No other omission has been allowed, for if one author leaned far to one side in certain debatable questions the other has been equally partisan for the opposite side, except a cerement on religion in general and discussion of the world-wide social evil were eliminated as having no particular Philippine bearing to excuse their appearance in a popular work.

We skirted high walls, wayside pools, and dripping mill-wheels; then one of the city gates engulfed us, and we were in the waste spaces of intramural Fez, formerly the lines of defense of a rich and perpetually menaced city, now chiefly used for refuse-heaps, open-air fondaks, and dreaming-places for rows of Lazaruses rolled in their cerements in the dust.

The nation found the times ripe at last for the final process of this historic evolution; the dead cerements of Judaism fell apart, and thereout bloomed that perfect flower of religion, the religion of the Christ, simple, free, ethical, spiritual.

In the vision of beautiful things we forget the troubles of conscience, as the first sinners hid themselves amid the leaves and flowers of Paradise; in fashion and splendor we forget our guilty sorrow, as medieval mourners sometimes concealed their cerements with raiment of purple and gold; in the noises of the world we become oblivious of the interior discords, as soldiers forget their wounds amid the stir and trumpets of the battle.