is impossible for a woman to ride for sixteen or eighteen hours without
a soft, comfortable seat.

"You go up high hills, and then down again, imagining every time you go
down that you will topple over and fall over the precipice and be
killed. In fact, your heart is in your mouth every five minutes, so that
by the time you arrive in Jerusalem (which is surrounded by hills) you
are almost too weak to rejoice at the beauty that greets your sight, for
nowhere in the world can, I think, anything be seen more beautiful than
a sunrise over the mountains around Jerusalem.

"Oh, I forgot to tell you that we youngsters were put into baskets on a
camel's back, and how we were shaken! I felt as if I were praying and
shaking all the time, for it seemed as if we could never get to
Jerusalem alive in this way."

THE PROUD BOYS OF JERUSALEM

"At last we entered the Holy City, and arrived at Father's friend's
house, where we were made very welcome and treated most kindly. I soon
made friends with the boys, for, you know, I can speak yiddish quite
well.

"They are funny little chaps. They look like old men, with long kaftans
(coats) and side ear-locks of hair, carrying their prayer book or Bible
to Shule. The first thing I noticed was the tsitsith. They wear really
long ones, with long fringes hanging down about a quarter of a yard or
more. They wear them as we do a waistcoat, so that they can be seen by
everyone, not as we wear them in England, tucked away out of sight. Here
young and old, even little boys who can only just walk and lisp their
prayers, wear them, and, what is more, take a real pleasure in wearing
them. I asked some of them why they wore them so openly, and they
answered: 'Because when we look at them we always remember that our
chief duty in life is to try to obey God's commands, and if we had them
tucked away out of sight we should forget to be obedient.' 'Besides,'
they said, 'we are commanded in the Torah to do so openly.' Then I told
them if we wore them so openly in Europe we should perhaps be laughed at
by some people and made fun of. They said: 'Why should doing so make us
be laughed at by other nations? Do we laugh at the symbols and charms
that many of them wear? Every nation,' they said, 'has its tokens and
symbols, and we Jews have ours, and we should rejoice in wearing ours
when they are to help us to feel that God is near us when we think and
act rightly.' All this made me think very seriously, a