The Ship-Dwellers. Albert Bigelow Paine

ETERNALLY EAST WITH NO HINT OF THE OUTSIDE WORLD TWO BENT, WRINKLED WOMEN WEAVING LACE OUTSIDE THE DOOR WE LOOKED ACROSS THE ENTRANCE AND THERE ROSE THE ACROPOLIS, HIGH AGAINST THE BLUE HE WOULD SWING HIS ARMS AND BEGIN, "YOU SEE—!" THE REST REQUIRED A MIND-READER I WOULD HAVE APPLIED FOR THE POSITION IN THE CHORUS MYSELF TOOK TURNS ADDRESSING THE MULTITUDE ONE'S AGE, STATED ON OATH, GOES WITH A PASSPORT KEYEFF I WANTED TO CARRY AWAY ONE OF THOSE TOMBSTONES ALL THE PLAINS AND SLOPES OF THE OLD CITY, WITH ITS WHITE FRAGMENTS AND POOR RUINED HARBOR, LAY AT OUR FEET FROM THE TIME OF ADAM, BAALBEC BECAME A PLACE OF ALTARS SO THE PATRIARCHS JOURNEYED; SO, TWO THOUSAND YEARS LATER, JOSEPH AND MARY TRAVELLED INTO EGYPT URGING US TO PARTAKE OF THE PRECIOUS STUFF, WITHOUT STINT ASKED HIM IF HE WOULDN'T EXECUTE A LITTLE COMMISSION FOR ME IN THE BAZAARS THE PATRIARCH KNEW ALL ABOUT JAFFA JERUSALEM—ITS BUBBLE-ROOFED HOUSES AND DOMES, ITS CYPRESS AND OLIVE TREES A CAMEL TRAIN LED THE WAY THROUGH THE GATES THE DEPTH OF THEIR FALL THE WAY OF THE CROSS THE TRUE GOLGOTHA—THE PLACE OF THE SKULL A VAST INDIFFERENCE TO ALL PUNY THINGS SANCTUARY IN KARNAK GADDIS I MADE A PICTURE OF THE FLY-BRUSH BRIGADE ITS MAGNIFICENT PYLONS OR ENTRANCE WALLS … AND THEN ONCE MORE WE WERE ON THE DONKEYS THE TEMPLE OF LUXOR … ONCE MORE REFLECTING ITS COLUMNS IN THE NILE THINK OF WATERING A WHOLE WHEAT-FIELD WITH A WELL-SWEEP AND A PAIL GOT IT MADE CHEAP SOMEWHERE, WITH HER PICTURE CARVED ON THE FRONT OF IT SET OUT ON THE LONG, STEADY, ATLANTIC SWING

THE SHIP-DWELLERS

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      "The grand object of all travel is to see the shores of the Mediterranean."

      —Dr. Samuel Johnson.

I

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THE BOOK, AND THE DREAM

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      It was a long time ago—far back in another century—that my father brought home from the village, one evening, a brand-new book. There were not so many books in those days, and this was a fine big one, with black and gilt covers, and such a lot of pictures!

      I was at an age to claim things. I said the book was my book, and, later, petitioned my father to establish that claim. (I remember we were climbing through the bars at the time, having driven the cows to the further pasture.)

      My father was kindly disposed, but conservative; that was his habit. He said that I might look at the book—that I might even read it, some day, when I was old enough, and I think he added that privately I might call it mine—a privilege which provided as well for any claim I might have on the moon.

      I don't think these permissions altogether satisfied me. I was already in the second reader, and the lust of individual ownership was upon me. Besides, this was a New Pilgrim's Progress. We had respect in our house for the old Pilgrim's Progress, and I had been encouraged to search its pages. I had read it, or read at it, for a good while, and my claim of ownership in that direction had never been disputed. Now, here was a brand-new one, and the pictures in it looked most attractive. I was especially enamoured of the frontispiece, "The Pilgrim's Vision," showing the "Innocents" on their way "abroad," standing on the deck of the Quaker City and gazing at Bible pictures in the sky.

      I do not remember how the question of ownership settled itself. I do remember how the book that winter became the nucleus of our family circle, and how night after night my mother read aloud from it while the rest of us listened, and often the others laughed.

TO ME IT WAS ALL TRUE, ALL ROMANCE—ALL POETRY

      I did not laugh—not then. In the first place, I would not, in those days, laugh at any Pilgrim's Progress, especially at a new one, and then I had not arrived at the point of sophistication where a joke, a literary joke, registers. To me it was all true, all romance—all poetry—the story of those happy voyagers who sailed in a ship of dreams to lands beyond the sunrise, where men with turbans, long flowing garments and Bible whiskers rode on camels; where ruined columns rose in a desert that was once a city; where the Sphinx and the Pyramids looked out over the sands that had drifted about them long and long before the Wise Men of the East had seen the Star rise over Bethlehem.

      In the big, bleak farm-house on the wide, bleak Illinois prairie I looked into the open fire and dreamed. Some day, somehow, I would see those distant lands. I would sail away on that ship with "Dan" and "Jack" and "The Doctor" to the Far East; I would visit Damascus