198 I GO A-FISHING. 



pany. Travel in the older countries warms and opens 

 the heart. Do you remember that moonlight at Bethel, 

 when every rock was like a tent, and there were Jacob's 

 ladders reaching up to the sky on every side of us ? Do 

 you not remember how it made all our hearts as soft as 

 the hearts of young children ? It was always so with me 

 in the East. Strangers could not be happy together in 

 such travel. You must have longed every moment for 

 one or two or more companions to whom you could talk 

 out all you felt. How many times I have seen you lie 

 down on the ground, face up to the evening sky, back 

 pressed on the turf, as if you were growing fast to it, and 

 then pouring out your rhapsodies. You will never travel 

 so joyously and freely again, unless we all go together." 



" Alas, dear Madam, that can never be in this world," 

 said John, and we were all silent for a little. Then he 

 added : "I think you are more than half right I know 

 you are altogether right. Eastern travel is different, in 

 that respect, from all other. The drafts made on the 

 thinking faculties are enormous. And not alone on the 

 thinking faculties, but especially on the believing facul- 

 ties. Sometimes I think faith is as distinct a faculty as 

 memory. I am sure it is as distinct as conscience, for 

 conscience is in reality but the judgment on comparison 

 with a standard, and faith is much the same mental act, 

 with the exception that it seems sometimes instinctive, or 

 say inspired. All over the Eastern world every step brings 

 some new object for faith, and faith yields or refuses to 

 yield by an involuntary process. It is quick swift as 

 lightning sometimes, and it is the special happiness of 

 travel, where the mind is thus occupied, to have compan- 

 ions to whom one may talk freely of the objects and ef- 

 fects of faith, seen and unseen as well. It would be little 



