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The Curious Republic of Gondour, and Other Whimsical Sketches by Mark Twain
page 26 of 63 (41%)



CURIOUS RELIC FOR SALE

"For sale, for the benefit of the Fund for the Relief of the Widows
and Orphans of Deceased Firemen, a Curious Ancient Bedouin Pipe,
procured at the city of Endor in Palestine, and believed to have
once belonged to the justly-renowned Witch of Endor. Parties
desiring to examine this singular relic with a view to purchasing,
can do so by calling upon Daniel S.. 119 and 121 William street, New
York"

As per advertisement in the "Herald." A curious old relic indeed, as I
had a good personal right to know. In a single instant of time, a long
drawn panorama of sights and scenes in the Holy Land flashed through my
memory--town and grove, desert, camp, and caravan clattering after each
other and disappearing, leaping me with a little of the surprised and
dizzy feeling which I have experienced at sundry times when a long
express train has overtaken me at some quiet curve and gone whizzing, car
by car, around the corner and out of sight. In that prolific instant I
saw again all the country from the Sea of Galilee and Nazareth clear to
Jerusalem, and thence over the hills of Judea and through the Vale of
Sharon to Joppa, down by the ocean. Leaving out unimportant stretches of
country and details of incident, I saw and experienced the following
described matters and things. Immediately three years fell away from my
age, and a vanished time was restored to me September, 1867. It was a
flaming Oriental day--this one that had come up out of the past and
brought along its actors, its stage-properties, and scenic effects--and
our party had just ridden through the squalid hive of human vermin which
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