sleep. This Sabbath of forty hours' duration is absolutely
unparalleled in any other City of the world. There is no other place,
there never has been any other place, in which not only work ceases,
but where the workers also disappear. In that far-off City of the
Rabbis called Sambatyon, where live the descendants of the Ten Tribes,
the river which surrounds and protects the City with its broad and
mighty flood, too strong for boats to cross, ceases to flow on the
Sabbath; but it is not pretended that the people cease to live there.
Of no other City can it be said that it sleeps from Saturday night
till Monday morning.

An attempt is made to awaken the City every Sunday morning when the
bells begin to ring, and there is as great and joyful a ringing from
every church tower or steeple as if the bells were calling the
faithful, as of old, by the hundred thousand; they go on ringing
because it is their duty; they were hung up there for no other
purpose; hidden away in the towers, they do not know that the people
have all gone away, and that they ring to empty houses and deserted
streets. For there is no response. At most one may see a solitary
figure dressed in black stuff creeping stealthily along like a ghost
on her way from the empty house to the empty church. When the bells
leave off silence falls again, there is no one in the street. One's
own footsteps echo from the wall; we walk along in a dream; old words
and old rhymes crowd into the brain. It is a dead City--a City newly
dead--we are gazing upon the dead.

Life and thought have gone away
Side by side.
All within is dark as night.
In the windows is no light;