The Birmingham age-herald., 1920-07-10
MEN, WOMEN
 AND THINGS

ian host, had a good reason for kicking when told by the prophet Elisha to bathe in the Jordan, for his own rivers were clear and cold, while the Israelitish one was muddy and turbulent. Like Victor Hugo, q love rivers; they do more than bear merchandise; ideas float along their surface Rivers, like clarions, sing to the ocean the beauty of earth, the fertility of plains and the splendors of cities" 1 am glad that was reared on the banks of the Chatta- hochee. inmortalized by Sidney Lanier. The Port of Birmingham sounds good l to me, for it's the realization of the dream of Mistress Birmingham to bathe her feet in the cool waters of the War rior; and at last to let all the world know that she had a waterway to the gulf and chance to send her fleets of coal, iron and steel even to the ports of the Orient in bottoms owned and oper- ated by one of her own great corpora tions.
 l Naaman had a right to boast of the Abana. for Damascus is the wonderful child of this little river which springs full born from the barren sides of the Anti-Lebanon, swiftly creates a paradise as it runs. and dives under bridge and l later sends it's dancing waters by hundred channels, and then disappears absolutely in a wide marsh on the edge of the desert; but not before her streets have bubbled with the currents of the multitudinous folk that do inhabit her and make her great.
 We who live in Alabama, the best watered state in the union, with it's thou sands of springs, hundreds of streams, scores of creeks and dozens of rivers icannot appreciate what water means to those who live in country like Arabia
 Damascus is the open port on the edge
 of the desert ''the trading booth at the foot of the mountains, the pavilion in
 the heart of the blossoming bower l
 No wonder that the Psalmist of old ; sang:
 "He sendeth the springs into the valleys, 1, Which run among the hills. They give drink to every beast of the
 field
 The wild asses quench their thirst. By them shall the fowls of the air have t their habitations.
 t Which sing among the branches. He watereth the hills from his chambers; The earth is satisfied with the fruit of II thy works
 
 Small wonder that Damascus has been
 called by the Arabs the deserts reflec-
 tion of paradise" Mahomet, coming from the sands of Arabia, he gazed on , the city encircled by it's green foliage and fields, with the white desert on the one
 side and the gray mountain on the other,
 knew why it. in the expressive language
 of the Orient, had been called "a pearl set in emeradls" He said, Man can have
 but one paradise, and mine is not here, and turned away, refusing to enter it. f That which made the city at least 4,ooI e years ago, has kept it through all the . ages. and will keep the plain through the = rift of Mount Lebanon. Scarcely city o on earth has such a wealth of fresh pure t water It turns the desert into garder | for miles around. One river runs through the city in mighty tide: the other flows
 around it; and both are borne every
 where. into streets and squares. anc t. mosques, and gardens, where they ris' j. up in fountains. Damascus is the onls n city in the Orient where you will ever o find water brought directly into man, !" houses.
 The Damascenes lived in the shadow O
 the desert, and to the Jew and the Ara'
 it was overpowering; Ezekiel, the prophe
 of old, pictured the New Jerusalem as
 city with a perpetual fountain of livin' " water flowing down in a great strean 'e to the sea, where fish could swim an V trees could flourish, because he wa ~ so familiar with the scarcity of wate
 on the Judean hills and the barrennes
 of the shores of the Dead Sea. Thus tn . wilderness and the desert afford man, ' figures for the poet. 'The wilderness shal 'u blossom as the rose"
 it ,s All that is needed is water I daresa
 that those who went the southern rout
 to the convention at san FranclScO Ca IS realize the truth of this for it too o, scme days and nights to speed across tn sea of sand. I made the trip once, an
 it's one of the most vivid memories TX have of all the travels have made. It t. an experience I am glad I had, but on sy that will satisfy, me for lifetime. Tal T.. of miracles. saw twentieth century one ie wherever the ingenuity of man ha le brought in water to slake the thirst ( O. the parched desert
 e0 It is impossible to fully appreciate som
 of the imagery of the Old Testament an
 to enter into the inner heart of the poet
 unless one has had some desert exper ;r cree Tn Judea. Samaria, and Syria tr spring rains come, and for a short tn ; the earth is sprinkled with flowers Tn
 gives the Pealmst his chance to drlN a home a lesson, in comparing mans daN
 to the life of grass and the flowers of u l field, because the hot east wind blown ep from the desert passes over it and withel he it up in a day.
 -ie aAs for man, his days are as grass; he As flower of the field, so he flou -i- isheth.
 ,,t For the wind passeth over it, and 1t
 gone;
 ut And the place thereof shall know 1t ne more"
 Then comes the more personal longin n for the intense thirst of the traveller ( at the desert road is like the thirst Of u
 soul for God Every Oriental within Il
 glare of the heat from the surroundir
 sea of sand understands the Psalmis