TWELVE years ago a little boy, only thirteen years old, stood bidding his mother good-by.

He was going a long journey with strangers across the ocean, to stay a good many years. He didn’t know how long it would be before he should see his dear father and mother again.

He had very black eyes and hair, and beautiful white teeth, and his skin was somewhat darker than yours when you’ve been playing bareheaded in the sun. For the rest, he was a little Armenian boy, born and reared in Turkey, and speaking the Armenian language. His father was a native preacher in Thyatira.

And now this boy was to take a long, long journey to America to be educated, so that he might come back to work for the Jesus whom he loved so much.

It was very hard to say good-by for so long a time, but at last it was over, and the boy went down to the great ship that was to carry him over the ocean, trying to choke back the tears that would rise when he thought of his home and father and mother and playmates, and the missionaries whom he loved so much. So he knelt down by his little bed in the ship, and begged the dear Heavenly Father to go with him. Then there came a sweet verse to him to cheer him: “Fear thou not, neither be thou dismayed, for the Lord thy God is with thee, whithersoever thou goest.”

He was very much bewildered when he landed in this country, at all the bustle and hurry, and the strange language.

He was put immediately into school, and went to work at the English language.

“Did you find it hard?” I asked him, not long since.

“Hard! I should think I did,” he answered. “Your language is so queer! See that horse tied to a tree. It is ‘fast.’ And yet if he is running at full speed you call him ‘fast.’ That window is locked. You say it is ‘fast,’ but so is the young man that smokes and drinks, and wears flashy neckties and carries a cane. It was a great puzzle to me at first. It has taken me all these twelve years to learn it.”

The boy has worked hard, and is a fine scholar.

Five years ago he went back to his own country and spent a year in Smyrna among the Greeks, and now if you chance to have the pleasure of spending an evening in his company, he may take his guitar and sing to you the wild, sweet melodies of the Greeks, with their soft, musical syllables, and I’m sure you’ll be delighted with them.

Perhaps, too, he may give you the Turkish call to go to Jerusalem, and describe the caravan of Armenians as they start on their pilgrimage to the Holy City, with a young man ahead on a beautifully-adorned camel, his head thrown back, his hands clasped at the back of his neck, and singing out the weird call which means something like this:

“Come all ye people! Let us go up to visit Jerusalem! It will please all the saints! I have sold all my vast estates to fit me out for the journey. I have given up everything! Be not behind your leader! Come, let us go up and we shall be saved!”

He will tell you, too, of his little brother, who has just started to this country to be educated. How often he will jump upon some barrel or box in the street and imitate the Mohammedan call to prayer, with such exactness that his mother is obliged to pull him down quickly and take him into the house lest some angry Mohammedan should seize him and punish him for his fun.

The young man is now studying medicine and expects to return to his own country soon, to begin work for his Master.

Shall we not all pray that his work may be blest, and that many may be brought to Jesus through him?

There is a little fable which says that one digging in the earth found a lump of fragrant clay, and asked, “Whence thy fragrance?” “One laid me on a rose,” was the answer. So he who lies on the bosom of Christ and abides in Him will be struck with His fragrance, His spirit of love and holiness, and wherever He goes will shed rich spiritual influence.—Presbyterian.