That was the beginning of ten days of such luxurious rest and continuous petting as I had never expected to find out of my native land and my own home. I rallied fast under the new conditions of invalidism. In two days, I left my bed and lay, for most of the forenoon and all the latter part of the day, upon a luxurious lounge in the square central hall, from which doors led on all sides to the other parts of the house. The ceilings were twenty feet above me; the casements opened down to the tiled floors; palms, and other tall plants rounded the corners of the hall, and vases of cut flowers filled the cooled air with fragrance. As I lay, I could see trees laden with oranges and tangerines in the gardens below; hedges of cactus and geraniums, the latter in the fulness of scarlet bloom, intersecting the grounds of the college and the neighboring dwellings. The colony of President and professors was one united family, and they took me—sick, and a stranger—into the heart of the household. I recall, with pride, that not a day passed that did not bring me a call from Doctor Bliss, the genial and honored head of the noble institution, while Mrs. Bliss’s neighborly attentions were maternally tender. I had not been at the hotel in the lower town for an hour before she appeared, laden with flowers and an offering of “American apples, such as one cannot buy in the East.” The next day, and for every day following, before Doctor Schauffler carried me off with benevolent violence, she sent to me home-made bread, having heard (as was true) that the hotel bread was generally sour.
I looked forward with especial pleasure to the afternoon-tea hour. The gathering about my lounge would have graced any salon where wits do congregate. The silver-haired President never failed to put in an appearance; Doctor Post, the distinguished senior of the medical professors, and his charming daughter, afterward my cicerone in the visits I paid to Syrian women in their own homes; Doctor and Mrs. Eddy, whose daughter was just then surprising the social world of Constantinople by taking her degree in medicine, and with honor; the Jessup brothers and their families, known to all readers of church and charitable literature by their achievements in the mission-field; Doctor and Mrs. Porter, in whose house we had celebrated Thanksgiving Day the evening succeeding our arrival in Beirut, singing, at the close of the joyous festivities, “My country, ’tis of thee,” with all the might of our lungs, and with hearts aglow with patriotism distance and expatriation could not abate—these, with a group of younger professors, tutors, and winsome girls, were the ministering genii that buoyed me speedily back to robust health.
They gave me a concert, a night or two before our parting. The light in the great hall was a pleasant chiaro-oscuro, the music-room opening out of it being brilliantly illuminated for the performers upon piano, violin, violoncello, guitar, and flute. From my sofa I had a full view of them all, and through one long window a moon, but four days old, looked at us through the orange-trees.
Is it strange that the chapter in my Home of the Bible, headed “My Friends the Missionaries,” was penned with grateful memories too tender for speech?
We had in Jerusalem another true, hearty, and affectionate home-welcome. Dr. Selah Merrill, the well-known archæologist and Oriental scholar, had then been United States Consul at Jerusalem for nine years. The change of administration in Washington had put in his place Rev. Edwin Wallace, and we found both consuls still in residence upon our arrival. It was a happy combination for us. The consuls and their wives were settled in the one good hotel in the city—the “Grand New”—to which our incomparable dragoman, David Jamal, conducted us. We fraternized at sight. Doctor Merrill and his successor were upon most amicable terms, the senior and late incumbent doing all in his power to lessen the labors of the novice. The fatherly kindness of one, and the gentle deference of the junior, were beautiful to behold. We two travellers shared the advantages enjoyed by Mr. Wallace in his first visits to memorable places in the new home, of which he has written eloquently in his book—Jerusalem the Holy. I shall always esteem as one of the rarest bits of good-fortune which befell us in our wanderings in storied lands, that Doctor Merrill was emphatically our “guide, philosopher, and friend,” during our stay in Southern Syria. He, it was, who made out our itinerary when he could not conduct us personally, as he did in our expeditions in and about Jerusalem.
I reckon the four, who made the City of the Great King home to us, among the friends to whom my obligations are not to be described in words. And what royally “good times” we had together! Had it been in the power of Mrs. Merrill and Mrs. Wallace to spare me every possible inconvenience of tent-life and Eastern transit, I should have been lapped in luxury throughout our tour of village and desert.
Of these I have written elsewhere, and at length.