The Innocents Abroad


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The guide said it was because this was one of "the very stones of  
Jerusalem" that Christ mentioned when he was reproved for permitting the  
people to cry "Hosannah!" when he made his memorable entry into the  
city upon an ass. One of the pilgrims said, "But there is no evidence  
that the stones did cry out--Christ said that if the people stopped from  
shouting Hosannah, the very stones would do it." The guide was perfectly  
serene. He said, calmly, "This is one of the stones that would have  
cried out." It was of little use to try to shake this fellow's simple  
faith--it was easy to see that.  
And so we came at last to another wonder, of deep and abiding interest  
--the veritable house where the unhappy wretch once lived who has been  
celebrated in song and story for more than eighteen hundred years as the  
Wandering Jew. On the memorable day of the Crucifixion he stood in this  
old doorway with his arms akimbo, looking out upon the struggling mob  
that was approaching, and when the weary Saviour would have sat down  
and  
rested him a moment, pushed him rudely away and said, "Move on!" The  
Lord said, "Move on, thou, likewise," and the command has never been  
revoked from that day to this. All men know how that the miscreant upon  
whose head that just curse fell has roamed up and down the wide world,  
for ages and ages, seeking rest and never finding it--courting death but  
always in vain--longing to stop, in city, in wilderness, in desert  
solitudes, yet hearing always that relentless warning to march--march on!  
They say--do these hoary traditions--that when Titus sacked Jerusalem and  
slaughtered eleven hundred thousand Jews in her streets and by-ways, the  
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