Rensselaer Standard, Volume 1, Number 15, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 27 September 1879 — A House in Damascus. [ARTICLE]

A House in Damascus.

“Irene the Missionary’/ inJSepteraber Atlantic. They traversed the luxuriant verdure. and variegated bloom of the Bukaa, and camped for the night amid the venerable solemnities of Baalbec. Next day, onward .through Anti Lebanon, a widespread and rugged and arid upland, with one winding valley of moderate fertility and one thread of crystal river. At last they stood on the bare, rounded knoll where one looks down from the desert of mountain upon the desert of the great ashy plain of Damascus, with its stripe of sparkling green marking the course of the Barida, and, half-hidden therein.! the gray city of Hazael. By nightfall they were housed in a mansion which looked to Irene’s wondering eyes as if it had been taken out of the Arabian Nights. “I think that Aladdin must have built it,” she wrote in her first letter to DeVries. “Outside it is nothing but shapeless, unburnt brick, daubed with gray slime; but inside it is all marble, fountains, wood-carving, stained glass, fresco and painting. The great court (or it is a hollow square) is paved with white and black marble, and has a marble fountain of bubbling water in the center. There is another fountain in an alcove, and a third in the principal saloon. This saloon consists of four rooms, each over twenty feet square, and opening into each other by Saracenic arches twenty-five feet high. The arches and the walls are decorated with an infinity of kaleidoscope pictures, in the richest of colors. The beams and cross slats of the ceiling are richly carved, gaily painted and lavishly gilded. The ceiling of the center room (around which the other three are clustered) cannot be less than forty feet above the marble pavement. “The floors of the outer rooms are slightly elevated, and have each their mukaad running along the wall, covered with broad mattresses and cushions. The very simplicity and scantiness of furniture make the great fourfold apartment seem the larger and more magnificent. I never in my life saw or imagined anything so deserving ol the word palatial. Do you wonder what right a missionary has to such a mansion of gk.ry? Well, in the first place, the saloon will serve for a chapel; in the second place, the rent is only $l3O a year. Mr. Payson shakes hu good head over our native helper for having taken such a palace; but we women believe that It was a wise step, and have So told the poor man in my poor Arabic."