Daisy In The Field

"Well?3 - said he tenderly, stroking my hair, "what is it? I

would keep all trouble from you, my pet, if I could."

"Papa," I whispered, "that may not be best. We must leave

that. But papa, if you only knew what I know and were glad as

I am glad, - I think I could bear all the rest!"

"How shall I be glad as you are glad, Daisy?" he said, half

sadly.

"Papa, let Jesus make you happy!"

"You are talking Hebrew, my child."

"No, papa; for if you seek Him, He will make you happy."

"Come! we will seek him from to-day," my father said.

And that was my summer on Lebanon. My mother wrote that she

would not join us in Syria; she preferred to remain in Paris,

where she had my aunt Gary's company and could receive the

American news regularly. Her words were bitter and scornful

about the successes of the Northern army and McClellan's

fruitless siege of Yorktown; so bitter, that papa and I passed

them over without a word of comment, knowing how they bore on

my possible future.

But we, we studied the Bible, and we lived on Lebanon. And

when I have said that, I have said all. From one village to

another, higher and higher up, we went; pitching our tents

under the grand old walnut trees, within sight or hearing of

mountain torrents that made witcheries of beauty in the deep

ravines; studying sunrisings, when the light came over the

mountain's brow and lit our broken hillside by degrees, our

walnut tree tops and the thread of the rushing stream; and

sunsets, when the sun looked at us from the far-off

Mediterranean and touched no spot of Lebanon but to make a

glorified place of it. With Mr. Dinwiddie we took rides to

different scenes of wonder and beauty; made excursions

sometimes of a week or two long; we dreamed at Baalbec and

rejoiced under the Cedars. Everywhere papa and I read the

Bible. Mr. Dinwiddie left us for some time during the summer,

and returned again a few days before we left Lebanon and

Syria.

"So you are going to-morrow" - he said the last evening, as he

and I were watching the sunset from the edge of the ravine

which bordered our camping-ground. I made no answer, for my

heart was too full.

"It has been a good summer," he said. I bowed my head in

assent.

"And now," he said, "you push out into the world again. I feel

about you as I did when I saw your little craft just starting

forth, and knew there were breakers ahead."

"You do not know that now, Mr. Dinwiddie?" I said.

"I know there are rocks. If the sea should let you pass them

in quiet, it would be a wonder."