VOIDING MY TRAVEL SCRIP.

Otago Daily Times, Issue 19202, 19 June 1924, Page 2

VOIDING MY TRAVEL SCRIP.

By W. H.

AN OLD TRAVEL LETTERS MEMENTOES. "Written for tho Otago Daily Times,

In the old travel letter written Trom Palestine by a young Arab physician, to which I referred in my last article, there is a remark about a spider, a plant, and some stones ho had seen. The young collector evidently had specimens of these in his big, and ho had also a notebook, tie was elated, so he tells up, at the thought of emptying his bag—voiding . his travel-scrip, he calls it—-and sharing his collection with his old professor at home. A writer in a university paper in the dominion, not knowing the Scriptures, and not. knowing his dictionary, doth err by calling the young doctor’s bag a script—quite another thing. I foresee trouble when the young physician gets home with hig specimens, if his wife happens to be a good housekeeper, and especially if she is a Home Science graduate. If there is one thing more than another that these house-cleaning women cannot abide it is specimens; they make such a mess of the mantelpiece, and they have to be dusted constantly. Some day in the early spring, unless I am much mistaken, ho will find his precious specimens missing. When Macaulay was a little child he electrified a drawing room full of his mother's lady friends by marching into the room, solemnly holding up his hand and saying. “Cursed be Sally, for it is written, ‘Cursed he everyone that removoth his neighbour’s landmark.’ ” Young Tom had a garden in the back yard which he had marked off with shells and other things. One day Sally, with a woman’s passion for clearing up, had swept all Tom’s landmarks into the rubbish bucket, I, too, have brought homo some specimens from my. travels—a violet from John Nicholson’s grave at Delhi, a water-worn stone from the Sea of Galilee, a fragment of stone from the Temple of the Sun in Baalbek, and some other such-like exceedingly interesting and valuable things. Periodically 1 have to take my stand with the priests on Mount Gerizim—or was it Mount Ebal? —and recite the curses of the whole law. Wo far I have managed to hold on to my specimens, but the price is eternal vigilance. r (he had feature about women who read “Good Housekeeping’’ and take an interest in home science is that, they have no historical sense and no imagination. It is surprising how a small object such as a stone or a faded (lower will stimulate the memory. Wordsworth in on? of his short poems describes how a country girl resident on London was transported to her country home by the sight and sound of a (brush singing in a cage in a London street. “She secs A mountain ascoiulinp, n vision of trees; Bright volumes of vapour through Lothburv glide, And a. river flows on through the vale of Chcapsido. Green pastures she views in the midst of the dale, Down which she so often has tripped with her pail; And a single email Cottage, n nest like a dove’s, '"*■ only dwelling on earth that, she loves.” The learned in these subjects discuss the vnnou3_ kinds of memory—what they call the visual memory and the auditory memory I have seen it said that smell is the sense which has the greatest power of reviving past experiences. Think of having a memory is our nose! What a calamity to a man who lives in the neighbourhood of a corporation tip! Dean Stanley, who could not smell anything, had a decided advantage under subh circumstances. Recently I asked a gifted young pianists about her memory—if it was visual, if she could see in imagination the notes of the piece she was playing. She told mo that sho could not, that she seemed to fee! the music ail through her, to icel it in her hands, that her memory appeared to bo muscular. I don’t know what kind of memory I have, unless it bo a very poor one for some things. I was trying the other day to recall the name of a man but could not do so. Tho next day, when I was not thinking about tho suojcct, something threw the name on to the surface, just as I have soe an object thrown up by an unseen man working in a pit. Who tho unseen man with the unseen shovel was who was working in my intellectual economy I do not know. A friend of mine told mo that ogee when he was undergoing an operation ho spoke freely in a language which the doctors did not know. He concluded that it was Hindustani, a language he had spoken when a child in India, but which he had completely forgotten. Ho did not know who was the unseen man with the invisible shove! who had thrown up to the surface the language which had been buried deep under years of disuse. I wonder it has not occurred to my enterprising medical students friends to have an anaesthetic before going into the examination room. Some of my friends have suggested that wo never for£6l anything, and that all our experiences niay bo revived as a chemist, revives the faded writing on a palimpsest, whereupon preachers begin at once to use the idea to terrify me into belter behaviour. Great as is tho trouble caused to mo by my inakility to rememher some things, I confess that I find Inc thought rather alarming that I (, a n "ot completely forget anything, fhope that when I come to go over Jordan I shall hnd some spot whore the waters of Lethe mingle with Those of tho great dividing stream, and that I shall get * good draught of tho waters of forgetfulness ° I have just been holding in my hand the violet I picked from John Nicholson’s grave. The perfume is all gone now; there is none of the indescribable fragrance left that conics up round the heart all dissipated among tho pages of the book where the little flower has lain crushed for many a year. The sight of it, however, brings back the memory of tho simple, neatly-kept grave of tho great soldier as 1 saw it on a bright sunny winter day just outside tho Kashmir gate of Delhi. I can see the ridge overlooking the walled city, on which tho British army camped for many weary weeks. I see the gate, pock-marked and battered with British shot and shell. I hoar the padre reading in the early morning the lesson for tho day when the gate was attacked, in which the prophet Nahum rejoiced over tho approaching fall of Nineveh; “Woe to the bloody city! It is full of lies and robbery.” I hear the instructions to the men .just before the gate was stormed; No prisoners are to he taken; no women or children are to he injured. I hear the immediate response of tho men : “No fear, sir.”. I see the narrow street whore Nicholson fell fighting. I see tho famous Silver street thronged with Indians in their brightlv coloured dress, and I hear tho soft padding of shoeless feet. I recall Lord Roberts’s picture of that street as he saw it after Delhi was taken—the dead strewn in all directions, the scavenger dogs, the gorged vultures too lazy to fly away. “Our horses,” he said, “seemed to fool tho horror of it as much as wo did, for they shook and snorted in evident terror.” Lord Roberts thought Nicholson tho most impressive personality ,ho had ever met. and his whole life story as it is told by Trotter passes before mo ns I look at that faded violet which I plucked from his grave on a bright Indian winter day. Many changes have taken place in India during tho 67 years that have passed since Nicholson was buried outside the Kashmir gate, and many great changes lie not far ahead. I raid to a widely-travelled man in New York that there are some difficult problems in India for our statesmen. ‘‘Yea,” ho replied, “but there is no country in the world so well able to handle them as England.” May wisdom ho given to our Imperial leaders to enable India to give necessary and proper expression to her awakening national consciousness 1 Another of my mementoes is this waterworn stone on my desk. It hears the legend “Sea of Galilee 14.3.05.” As I look at it I can remember the morning when wo stood by tho blue waters of the lake lying in its basin some 680 feet Inflow the level of the ocean. Galileo surrounded by hills reminded mo of the harbour of Dunedin. It is about the same length but, I should say, twice ns wide. At the beginning of our era there were towns and villages all along its western shone with a population of tens of thousands, who farmed its hillsides and fished in its waters. Dean Stanley tells us that as he rode along tho side of the lake, thinking of the stories in the Gospels, a turn of tho path brought before him every detail of tho picture in tho parable of the power—the hard-trodden track, the rich patch of soil, the thorn-covered section, tho birds flying overhead. When I saw the lake there was only one miserable town on its shores, Tiberias, where Dr Torrance, whose biography entitled “A Galilee Doctor” lies at my hand, was following hia Master’s example and command, “Heal the side and. as ye go, preach.” I stopped too late in tho hospital talking to Dr Torrance and his young Edinburgh medical colleague with the result that darkness overtook me in a Mohammedan graveyard and mado it difficult for me to find our

camp by ibo lake-side. I was afraid to coo-ee lest some persons who did not understand the good Australian call should come to my help, afraid to step out lost I should stop into a grave. An Australian in my circumstances could scarcely help thinking of snakes. Dr Torrance calculated that there were five venomous and twenty-five non-venomous kinds in the country, one of them, a venomous nocturnal species, being large enough to swallow a hare. I pushed my way cautiously through the tangled growth which was about 3ft high, and at last reached the shingle of the lake. It was with great relief I saw the lights of our tents, and, a little later, my travelling companion contentedly writing up her journal for the day. , The next morning early, standing by tno water’s edge, wo road John’s last chapter in which he tells us of the disciples’ unsuccessful night’ of fishing, the appearance of their Master in tiro dim light of the dawn, the fire with its warmth after the depressing experience of the night, and the excitement of the morning, the haul of fish, the moating with their Master who had been crucified and buried miles away at Jerusalem in the south It is an extraordinary story told with great simplicity and dramatic power. Mr A. C. Benson, in one of those brooding, meditative papers of his, calls John’s narrative "one of the most bewildering and enchanting pieces of literature I know.” lie thinks that the disciples as they looked at their Master would bo wondering where He had been and what He had been doing since iliev saw Him last. That is the thought Tennyson puts into the mouth of the sisters of Bethany as they looked at their brother, raised from the dead, according to another of John's stories: “‘Where, ivert thou, brother, those fear days?’ There lives no record of reply, Which telling what it is to die Had surely added praise to praise.” There are persons whoso horizons close down definitely and without further questioning on a yno of hills not far distant, but there are other persons who scan the clouds, search the heavens, and try to pierce the blue in quest of something beyond. Charles Kingsley was a groat hero of my youth. I liked him because he was a man, a very human man, one through whoso life there blew the fresh air of the world. I liked him, too, because he was a bit of a heretic, although his heresies have become commonplaces to-day, and yet withal a deep and reverent soul. I remember on one occasion he said something to this effect: ‘‘God forgive me if I am wrong, but I look forward to death with a great and reverent curiosity.” To all of us, sooner or later, if wo keep our minds alive and do not use narcotics, life’.? experiences bring this curiosity. Perhaps, as Mr Benson suggests, the disciples wondered where their Master had been during those last few days. I think they must aho have foit how naturally He had assumed His oldposition of authority over them. Many a time His talks with them had been a' kind of search-light opening up the inner recesses of their lives; by Him the thoughts of many hearts were often revealed. It is an uncomfortable effect that good men and good books often have upon us. If the light is not always soothing, it is at least wholesome. On this occasion the Master turned his search-light on Peter, and brought that strong assertive man to his knees in the dust. They could not fail to feel that His love had persisted through death, and I feel certain that thev noticed the hands with which He served them at breakfast wore wounded. Mr Benson several times in the course of his essay refers to the historicity of this story. He ponders over it; bo seems unable to get away from it. He calls the story wildering,” “enchanting.” I have often wondered if thev are the only adjectives applicable to it and if they are the right ones. , , Several times I have rescued my memorial stone from the dust bin, the last_ time being this spring. I intend to Keep it for all it means to my heart, for as I finger its smooth water-worn surface, that March morning of 1905 when by the Sea of Galilee comes back to me again, and my memory fills with pictures of scenes associated with it. Quite truly did Murray M’Cheyne say in his little poem on that sea: “ Fair are the lakes in the land that I love Where the pine and the heather grow. But thou hast a loveliness far above What nature can bestow.” The preceding articles appeared in onr issues of March 15 and 28, April 4, 15, 21, and 30, May 6, 17, and 28, and June 11.