Ireland Is Full of Priests

As soon as we touched down in Shannon I thought I glimpsed several priests hovering about the terminal, and I was right. A stout monsignor took my passport, another examined my luggage (though both wore official caps and badges in addition to their smocks).

What’s this? I wondered, some kind of cooperative venture between church and state? But I was more surprised when I started out with my luggage.

Take your bags, sir?” another priest accosted me, and whisked them away from the examiner' s table before I could object.

Following him through the door with difficulty--he had quite a lead-­I spied him relaying my bags quickly to another father, who threw them into his taxi, slapped his hands together, and whisked open the door for my entry.

“This way, please,” he smiled, a burly father even bigger than the monsignor examiner, I thought it best to simply cooperate. One thing that puzzled me was that when I tried to tip the priestly porter, he immediately shunned it, backed away, and seemed rather offended. It’s not money then? I asked myself. Then what in heaven’s name is it, this masquerade? I had read of the strong role the priesthood played in the lives of the Irish, but no mention was made of this kind of infiltration into the daily trades. Ah well, I considered, I’ll ask in Limerick.

We lurched pell-mell for the city as I enjoyed my baptism into left-lane driving, till suddenly a huge haywagon bore down on us and we veered by just to the left. The rickety, overloaded wagon and shag horses were terrible enough, but I was even more struck by ~ brief look at the driver, garbed in a priestly smock and a straw hat! We passed a road crew working in a wide ditch to our side of the road. They were bent with their shovels and picks, and, somewhat to my relief, I noted that they wore heavy woolen waistcoats and flat caps. But as we passed, one looked up absently and turned to watch us go by. I spied under his parted front the ubiquitous priestly collar, and couldn’t doubt the others were brothers of the same order.

But perhaps that’s it! I considered. This is all some kind of social gospel order of the priesthood, perhaps working without pay, maybe filling in for some severe labor shortage, though I can’t say I was very satisfied with my hypothesis.

Buildings of the town began to line the road, which soon became the main street. Now it was unquestionable; everyone on the sidewalks wherever one turned was a priest--everyone! Oh, some wore other habits as well, in keeping with their particular trades or stations, but I was by now totally baffled.

We pulled up to my hotel--I hadn’t said a word to the burly driver the entire trip--and he hastily placed my luggage on the walk. I was about to say something about the whole business, when suddenly two urchins, dressed, of all things, in monks’ habit, dashed from the doorway and snatched my suitcases, scurrying up into the hotel again before I could invent a suitable protest

My driver chuckled, “Heh-heh, they're quick, they are.”

“Yes, indeed,” I laughed. “Now, how much is my fare?”

“Oh no, no, please not,” he objected.

“No fare?” I confirmed, but simply could not stand the mystery any longer. “I beg your pardon,” I said, “but I’ve seen no one since touching down except--well--priests, nuns, and others of your faith.”

“Yes, of course,” the driver looked puzzled.

“Well, that is, where are the others, the laity, the parishioners?” I was afraid of sounding offensive.

“There are few damned here,” my man scowled. His manner intimidated further discussion.

“Oh, yes, of course,” I stammered, and traipsed in after my luggage, past a lobby fountain with a sign: “Help the poor of Ireland,” in which scattered coins lay against a lighted greenish glass bottom, and approached the main desk where I was not surprised to find another father tending business.

“Good morning,” he beamed. “Will you be staying long?”

His lesser size restored my courage and I plunged right to the heart of the matter. “Father, what’s going on around here? Why is everyone I see in some holy order?”

I watched a nun hurry by with a tray of tea for someone in an adjoining sitting room, wearing a white apron and small lace headpiece.

“You mean you don’t know our traditions?”

“Certainly not.”

“Oh dear, are you not among the saved?” he quivered.

“Well, I’m a Methodist, from America, if that’s what you mean,” I semi-apologized.

“My goodness!” the priestly manager flew into a frenzy, flinging his hands here and there, scurrying to and fro behind the desk, grabbing his cheeks and gasping. “Sister, Sister, get the Bishop here right away!” he cried.

A wiry old mitered head soon materialized before me. “You’re not one of us, my son?” he rasped.
“No,” I held firm.

“I see,” he worried. “How very unfortunate. I’m sorry that I must beg you to leave at once.”

“Leave? But I only just arrived,” I objected.

“No, it would not be proper--you see how things are,” he insisted. “There will be another plane leaving Shannon in--let’s see--in about a half-hour. That should give you just the right time to get there. Brother Flanagan, would you please have this man’s things brought to the door and summon a car right away.”

“But, your Grace,” I pleaded. “I simply don’t understand any of this. Why must everyone here be in the church in some official way?”

“Official way? No, my son--God’s way,” the old mitred head corrected with a smile and a wave of his ringed finger.

“But must every Irishman work for the church? every man, woman, and child——?”

“No one works for the church, my son,” he corrected again with a condescending smile. “All are the holy church.”

My flight rose as predicted, and my relief was indescribable to see a stewardess with no ecclesiastical garb whatever ask the passengers for their luncheon selection, shortly to be served.

When she reached me I saw my opportunity. “Miss?” I nearly whis­pered, though I saw no reason for subdued voice since among the other passengers I found not one hint of churchhood.

She listened politely, regarded me for a time, then simply laughed,

“Yes, Ireland is simply full of priests——everyone comments on it. Now, would you like sandwiches or a meal?”

As she took my order I thought I saw a small silver chain glint from under her uniform collar--a finely wrought, delicate one of the kind used to depend a crucifix.

One-Two-Three-Four

One-two-three-four, step-draw-close-tap, the dancer finished his routine with a sweeping bow and a tilt of the hat, Very precise he was, for a hoofer.

“Like Charlie Chaplin,” someone said. A bevy of blondes fawned about him.

“True, Chaplin,” someone else said.

“Take it again,” the cameraman motioned. Then I concentrated on the cameraman
and noticed that he had an equally precise choreography, moving rhythmically, parallel and equidistant to the hoofer, always head on, flinging the half-ton camera dolly about like a toy, duplicating each move, each nuance, suspending the pauses then leaning into a new flow in perfect imitation, But for the camera and the blondes, Chaplin may have been imitating him.

“So what do you make of it?” the man asked.

“Interesting,” I said. “But is this why you invited me aboard your private jet?l mean, why me?”

“You looked ‘right’ at the ticket counter. You seemed not to be going anywhere in par­ticular.”

True, I thought.

“Ever seen anything like this before?”

“No. I never noticed the cameraman’s moves.”

“Most don’t, but they’re essential.”

“Yes, I can see that now. The observer is active, integral to the performance.”

“He creates it,” the man said.

“So one needs to see the performance not through the observer’s eyes, but to see the observer seeing the performance?” I said.

“That’s it.” He lit a cigar and led me down the ramp.

“One thing—how did you get an entire soundstage in there?”

He looked at me. “I didn’t,” he said. “You did.”

I had to ponder that awhile. See the observer seeing the dancer, creating the dance, as it were.

“Create the observer also,” he said. “Look at it this way. Remember the old riddle about a tree falling in a forest with no one around?”

“Was there a sound?”

“Right,” he waited.

“Well, was there?”

Again he looked at me. I felt stupid.

“Of course not. You’re forgetting to create the observer.”

“Wait. A tree fell in a forest, and someone saw it fall and heard it fall. There. Now, did the tree fall, and did it make a noise?”

“Unquestionably!”

I looked him right in the eye. “But how can I know that?” I said.

“Know it? You just saw and heard it!”

“Okay. Now what if I had seen it fall, myself’?”

“Have you?”

“No, but—.”

“Then it didn’t.”

“But if I ever do see one fall—.”

“Ah, now you’re close. You’re beginning to see someone watch a tree fall.”

“Yes, me.

“Exactly.”

“And hear it crash to earth.”

“No, and hear yourself hear it crash to earth.”

I was quiet for awhile then, too.

“One last thing: who said that that guy danced like Chaplin?”

“You did.”

“I did not. Wait a minute—I made someone say it?”

He grinned.

“But why?”

“It was Charlie Chaplin.”

“You’re kidding. He’s been dead for years.”

He grinned again. “I’ve got to go now. Drop you off any­where?” he said.

“Oh, maybe Seattle, Orlando—I don’t know.”

What's a Door For?

What is a door, anyhow? An opening in the wall? No, that’s a doorway. The door is the thing that closes up the doorway. Or opens it up so that things can go through the wall.

That brings us to windows. What are they for? So you can look out, right? And look in. and so the light can shine in today. And shine out tonight.

Which gets us back to walls. They’re supposed to make it so you can’t see or hear people on the other side, and they can’t see or hear you.

Which gets us back to doors: you can’t see and hear each other through them very well, either. Which means a door is really kind of a wall, but with the added advantage that it’s easy to open when you want to go through or let someone else in. and the best part of all, it can be just another part of the wall if you lock it.

Unwise to Interrupt Coffee Hour

One fine midmorning in May when our coffee klatch was settled into one of its usual heated discussions of academic policies over a draught of that brew which won the Golden Cup Award, and from which our dining club takes its illustrious name, Dr. Bjorn Berg-Bjorn, our distinguished philosophy chairman, was reclining his six-foot-seven frame against his chair as was his wont, so that the provincial French piece supported the weight upon its rear cabriole legs alone. He clasped his large hands atop his long head as if to stretch his thoughts as well as his body to their fullest capacities.

“It’s clear enough,” Dr. Berg-Bjorn proposed, “that the good Dean means to further his proposed curriculum changes by one means or another at any cost.”

A man approached swiftly from Berg-Bjorn’s blind side and accosted
the latter in an aggressive, husky voice.

“See here, sir, sit up straight or get out at once!” he barked.

“I beg your pardon, sir,” Berg-Bjorn flushed. “I must have forgotten myself.”

“Forgot yourself? Indeed!” the manager’s voice took a sinister tone.

“I made my apologies, now be gone, knave!” Berg-Bjorn exploded.

“What? Knave, you say? We’ll see about that, you educator!” blustered the man, and with uncontrolled force slapped Berg—Bjorn on the latter’s right ear. “Get out, all of you!”

Our philosopher, never known for violence, detonated to his full height and with blinding speed unleashed a most unacademic right fist squarely into the manager’s left eye, knocking the man to the floor like a brick. “Let us adjourn to a more hospitable hall, gentlemen, and leave this disagreeable man to his rudeness,” he said turning away.

We all rose, stunned, to leave forthwith, but the manager, though badly shaken, picked up Berg-Bjorn’s French Provincial chair and brought it down crashing upon the latter’s head and shoulders, sending our chairman staggering against the wall with a thud.

“Now you’ve played me foul indeed,” Berg—Bjorn recovered. “I wasn’t even looking, varlet!”

Whereupon, it is sad to record, our chairman went in a fair way berserk, splitting chairs like matchsticks, upsetting tables, tearing down chandeliers, ripping out sconces and trappings, smashing statuary and dislodging pilasters till we feared to a man the seething Samson would
raze the entire building to rubble around us.

In the space of moments he decimated the main dining room. Not a table or chair, fixture or lamp remained intact, and the righteous, three hundred pound juggernaut wheeled around with bloody eyes and flashing teeth for something further upon which to expend his insatiable wrath.

‘Aha!” he shouted, spying the serving line and kitchen beyond.

With a hideous laugh he bore down upon the seventy-foot gleaming steam table and applied his mighty shoulders. The metal and glass monolith groaned heavily under the force, and at length with a deafening roar overturned and smashed to ruin.

“Haha!” the giant roared. Then he rushed toward the kitchen, tore the door from its moorings and sent it whirling like a boomerang through a partition wall. We could only tremble in wonder at our colleague s inexhaustible fervor and incredible strength as he methodically went about destroying every article of value in the kitchen and returned with a hunk of meat in one hand, evidently torn from a beef in the larder. He stood tall, tearing the morsel savagely with his fangs till it was gone.

“Ahhaayaheeyah!” he bellowed, beating his chest furiously, the cry reverberating through the great space. “Hear me, ye Pharisees. I am the wise Fisher King of the Phoenicians, the courageous Khan, the invincible Constantine and the great Alexander rolled into one! Omnipotent is my wrath! Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!”

“Bravo!” we hailed. “Magnificent!”

Whereupon, to entertain us, our hero plucked up overhead the jellied manager like a weightless toy, and drawing far back his elastic arms, flung the wretch with ferocious velocity the entire length of the hail, striking down four officers of the law like ninepins in a heap.

“What ho! Well wrought!” we applauded.

Our champion now looked about for something left to rend, but finding nothing, at last dashed his swollen hands together, his wrath visibly diminishing at the terrible and utter deve station about us.
“There!” he shouted toward the manager. ‘That will instruct you in the virtue of philosophy! Now hie thee hence, Pharisee, and take your lackeys withal!”

The manager and the officers scrambled out the door as our liberator returned triumphant, adjusted his coat and tie, and resumed his seat, carefully balancing himself on its two remaining rear legs as was his wont.

“Well, my friends, I regret this inconvenience,” he said.

No one spoke for some time. Finally Smythe-Jones, the chemistry scholar, ventured a quiet opinion: “That was very embarrassing, I’m afraid.”

“Yes, I’ll have to be more careful,” Dr. Berg—Bjorn agreed. “We wouldn’t wish to cause any iii feelings here.” He hemmed to clear his throat. “Now, as we were discussing, how would you gentlemen react to the Dean’s proposed reduction of the general education requirements?”

The Slot Machine

I saw Mac the second I pushed through the post office door. He was hard to miss; his great hulk nearly filled the narrow aisle before the rows of rent boxes, and his heavy cigar smoke filled whatever space he didn’t.

“Hi Miller,” he said around the cigar.

“Hello Mac. Mail up ret?” I asked.

“Naw, these guys are always late. I spend half my day down here just waiting for the mail.”

Something flicked nearby.

“There’s one now,” he said, shuffling to his box. The key was already in the glass and metal door.
“Unh, a bill,” he said, jamming it into his pocket and shuffling back to his strategic watch by the high counter near the outer door.

Another man entered and opened a bigger lower drawer--the kind the big companies in town rented, like Caswells, Schact Rubber, and the First National Bank.

“Hey there, Joe, what’s new?” Mac said. He knew everybody in town; it was his business to.

“Howdy, Mac,” the man replied, routinely snatching up several parcels and tied bundles of letters and stuffing them into a big company bag with a key lock on top. “Had another kid last Monday, you know.”

“Eh? How’s that?” Mac perked up, like a buzzer went off at a switchboard in his head. “Another one, eh? Hey, hey! What’d you call it?”

“Alfred Morris, “ Joe answered proudly. “Seven pounds four ounces.

“Hey, how about that! Why, he’s half-grown already,” Mac joked.

“Yeah, but I still got a ways to go to catch up with you,” Joe countered.

“Eh? Oh, heh-heh, you’ll make it alright.” Ma.c pulled out a note pad and pen. “Al—vin-Mor-ris.”

Joe had gone down to the stamp machine, but he heard Mac’s loud voice like everyone else. Many had now gathered to wait and watch the boxes as shutters of light opened and closed through the small windows. Behind the partition the clerks moved to and fro mechanically, flicking letters which ticked as they struck the front plates.

“You got to put everything down right away in this business,” Mac said, putting his notepad back into his vest pocket. “Trust to memory and you’ll go broke in a month. A million details.”
“I guess that’s right,” I agreed. “Yeah. You know, this mail is really something else. I spend
more time down here than I do at the office as it is.”

“They route everything through Indianapolis now,” I said. “Takes longer if you ask me.”

“You can say that again--say, I had a gal to put a check in that box around the corner there last Thursday, addressed to me, and I didn’t get it for four days!”

“Went to Indianapolis,” I said.

“Can you believe it? Fifteen feet, that box right over there to mine right here, and it took four whole days!”

Mac shifted his weight and fingered his cigar affectionately. Sud­denly he turned. “Hey there, Joe--.” Mac caught the man by the arm, near the outside door. “I put little Alfred on that family plan of yours; he’s covered already.”

“Oh, you’ll take care of it?” Joe said.

“Yeah, it’s all set, no problem. Cost you about three bucks-fifty or four more a month, and give him a little something to start college with. They grow faster’n you can bat your eye, you know.”
“Hey, that’s for sure,” Joe laughed on his way out.

There was another letter in his box by the time Mac shuffled back. “Looks like a bill,” he muttered, turning the key. “That’s about all it is these days, calendars and bills and lapses.”

Tearing off the end, he puffed a quick breath into the edge and squinted into the envelope.

“Eh? What’s this?” he said. He jerked out a single page of coarse yellow notebook paper and unfolded it by the window light. “Oh no,” he groaned softly.

“Not a bill?” I said.

Mac read the letter with his lips. I could only see that it was handwritten, with rude lettering, and brief. When he finished, his hand dropped slowly to his side. He looked confused, like someone had asked a simple question that he couldn’t quite answer. He read it again.

“Accident claim?” I asked.

“Huh?”

“That an accident claim?” I repeated.

“Oh, no, no-—just a fellow I knew over in Bonner Corners a while back, went to school together. His little girl died.”

Mac carefully folded the letter and put it back in the envelope, then gently placed it in his inside coat pocket. For a long time he just looked at the floor. Then he walked over to the counter and deliberately ground out his cigar in an ashtray, then returned and pulled his key from the rental box door and pushed it hard shut.

“I can’t wait on these guys forever,” he said loudly. “I got a business to run. Spend half the day down here as it is.”

Mac pushed through the outer door and held it open as another man brushed by. “Hey there, Freddie!” he shouted. “What’s new?”

Writing about Oneself

When a writer writes about himself, it’s often not conceit but a search for material in a natural, accessible place. And he may be looking at himself not “as himself” but as an observer, as he might look at another. So we may be dealing with two people: the writer and his “subject”. This is especially likely if he is writing in third person, which is assumed to be narrated by a person or persona separate from the characters in the story; but it is also true, if more subtle, when he writes in first person. One might think first person writing is always subjective. But even in first person telling there’s a voice, a narrator, describing the acts and thoughts of a character. What is written is not quite the same as what a person actually “says to himself” when he thinks, feels, speaks and acts. Those thoughts are usually not sentences but words and phrases, structures short of sentences, and the prose writer typically writes in coherent sentences in order to communicate sensibly. (If the writer is writing lyric poetry, however, he might approach the less structured syntax of actual thoughts, of words and short phrases we say to ourselves short of speech.)
My point is that any writer can step back from himself and regard himself as one person regards another, and there’s nothing self-absorbed in doing that. It’s natural, it’s the nearest of subjects, and it’s perfectly normal to do. So one need not fret in journal writing that he is being too self-centered. Many famous writings are about the author.

The Expulsion (after Massacio, 1425)

As I walked in the garden at dusk, on its eastern edge, where the lush, leafy forest path turns to rocky barrenness, a young couple hurried by. They were naked, save for a few leaves hastily contrived to clothe themselves. Seeing me, the man put his hands to his face and turned away, while the woman covered her breasts and groin. She was sobbing.

“Good heavens, have you had an accident” I called. “Can I help?”

“No,” the man said “no one can help. It is finished.”

“We are condemned to die,” The woman said. “We are banished,”

“Condemned? banished? what talk is this?” I aaked, removing my coat and offering it to the woman, who hesitated, then accented it,

“Oh, my fellow man, forgive me!” she burst into tears.

“Forgive yon? for what? You have done nothing against me. What is all this?”

“I have brought us all to ruin, all of us, It’s all my fault,”

“Ho!” the man shouted. “I share the blame.”

“But I made you do it,” she insisted, “You might have gone on but for me——at least you, my darling.” “1 could not have,” he countered • “It was unbear­able before you came, even in the garden. I would rather live by your side in the wasteland than spend an eternity in the garden without you.”

They embraced, and her grief slowed. “We must qc on,” he said. “You are welcome to join us if you wish.”

“Wait,” I said. “I still don’t understand what has brought this misery upon you0 You live in the garden and bring no harm. What drives you from its sanctuary?”

“The Lord God,” said the man.

“The Lord God? for what purpose?”

“We broke the Law. We ate of the forbidden fruit.”

“I tempted it to him,” said the woman.

“No, the serpent tempted you, and you did not know him.”

“I should have recognized him,” she said.

“It was not possible. but I should have, and I should have told you--warned you of him.”

“How could you?” she asked. “Nothing was said of it. No word was given.”

“Ah, but I had a sense. For my part the fault is greater because of it.”

“You never said it,” she said.

“I didn’t expect it, but I sensed that one day ano­ther thing would appear. I didn’t know what form it might take, but I knew that it would be another thing, hideous, and I would know it. I hoped to destroy it.”

“I should have shown you,” she said.

“In time its image faded, I saw only you, and your happiness and beauty. I thought all was right, and good.”

“My poor dear~” she cried.

“Had I seen the thing, had I only seen the wicked thing——!” he shouted.

Again they embraced, and after a time grew calm. “We must no on,” he repeated.

“Wait a little more,” I said. “It’s clear to me tha.t some terrible accident has befallen you both which you do not understand in your exhaustion. Even God could not hold you accountable for something you did not understand. You must go back.”

“That is quite impossible,” the man said.

“Perhaps not,” I replied quickly.

“No, what the Lord has commanded must be obeyed, or even the worse will come of it,” he insisted.

I felt myself growing angry and perplexed. “We must reconcile this matter,” I said. “It is intolerable to think that an injustice should go unreconciled. Please. Give me a moment to consider.’

I sensed somehow that their plight was my own. My mind was awhirl with fear and pity for them, yet I forced my feelings back, and gradually the matter straightened.

“Now, as I see it, you were both victimized by the deceit of another. That much von will agree to?”

“Deceived? Perhaps, to an extent, but we still broke the Law, and must accept our fate,” the man replied.,

“No, wait,’ 1 insisted. “You did not intend to break the law, and no one can hold von responsible for something done with no criminal intent on your part. That is the first rule of law. You knew not what you did, therefore you cannot be held responsible.” My mind was elevated by this truth, and I regained my confidence.

“You do not understand, my friend,” the man said. “I was clearly warned——most emphatically warned.”

“In what way?”

“By the Lord Sod Himself,” he shuddered. “~ voice from nowhere, yet from everywhere, said as if within me, ‘Of every tree of the garden thou mayest freely eat: but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat of it: for in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die.’ He commanded it so, and I under­stood fully.”

“And you accepted this?”

“I thought it strange, but yes, I accented it. I had dominion over all things——the beasts of the field, the birds of the air—— .“

“And you were happy?”

The man paused and looked away • “Not happy,” he said slowly. “I was alone then. I pondered it until I could think no more. For many days, till I grew too weary to comprehend. At last I accepted it, and trusted that If I were ever tried, I would somehow prove worthy, and vowed to myself never to approach the tree, and slept.”

“I see. Very understandable.”

“When I awoke the reward of my trust was with me,” he said, turning to her radiantly, “She was beside me. My love and my life. She was beautiful—more beautiful than all else. Then, from that moment, I was happy.”

His troubled eyes beamed as he held her.

“And the Lord commanded her also?” I asked.

His hands dropped. “No.”

“Ah, and did you tell her”

“No.”

“She knew not, then!” I exclaimed. “She is blameless, for she knew not the commandment. Surely you see it.”

“I did not tell her. I would not trouble her. She was lovelier than the sun and the moon and the stars. I would not lessen her by telling her.’

I was proud of him. “She is blameless, blameless as a new babe,” I said.

“I didn’t know,” she cried. “It’s true, I honestly didn’t know.”

“So, there you have it,” I said.

“But I--,” the man countered, “I ate also, and I did know, but I still disobeyed.”

The man and the woman turned and hurried away in shame.

“Wait, wait,” I cried, running after them. “Stop!” nearly breathless, I caught up with them. ‘Don’t leave, hear me out. Don’t you see? What you are—— everything you are——the Lord made you. What you have, the Lord gave you, and what you knew, the Lord gave you to know. No more and no less.”

“That is true,” the man said. His Law.”

“But don’t you understand,” I answered, “that the choice was not your own? Can you not see the, given what you were, and what you are, that you could have done no other thing? that the Lord gave you this woman, gave you your love for her, gave you your desire to please her, and in so doing gave you your very inability to warn her of the danger?”

“It changes nothing,” said the man. “It is so, perhaps, but I still broke the Law by my own hand.”

“No, no, not by your hand, He gave that also. He gave that capacity, and permitted it——no, forced it to happen; He made it happen from the moment you were created. The seed of your despair was in you from the start, and He planted it! You must not be held responsible. You must not accept it! Any rabbit in a cage with a carrot would have done the same thing. Any living thing will obey its nature.”

The man regarded me with mixed awe and despair in his eyes for a long time.
“You have been deceived from the first——tricked.”

They were speechless, both. After a long time, the spoke once more:

“Perhaps you are right, but it is too late,”

“No, not too late,” I insisted.

“But it is. I cannot be forgiven.”

“You must, and you will.”

“No, never. I am absolutely certain of that, if of nothing else.”

“Nonsense! The circumstances——the extenuating circum­stances of the matter——wait, listen: you harbor no ill against her yet?”

“Certainly not!” he said forcefully.

“Of course not • And against your God, who made you both, and everything about you, you do not hate Him?”

“I love the Lord with all my heart, soul, and mind,” he proclaimed from his depths “Praise Him!”

“Despite what He has done, despite these miserable conditions, despite His withdrawal of love, and support, and. all things from yon--and worst of all despite the with­drawal of eternal Hope from your breast, yet you forgive him entirely?” I cried.

“Entirely, if ever he wronged me, which I could never believe,” he sobbed piteously.

“You see!” I shouted. “You are but a man, and have been sorely victimized, yet you entirely forgive your prosecutor though he forgives you not, his victim! Your Almighty, Great God, ruler of the universe, creator of all things, bestower of love and mercy arid goodness upon all he has made, wills to punish you eternally for a crime instigated by a totally different agent--not you, Madam, who were unaware of the fact and utterly blameless—— the serpent. There we have it! Let me ask you, who do you think permitted the serpent to exist in the garden?”

The man did not answer. “Who, indeed!” I repeated, “Of course, the Evil one!”

“No, no, he did not create the Garden, he did not create the tree, he did not create you--who let him in? Who suffered him to trick you?”

The man trembled and the woman clung to him violently.

“Who!” I pressed.

He opened his mouth to speak, but could not. I waited tensely for what seemed an eternity. The sun had set for some while, and night was nearly upon us in the wasteland. Nearby, something whisked through the sand among the rocks and was gone. Behind us to the west, the lest rays of light silhouetted the far outline of the garden, then receded into darkness.