June, but we kept the fire place piled with logs, And every day it rained. And every morning I heard the wind and rain among the leaves. Try as I would my spirits grew no better. What was it? Was I ill or sick in mind? I spent the whole day working with my hands, For there was brush to clear and corn to plant Between the gusts of rain; and there at night I sat about the room and hugged the fire. And the rain dripped and the wind blew, we shivered For cold and it was June. I ached all through For my hard labor, why did muscles grow not To hardness and cure body, if 'twere body, Or soul if it were soul? But there at night As I sat aching, worn, before the hour Of sleep, and restless in this interval Of nothingness, the silence out-of-doors, Timed by the dripping rain, and by the slap Of cards upon a table by a boarder Who passed the time in playing solitaire, Sometimes my ancient host would fill his pipe, And scrape away the dust of long past years To show me what had happened in his life. And as he smoked and talked his aged wife Would parallel his theme, as a brooks' branches Formed by a slender island, flow together. Or yet again she'd intercalate a touch, An episode or version. And sometimes He'd make her hush; or sometimes he'd suspend While she went on to what she wished to finish, When he'd resume. They talked together thus. He found the story and began to tell it, And she hung on his story, told it too. This night the rain came down in buckets full, And Claude who brought the logs in showed his breath Between the opening of the outer door And the swift on-rush of the room's warm air. And my host who had hoed the whole day long, Hearty at eighty years, sat with his pipe Reading the organ of the Adventists, His wife beside him knitting. On the table Are several magazines with their monthly grist Of stories and of pictures. O such stories! Who writes these stories? How does it happen people Are born into the world to read these stories? But anyway the lamp is very bad, And every bone in me aches—and why always Must one be either reading, knitting, talking? Why not sit quietly and think? At last Between the clicking needles and the slap Of cards upon the table and the swish Of rain upon the window my host speaks: "It says here when the Germans are defeated, And that means when the Turks are beaten too, The Christian world will take back Palestine, And drive the Turks out. God be praised, I hope so." "Amen" breaks in the wife. "May we both live To see the day. Perhaps you'll get your trunk back From Jaffa if the Allies win." To me The wife turns and goes on, "He has a trunk, At least his trunk went on to Jaffa, and It never came back. The bishop's trunk came back, But his trunk never came." And then the husband: "What are you saying, mother, you go on As if our friend here knew the story too. And then you talk as if our hope of the war Was centered on recovering that trunk." "Oh, not at all But if the Allies win, and the trunk is there In Jaffa you might get it back. You know You'll never get it back while infidels Rule Palestine." The husband says to me: "It looks as if she thought that trunk of mine, Which went to Jaffa fifty years ago, Is in existence yet, when chances are They kept it for awhile, and sold it off, Or threw it away." "They never threw it away. Why I made him a dozen shirts or more, And knitted him a lot of lovely socks, And made him neck-ties, and that trunk contained Everything that a man might need in absence A year from home. And yet they threw it away!" "They might have done so." "But they never did, Perhaps they threw your cabinet tools away?" "They were too valuable." "Too valuable, Fine socks and shirts are worthless are they, yes." "Not worthless, but fine tools are valuable." He turns to me: "I lost a box of tools Sent on to Jaffa, too. The scheme was this: To work at cabinet making while observing Conditions there in Palestine, and get ready To drive the Turks from Palestine." What's this? I rub my eyes and wake up to this story. I'm here in Illinois, in a farmer's house Who boards stray fishermen, and takes me in. And in a moment Turks and Palestine, And that old dream of Louis the Saint arise And show me how the world is small, and a man Native to Illinois may travel forth And mix his life with ancient things afar. To-day be raising corn here and next month Walking the streets of Jaffa, in MycenÆ, Digging for Grecian relics. So I asked "Were you in Palestine?" And the wife spoke quick: "He didn't get there, that's the joke of it." And the husband said: "It wasn't such a joke. You see it was this way, myself and the bishop, He lived in Springfield, I in Pleasant Plains, Had planned to meet in Switzerland." "Montreaux" The wife broke in. "Montreaux" the husband added. "You said you two had planned it," she went on. Now looking over specks and speaking louder: "The bishop came to him, he planned it out. My husband didn't plan the trip at all. He knows the bishop planned it." Then the husband: "Oh for that matter he spoke of it first, And I acceded and we worked it out. He was to go ahead of me, I was To come in later, soon as I could raise What funds my congregation could afford To spare for this adventure." "Guess," she said, "How much it was." I shook my head and she Said in a lowered and a tragic voice: "Four hundred dollars, and you can believe It strapped his church to raise so great a sum. And if they hadn't thought that Christ would come Scarcely before the plan could be put through Of winning back the Holy Land, that sum Had never been made up and put in gold For him to carry in a chamois belt." And then the husband said: "Mother, be still, I'll tell our friend the story if you'll let me." "I'm done," she said. "I wanted to say that. Go on," she said. And so he started over: "The bishop came to me and said he thought The Advent would be June of seventy-six. This was the winter of eighteen seventy-one. He said he had a dream; and in this dream An angel stood beside him, told him so, And told him to get me and go to Jaffa, And live there, learn the people and the country, We were to live disguised the better to learn The people and the country. I was to work At my trade as a cabinet maker, he At carpentry, which was his trade, and so No one would know us, or suspect our plan. And thus we could live undisturbed and work, And get all things in readiness, that in time The Lord would send us power, and do all things. We were the messengers to go ahead And make the ways straight, so I told her of it." "You told me, yes, but my trust was as great As yours was in the bishop, little the good To tell me of it." "Well, I told you of it. And she said, 'If the Lord commands you so You must obey.' And so she knit the socks And made that trunk of things, as she has said, And in six weeks I sailed from Philadelphia." "'Twas nearer two months," said the wife. "Perhaps, Somewhere between six weeks and that. The bishop Left Springfield in a month from our first talk. I knew, for I went over when he left. And I remember how his poor wife cried, And how the children cried. He had a family Of some eight children." "Only seven then, The son named David died the year before." "Mother, you're right, 'twas seven children then. The oldest was not more than twelve, I think, And all the children cried, and at the train His congregation almost to a man Was there to see him off." "Well, one was missing. You know, you know," the wife said pregnantly. "I'll come to that in time, if you'll be still. Well, so the bishop left, and in six weeks, Or somewhere there, I started for Montreaux To meet the bishop. Shipped ahead my trunk To Jaffa as the bishop did. But now I must tell you my dream. The night before I reached Montreaux I had a wondrous dre
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