to me as common-place as New England. 'I srpose you've seen the meetin'-house ?'-' Yes.' ' Wal, ' it's goin' to rack