It is a glorious trip when you make it in an automobile. Ten days of travel are reduced to one, and ten days' interesting sights are compressed into twelve brief hours.

This morning I left the town called Nazareth. Our motor car snorted past a well, the only one in the old city. Who can doubt that the wife of a Nazarene carpenter once came here to draw water? A child- - doubtless often accompanied her. Above the well cluster the buildings of the town, white in their frame of verdure, straggling away at last to loftier heights crowned by churches and cloisters. It is not an Oriental, but rather a Tuscan landscape, with its pale green glow of silvery olive-orchards. The thought has come back to me a thousand times to-day, how truly the great artists of the Renaissance conceived the Holy Land when they painted it.

Arab Christian women stand by the well with water-jars on their heads. All the guidebooks say they look like Madonnas; Mark Twain thought not, however; and I agree with Mark. Perhaps it was the speed of our automobile for an automobile conceals as well as reveals but I did not detect one beautiful face among the women of Nazareth.

An hour later our car speeds through a pretty village where fire-red pomegranate trees are in full bloom. Church

bells are ringing. It is Cana, the Cana of the wedding. The wooded mountain that looks down upon us is Mount Tabor. A passing motor-car does not profane this country more than the bare feet of a holy pilgrim, for there is no abiding reality in this ever-changing landscape; it lingers a moment on our vision, then vanishes like an illusion into its century-hallowed past. Yes, that was Cana. Could I carry away a truer memory of it than this fleeting vision gave?

The road dips downward between bright green hills, winding through a delirious wealth of field flowers on either hand. I catch a magic glimpse of glittering silver in the distance snow like that which rests upon my native Austrian peaks. It is Mount Hermon. And now behold a broad lake, blue as the heavens it reflects — Gennesaret!

At a point where a path diverges from the carefully kept highway to a village on the border of the lake, a band of Arab nomads turn aside. The men are clad in billowy mantles. Their faces glow like bronze beneath the shadow of their hoods. Instead of weapons, which are now forbidden, they carry stout staves in their hands. The few women in the party wear no veils, but are tattooed with bluish lines upon the face and hands. Among them, one red-haired girl with glowing

eyes, whose glance seems to burn when she gazes at me. It was thus the Italians painted Mary Magdalene. Thus Titian made her hair. Thus Correggio made her eyes. And the village below is Magdala.

A motor car is a miracle- above all, in Palestine. For the Holy Land is small, and an automobile brings out its sharp contrasts. We left a chilly spring morning at Nazareth; at Tiberias, in a hollow six hundred feet or more below the level of the sea, we meet the summer of the tropics. I decide that a tropical night is probably pleasanter than a tropical noon, and bid my chauffeur speed on to a cooler climate. A slight pressure on the accelerator, and we are there, northward in the mountains.

As I write these words, I feel only too keenly how impotent they are to paint what I see. Can the word 'lake' convey the impression of this holy Lake of Galilee, sparkling like turquoise under the snow of Mount Hermon? It is, to be sure, a body of water. A steamer is crossing it at this moment toward the railway station. Rowboats with tourists are visible near Capernaum. Water is water; there is excellent fishing here. But is not its surface furrowed forever with the wake of a certain skiff, that belonged to the fisherman Simon, named Peter? The city of Tiberias is an Oriental town with flat roofs, a German hotel, and a public park. In the park lie the capitals of the pillars that King Herod had erected here in honor of Emperor Tiberius. In yonder white tombs lie the remains of the great rabbis, Maimonides, Jochanan, Ben Sakkai, and Akiba. Jewish masons are erecting a new suburb of black lava-stone, which for variety's sake they are naming not after Emperor Tiberius but after the High Commissioner Herbert Samuel. Indeed, there are three cities here:

the city of dim antiquity, the city of to-day, the city of the future. And yonder mountain is the Mount of the Sermon!

The title of a book by Pierre Loti, that I read hastily many years ago, keeps echoing in my ears: La Galilée au printemps - Galilee in springtime. Those who have only seen our Alpine meadows turning green beneath the retreating snows have no idea what spring is here. In a brief month the land will be burned brown again. The scanty trees will have shed their foliage. The stones will project from between the fallen leaves. Hardly a green thing will be visible, except where industrious Jewish colonists have planted gardens. But just now nature seems intoxicated, half-hysterical in her prolific exuberance. My little Overland car, a splendid climber, bears me up steep ascents over which every color in the universe seems to have been poured by a recklessly prodigal hand. There are a hundred shades of green alone; it is the predominant color, as everywhere in nature, but it is often submerged under the brilliant glory of the wild flowers. Yes, there are miles of glistening yellow anemones, then wide stretches of steel-gray aconite. Am I mad? Is it possible? Blue mountains whole mountains of blue, like fragments of a mirror dropped from heaven, cascades of violet draping the declivities. Then red spots, as if the soil were saturated with blood or clad in a cardinal's purple robe. When I tell you it is red poppies, I mislead you. Do not imagine such poppies as we have in our meadows; they are entirely different. For the blue of the gentian does not resemble the blue of the forget-me-not less than the red of these poppies resembles the red of our poppies at home.

yes,

The flowers lash teasingly at the

wheels as our car speeds past. Grazing sheep are buried to their backs in this vast bouquet. A long line of camels lurches grotesquely through the brilliant pattern. The intoxication of this riot of vivid spring color is indescribable.

My motor car bears me aloft to Mount Safed, three thousand feet above the lake that I seem hardly to have left behind me. A little mountaintown, half Arab and half Jewish, lies nestled under the silvery olive trees. I order the car to slow down, for my ears catch the rhythm of pipes and cymbals. An Arab marriage-procession marches — no, dances up a steep path, across which a little stream flows. Before I come up with it, the procession disappears in a large residence. Distant melodies from the Arabian Nights still linger faintly in the air. We reach a market place surrounded by Oriental merchant-stalls, coffee-houses and cook-shops. Syrian traders are selling bright fabrics from Damascus, unhappily, previously from Manchester, - bright camel

housings embroidered with cowrie shells, mule-girths, red shoes, and women's veils, gold-embroidered. get but a glimpse of these as we hasten past.

The road descends again. A stop for luncheon at the Jewish colony Roche Pinna, at a patriarchal inn such as might be found in any Galician village, except that the table is adorned with lemon blossoms. This is one of the old colonies that I do not like, in spite of its magnificent gardens. I am surrounded by ghetto and petty bourgeois Jews. But I have my automobile. In a few minutes I am away in a quite different world - Mahanaim Farm, where young Socialists, burning with intellectual enthusiasm, are starting a new life in the shadows of a magnificent eucalyptus grove. They

live in a rude cabin where they spend their evenings discussing all the problems of mankind. Their hard labor is working wonders with their new soil.

After a brief pause I am again on my way through a low marshland lying still farther to the north. A river now accompanies the route: it is the Jordan. This is the region between Lake Galilee and Lake Huleh. We pass another Jewish colony, and come to an ancient stone bridge. Beyond the river lies unbroken desert.

My chauffeur stops at the bridge. Two armed sentries approach, one wearing the lambskin cap of an AngloArabian gendarme, and another a uniform I do not recognize. My chauffeur asks: 'Have you a visa? This is the road to Damascus. We can get there in two hours, but the French gendarme won't let us pass without a visa.'

I have no visa. I shall never see Damascus.

My automobile stops in the marshes by Lake Huleh. Great stretches of papyrus, wild buffaloes, Arab gypsies, a dilapidated mud-village. It is impossible to proceed farther, to the northern settlements that lie on the border, under the snowy peaks of Lebanon. So we hasten to turn back before the gnats and mosquitoes de

vour us.

Yes, back to Tiberias. Evening is descending. The heat of the day is over. On the shore of the lake, not far from the village of Magdala, an impressive-looking young man on a fine Arabian steed meets me. He invites me to visit the farm that he is managing. He is a Jew, born in Palestine but reared and educated in France and French North Africa, and he is an expert in tropical agriculture. Magdal Farm is the private property of some Russian Jews, who were very wealthy before the war. Now this estate on

the Sea of Galilee is all that remains of their former vast fortunes. My guide is operating the place with the help of seventy Jewish laborers.

Here, under the palms, I revel again in tropical nature, for the first time since I left Ceylon. A magnificent avenue of Californian Washingtons, the most beautiful palms that grow, leads out to broad orchards where oranges, grapefruits, papayas, and mangoes, are in bloom. Great bamboos, as thick as a man's body, tower out of the jungle. I push forward,

along a path hedged in by impenetrable thickets, to the shore of the lake. My companion's spirited horse gallops ahead. I am left alone for a moment.

Yonder is the sun, setting behind the pearly water. It is an hour for silence. Life loses its reality. If I were to see One walking toward me over that water, how easily I could believe the miracle!

A spring day in Galilee explains so much that I never understood before. Here goodness and wisdom mightand must enlighten the world.

FRENCH public affairs of the last three weeks have caused sad uneasiness in England. It was not the occupation of the Ruhr that caused the uneasiness, but the strike of the cousettes. With the marriage of the Duke of York in prospect, what would become of the two hundred dresses that the English Court was expecting from the ChampsÉlysées or the rue de la Paix?

Heroic measures were required. One saw directresses take up the needles that their working girls had abandoned and spend toilsome nights with them. Others crossed the Channel in order to superintend the completion in London of toilettes that had been delayed here. It was through this enthusiasm and in

genuity that Paris once more upheld her reputation. At Westminster Abbey, as well as at Buckingham Palace, our French models dazzled all beholders.

There is no reason to smile at this victory, which is by no means so frivolous as it may seem. Just as other countries export coal or agricultural machinery, we French export elegance. Our manufacturers of luxuries reëstablish the trade-balance even while they are spreading French influence abroad. Last week L'Illustration described the cruise in distant seas of the French warvessels, Jules-Michelet and Victor Hugo. On board these ships were some marvelous models - parts of the exhibits in the Salon du gout français, which re

produced the latest creations of our couturiers, our modistes, our jewelers, and our artists in furniture and interior decoration. These These exhibitions will spread the reputation of France quite as much as the appearance of our sailors at Melbourne, Sydney, or Yokohama. Our diplomats, our writers, our painters, and our actresses are not the only ones that make our culture known throughout the world. Wherever ladies dress à la française, people are already beginning to think à la française. In both hemispheres we have efficient ambassadors whose names are Worth, Paquin, Jenny, and Paul Poiret.

Such considerations no doubt did not greatly concern the premières mains, the secondes mains, and the petites mains who assembled at the Bourse du Travail to demand increases in their pay. But since an agreement has been reached and the workshops have resumed their feverish activity, there is an excellent opportunity-now that now that they have left the first page of the newspapers to find our way into those workshops whose patrons themselves rarely see them except superficially.

The entrance is not necessarily very imposing, in spite of the gold-braided usher who leads you as far as the elevator. At the door of the salons a maître de céans receives you. Young girls in neat attire, the saleswomen, come hurrying up. It takes a few minutes to get used to the hum and bustle of this hive of industry, this mixture of a society affair with effervescent chatter (one's eyes instinctively search the table for tea and cakes), of the lobby of a big hotel with its mingling of languages, and of a theatre. Brief and mysterious phrases and hurried calls ring out: 'Schéhérazade wanted'; 'Bring Vésuve and Desdémone.' The mannequins, with their graceful walk, appear, turn, stop, disappear, and appear again with a new gown, all with a gentle

indifference, without nerves and without thought.

Styles and fashions mingle in picturesque, paradoxical confusion. The street suit stands side by side with an elaborate evening-cloak. In one corner a designer is making sketches for an American magazine. Here is a buyer, arrived this morning from New York or Buenos Aires, notebook in hand, making notes. Ladies are judging, criticizing, questioning, and hesitating. The methods of persuasion are engaging and the flattery is audacious: 'But no, madame, I assure you, you are no heavier than the mannequin. With such a complexion you can wear anything.'

Other remarks even more piquant are exchanged: 'You want to Séduction again? But you said yesterday you did not like it.'

'Yes, but I had a friend along then: if she had imagined that I liked it she would have wanted it herself.'

The order is finally made, written down, and work begun. Two or three fittings, and the dress will be delivered to its happy owner. Nothing more remains for her except, of course, to pay the bill, which she does not always do as quickly as she might. But she can wear it with pride at the theatre or the Opéra. She will watch the approving glances of the men and a still keener satisfaction- the envious eyes of the ladies. With an air of indifference and the negligent uttering of a name she will reply to the question, 'Where did you get that?' and perhaps she will never know how much creative genius and originality 'that' represents, and what industrial organization was required before her costume could come into being.

To create this is the business of the great couturier. While others are following the fashion, he is making it. Here is a subject for a psychologist,