knows how they got there. I have hunted up the guide-books, and the gist
of what they say is this: "They are there, but how they got there is a
mystery."

Twenty-five years ago, a multitude of people in America put on their
ascension robes, took a tearful leave of their friends, and made ready to
fly up into heaven at the first blast of the trumpet. But the angel did
not blow it. Miller's resurrection day was a failure. The Millerites
were disgusted. I did not suspect that there were Millers in Asia Minor,
but a gentleman tells me that they had it all set for the world to come
to an end in Smyrna one day about three years ago. There was much
buzzing and preparation for a long time previously, and it culminated in
a wild excitement at the appointed time. A vast number of the populace
ascended the citadel hill early in the morning, to get out of the way of
the general destruction, and many of the infatuated closed up their shops
and retired from all earthly business. But the strange part of it was
that about three in the afternoon, while this gentleman and his friends
were at dinner in the hotel, a terrific storm of rain, accompanied by
thunder and lightning, broke forth and continued with dire fury for two
or three hours. It was a thing unprecedented in Smyrna at that time of
the year, and scared some of the most skeptical. The streets ran rivers
and the hotel floor was flooded with water. The dinner had to be
suspended. When the storm finished and left every body drenched through
and through, and melancholy and half-drowned, the ascensionists came down
from the mountain as dry as so many charity-sermons! They had been
looking down upon the fearful storm going on below, and really believed
that their proposed destruction of the world was proving a grand success.

A railway here in Asia--in the dreamy realm of the Orient--in the fabled
land of the Arabian Nights--is a strange thing to think of. And yet they