Tracks of a Rolling Stone [145]
a sincere request that he might be allowed to furnish Sir Frederick GRATIS with all the means at his disposal for a tour through the Holy Land. The liberal and highly complimentary offer was gratefully acknowledged, but at once emphatically declined. The old soldier, (at least, this was my guess,) brave in all else, had not the courage to face the tourists' profanation of such sacred scenes.
Dr. Bird told me a nice story, a pendant to this, of Mr. Thomas Cook's liberality. One day, before the Gordon Expedition, which was then in the air, Dr. Bird was smoking his cigarette on the terrace in front of Shepherd's Hotel, in company with four or five other men, strangers to him and to one another. A discussion arose as to the best means of relieving Gordon. Each had his own favourite general. Presently the doctor exclaimed: 'Why don't they put the thing into the hands of Cook? I'll be bound to say he would undertake it, and do the job better than anyone else.'
'Do you know Cook, sir?' asked one of the smokers who had hitherto been silent.
'No, I never saw him, but everybody knows he has a genius for organisation; and I don't believe there is a general in the British Army to match him.'
When the company broke up, the silent stranger asked the doctor his name and address, and introduced himself as Thomas Cook. The following winter Dr. Bird received a letter enclosing tickets for himself and Miss Bird for a trip to Egypt and back, free of expense, 'in return for his good opinion and good wishes.'
After my General's departure, and a month up the Nile, I - already disillusioned, alas! - rode through Syria, following the beaten track from Jerusalem to Damascus. On my way from Alexandria to Jaffa I had the good fortune to make the acquaintance of an agreeable fellow-traveller, Mr. Henry Lopes, afterwards member for Northampton, also bound for Palestine. We went to Constantinople and to the Crimea together, then through Greece, and only parted at Charing Cross.
It was easy to understand Sir Frederick Stephenson's (supposed) unwillingness to visit Jerusalem. It was probably far from being what it is now, or even what it was when Pierre Loti saw it, for there was no railway from Jaffa in our time. Still, what Loti pathetically describes as 'une banalite de banlieue parisienne,' was even then too painfully casting its vulgar shadows before it. And it was rather with the forlorn eyes of the sentimental Frenchman than with the veneration of Dean Stanley, that we wandered about the ever- sacred Aceldama of mortally wounded and dying Christianity.
One dares not, one could never, speak irreverently of Jerusalem. One cannot think heartlessly of a disappointed love. One cannot tear out creeds interwoven with the tenderest fibres of one's heart. It is better to be silent. Yet is it a place for unwept tears, for the deep sadness and hard resignation borne in upon us by the eternal loss of something dearer once than life. All we who are weary and heavy laden, in whom now shall we seek the rest which is not nothingness?
My story is told, but I fain would take my leave with words less sorrowful. If a man has no better legacy to bequeath than bid his fellow-beings despair, he had better take it with him to his grave.
We know all this, we know!
But it is in what we do not know that our hope and our religion lies. Thrice blessed are we in the certainty that here our range is infinite. This infinite that makes our brains reel, that begets the feeling that makes us 'shrink,' is perhaps the most portentous argument in the logic of the sceptic. Since the days of Laplace, we have been haunted in some form or other with the ghost of the MECANIQUE CELESTE. Take one or two commonplaces from the text-books of astronomy:
Every half-hour we are about ten thousand miles nearer to the constellation of Lyra. 'The sun and his system must travel at his present rate for far more than a million years (divide this into half-hours) before we have crossed
Dr. Bird told me a nice story, a pendant to this, of Mr. Thomas Cook's liberality. One day, before the Gordon Expedition, which was then in the air, Dr. Bird was smoking his cigarette on the terrace in front of Shepherd's Hotel, in company with four or five other men, strangers to him and to one another. A discussion arose as to the best means of relieving Gordon. Each had his own favourite general. Presently the doctor exclaimed: 'Why don't they put the thing into the hands of Cook? I'll be bound to say he would undertake it, and do the job better than anyone else.'
'Do you know Cook, sir?' asked one of the smokers who had hitherto been silent.
'No, I never saw him, but everybody knows he has a genius for organisation; and I don't believe there is a general in the British Army to match him.'
When the company broke up, the silent stranger asked the doctor his name and address, and introduced himself as Thomas Cook. The following winter Dr. Bird received a letter enclosing tickets for himself and Miss Bird for a trip to Egypt and back, free of expense, 'in return for his good opinion and good wishes.'
After my General's departure, and a month up the Nile, I - already disillusioned, alas! - rode through Syria, following the beaten track from Jerusalem to Damascus. On my way from Alexandria to Jaffa I had the good fortune to make the acquaintance of an agreeable fellow-traveller, Mr. Henry Lopes, afterwards member for Northampton, also bound for Palestine. We went to Constantinople and to the Crimea together, then through Greece, and only parted at Charing Cross.
It was easy to understand Sir Frederick Stephenson's (supposed) unwillingness to visit Jerusalem. It was probably far from being what it is now, or even what it was when Pierre Loti saw it, for there was no railway from Jaffa in our time. Still, what Loti pathetically describes as 'une banalite de banlieue parisienne,' was even then too painfully casting its vulgar shadows before it. And it was rather with the forlorn eyes of the sentimental Frenchman than with the veneration of Dean Stanley, that we wandered about the ever- sacred Aceldama of mortally wounded and dying Christianity.
One dares not, one could never, speak irreverently of Jerusalem. One cannot think heartlessly of a disappointed love. One cannot tear out creeds interwoven with the tenderest fibres of one's heart. It is better to be silent. Yet is it a place for unwept tears, for the deep sadness and hard resignation borne in upon us by the eternal loss of something dearer once than life. All we who are weary and heavy laden, in whom now shall we seek the rest which is not nothingness?
My story is told, but I fain would take my leave with words less sorrowful. If a man has no better legacy to bequeath than bid his fellow-beings despair, he had better take it with him to his grave.
We know all this, we know!
But it is in what we do not know that our hope and our religion lies. Thrice blessed are we in the certainty that here our range is infinite. This infinite that makes our brains reel, that begets the feeling that makes us 'shrink,' is perhaps the most portentous argument in the logic of the sceptic. Since the days of Laplace, we have been haunted in some form or other with the ghost of the MECANIQUE CELESTE. Take one or two commonplaces from the text-books of astronomy:
Every half-hour we are about ten thousand miles nearer to the constellation of Lyra. 'The sun and his system must travel at his present rate for far more than a million years (divide this into half-hours) before we have crossed