s on the floor! I simply said, "If
you call this camping out, all right--but it isn't the style I am used
to; my little baggage that I brought along is at a discount."

It grew dark, and they put candles on the tables--candles set in bright,
new, brazen candlesticks. And soon the bell--a genuine, simon-pure bell
--rang, and we were invited to "the saloon." I had thought before that
we had a tent or so too many, but now here was one, at least, provided
for; it was to be used for nothing but an eating-saloon. Like the
others, it was high enough for a family of giraffes to live in, and was
very handsome and clean and bright-colored within. It was a gem of a
place. A table for eight, and eight canvas chairs; a table-cloth and
napkins whose whiteness and whose fineness laughed to scorn the things we
were used to in the great excursion steamer; knives and forks,
soup-plates, dinner-plates--every thing, in the handsomest kind of
style. It was wonderful! And they call this camping out. Those
stately fellows in baggy trowsers and turbaned fezzes brought in a
dinner which consisted of roast mutton, roast chicken, roast goose,
potatoes, bread, tea, pudding, apples, and delicious grapes; the viands
were better cooked than any we had eaten for weeks, and the table made a
finer appearance, with its large German silver candlesticks and other
finery, than any table we had sat down to for a good while, and yet that
polite dragoman, Abraham, came bowing in and apologizing for the whole
affair, on account of the unavoidable confusion of getting under way for
a very long trip, and promising to do a great deal better in future!

It is midnight, now, and we break camp at six in the morning.

They call this camping out. At this rate it is a glorious privilege to
be a pilgrim to the Holy Land.

CHAPTER XLII.

We are camped near Temnin-el-Foka--a name which the boys have simplified
a good deal, for the sake of convenience in spelling. They call it
Jacksonville. It sounds a little strangely, here in the Valley of
Lebanon, but it has the merit of being easier to remember than the Arabic
name.

"COME LIKE SPIRITS, SO DEPART."

"The night shall be filled with music,
And the cares that infest the day
Shall fold their tents like the Arabs,
And as silently steal away."

I slept very soundly last night, yet when the dragoman's bell