A FAMILY FLIGHT OVER EGYPT AND SYRIA.
I KNOW you are acquainted with the Hales, Edward Everett and Miss Susan; therefore you know, without my telling you, that they write thoroughly delightful books. But I wonder if you are acquainted with the Horners? Not the family of "Little Jack Horner" who "sat in a corner," but some friends of the Hales who took delightful journeys all over the world. What I want of you is to accompany them, and have a good time, and learn more about the world we live in than you imagined you could without bidding good-by to your father and mother, and spending a great deal of money. This trip is very cheap indeed; in fact, if you belong to the P. S.—as of course you do—it will actually cost you only one dollar and fifty cents! Who ever heard of travelling over Egypt and Spain for a dollar and fifty cents! For the matter of that, if you are not particular about the dress, and will choose one a little plainer, you may save thirty cents and go for a dollar-twenty. The book has nearly four hundred pages, and a great many pictures. It is beautifully bound, and printed on the best of paper. I do not know how you could have a prettier ornament for your book table than it offers.
But the best way of helping you to understand how well the book is written, is to give you a piece of it, and I therefore let you have a peep at Damascus with the Horner family:
DAMASCUS.
One of the first things the Horners did was to go to the top of the minaret of the city gate, for the view which is presented there of the town.
They saw below them a plain of flat roofs, broken here and there by a white cupola, and a tall minaret, and the large dome of the great mosque.
At their feet was the beginning of a narrow lane, winding along as far as the eye could follow it. This was the "street called straight,"—straight, meaning narrow; for it certainly would not be called straight in Philadelphia. In the Roman period of Damascus a noble street extended through the city in the same direction, and excavations made under the present Straight street have revealed fragments of a Corinthian colonnade which adorned it. For, during the great age since the founding of Damascus, and in the many evèuements it has experienced, one set of buildings after another has been destroyed, so that, as at Jerusalem, there is supposed to be layer upon layer of demolished cities to a great depth, underlying the present one.
PUBLIC GARDEN, DAMASCUS.
In the distance they saw Mount Hermon, snow-covered at the summit. A walk through this street led them past scenes of the massacre of 1860, and other interesting sites; then, under a low Roman arch, they entered the region of the bazaars. This reminded them of Cairo, "only more so." The same narrow streets, and same open fireplaces as Bessie had called them, where the merchants sat cross-legged, in front of little shelves, on which were piled their stuffs; but at Damascus there was a greater variety of strange and gorgeous materials, rich and splendid. They could not resist the fascination of these shops, and bought a good many things, Hassan doing the bargaining, which consisted in a long and violent argument between him and the shopkeeper, ending in a mutual compromise. Both parties love these tilts of the tongue, and it is a regular part of shopping in the East. The dealer demands a price which he does not dream of receiving, and Hassan mentions a figure which he knows he shall have to raise. The squabble became sometimes violent, but after awhile the repetition was tedious, especially as our Americans did not understand a word of it. Miss Lejeune saw some pretty little damask napkins, for which her soul longed, bordered with red and yellow stripes.