In a great pit lay the mate of the largest stone in the ruins.

It lay there just as the giants of that old forgotten time had left it when they were called hence--just as they had left it, to remain for thousands of years, an eloquent rebuke unto such as are prone to think slightingly of the men who lived before them.

This enormous block lies there, squared and ready for the builders' hands--a solid mass fourteen feet by seventeen, and but a few inches less than seventy feet long! Two buggies could be driven abreast of each other, on its surface, from one end of it to the other, and leave room enough for a man or two to walk on either side.
One might swear that all the John Smiths and George Wilkinsons, and all the other pitiful nobodies between Kingdom Come and Baalbec would inscribe their poor little names upon the walls of Baalbec's magnificent ruins, and would add the town, the county and the State they came from -- and swearing thus, be infallibly correct.

It is a pity some great ruin does not fall in and flatten out some of these reptiles, and scare their kind out of ever giving their names to fame upon any walls or monuments again, forever.
Properly, with the sorry relics we bestrode, it was a three days' journey to Damascus.

It was necessary that we should do it in less than two.
It was necessary because our three pilgrims would not travel on the Sabbath day.