Pittsburg dispatch. [volume] (Pittsburg [Pa.]) 1880-1923, 1890-01-12


in summer one scarcely says that. Pres
cience of the dusty dryness to come scorches
the nerve. and it is with the imagination
busy upon the hot noon that the body en-
joys the cool of an exceptional dawn.
The hour was yet early, but so are the
habits Of hot country. The city was
already astir. The open markets at the
chartered busily, finding q good share of
their customers among a people devout
enough to get up early in the morning and
go to church.
For with the synagogues, too, dawn was
busy time. A full stomach and pious con-
science pulled well together. People ate
and prayed and SO began to 1--we, with the
easy content of the Oriental.
The day was the second day Of the week
and the place was Jerusalem-hot, bright,
splendid Jerusalem; the glory and despair
of the thoughtful Jew; the pride of the
most thoughtless; the hope, the doom, and
the enigma of the race.
Let us take the trouble to consider what
the city of New York would be if idealized
by the rural native through fiery national
patriotism-what Paris, if enshrined by a
great religious sancity; we may almost
add what heaven if universally desired by
earth.
Thus was Jerusalem to the country peo-
pie Of Judea in the year in which our story
opens.
The suburbans, to whom Sabbath travel
ing was forbidden by the ecclesiastical law,
ko- H. i
than upon weekday such as the one of
which we speak; 1t chanced to be that which
to good domestic modern Gentle is known
as working-day.
These Judean women had already per-
formed their simple morning tasks, had got
the breakfast of lentils and fruit easily out
of the way, had shaken the mats and
brushed the dust and bathed and wrapped
themselves shyly into their wells, and were
now meekly following in the shadows of
their men, who did not by courtesy address
them in the streets.
"Yonder goes my lord, said.a woman
with deep voice and rowing eyes. She
spoke to a neighbor, one of group of sew
eral suburbans who were making their way
to the service of morning prayer about to be
held in one of the minor synagogues.
''My brother should not be far distant
replied she who had been addressed.
"He is there" observed another voice,
gentler voice than either of the first. "He
standeth apart by himself, Martha. That is
our brother with his eyes bent upon the
ground in thought"
: "Surely," nodded Martha briefly, "your
eyes are swifter than mine; they always
were."
A fine observer regarding the two women
"a Al
sit is the heart that is swifter." But the
ruder woman was not such an observer
And naturally, her nelghbor's affairs were
less interesting than ones own.
'I hope Ariella will manage to get
through the day. Our neighbor, the mother
of Baruch, promised to look in upon her;
and Baruch himself is worth two men with
eyes for such purpose. would'have had
my husband to stay at home, but he said he
was not the woman of US to be nursing sick
folk. See-there he goes. There goes
Malachi. A comely man, and no more
fond of his own way than a man ought
to be-"
Malachi, staggering Phsrisee, with the !
broadest phylactery on the street bound |
across dark, coarse forehead, strobe by the |
women at this moment. He passed without |
recognition. 1t was not good form in Judea |
q
public highway.
''I would have remained with ArielIa."
said she of the quiet voice, "but blind |
Baruch is tenderer than the most Of women. !
She will not suffer, Hagaar.'
"For my part, retorted Hsgaar a little |
snappishly, 81 think L have right to see |
the world now and then like other people, if |
I have sick daughter"
"Hush," pleaded the other, "Oh hushl We |
are about to pray"
Hagaar rolled her round eyes more in
wonder than in displeasure upon her gentle
and became silent.
With the bowed head, covered face, and
deterrent step of the Eastern woman, the lit
tie group now passed up the steps Of the
synagogue and crossed its portieo to the en-
trance set apart for their sex.
The men, less reverent, as of course more
individual OF manner, iabbered steadily up
to the last moment. They did not speak
Hebrew, which was now the lost language
Of the race-the tongue Of culture and
scholarship. They talked in Aramaic, the
language Of the people, of the unlea.ned, of
the democracy. For these were not the wor-
shippers of the Temple, made glorious by
national tradition and reverence, cherished
BY conservative religion, and paIronized by
Iocial influence. These were the classes Of
people who frequented the synagogues where
leresy was taught not without authority
hese we're the powerful sect of the Pharisees;
party with many excellent points not al
Ways credited in the memory Of their weaker
Ind worse ones. These were the vigorous
bourgeois who had tried to revolutionize, the
Jewish Church, and to some extent sue
eeded.
A theocracy is great simplifer of maseu-
inc conservation in that religion and patriot
SIN are identical; but not of masculine dis
ussion, in that no theocracy has yet extin-
,uished politics, and the Jewish one at this
ime was political nladhouse in which each
maniac ran his own fixed idea till he came
n contact with some keeper stronger than
limself, and so got into his strait jacket
IS matter OF course.
Malachi the Pharisee having talked sew