THE GATES OF THE CITY The men I met coming from Jerusalem reported all sorts of contradictory impressions; and yet my own impression contradicted them all.

Their impressions were doubtless as true as mine; but I describe my own because it is true, and because I think it points to a neglected truth about the real Jerusalem.

I need not say I did not expect the real Jerusalem to be the New Jerusalem; a city of charity and peace, any more than a city of chrysolite and pearl.
I might more reasonably have expected an austere and ascetic place, oppressed with the weight of its destiny, with no inns except monasteries, and these sealed with the terrible silence of the Trappists; an awful city where men speak by signs in the street.
I did not need the numberless jokes about Jerusalem to-day, to warn me against expecting this; anyhow I did not expect it, and certainly I did not find it.

But neither did I find what I was much more inclined to expect; something at the other extreme.
Many reports had led me to look for a truly cosmopolitan town, that is a truly conquered town.

I looked for a place like Cairo, containing indeed old and interesting things, but open on every side to new and vulgar things; full of the touts who seem only created for the tourists and the tourists who seem only created for the touts.
There may be more of this in the place than pleases those who would idealise it.