"I was the person from whom Solomon first heard of the Queen of Sheba.
I had lived in her capital city for several years, and she had summoned
me before her, and had inquired about the places I had visited and the
things I had seen. What I said about this wonderful woman and the
admirable administration of her empire interested Solomon very much,
and he was never tired of hearing me talk about her. At one time
I believe he thought of sending me as an ambassador to her, but afterward
gave up this notion, as I did not possess the rank or position which
would have qualified me to represent him and his court; so he sent a
suitable delegation, and, after a great deal of negotiation and
diplomatic by-play, the queen actually determined to come to see Solomon.
Soon after her arrival with her great retinue, she saw me, and immediately
recognized me, and the first thing she said to me was that she perceived
I had grown a good deal older than when I had been living in her domains.
This delighted me, for before coming to Jerusalem I had allowed my hair
and beard to grow, and had dispensed with as much as possible of my
ordinary erect mien and lightness of step; for I was very much afraid, if
I were not careful, that the wise king would find out that there was
something irregular in my longevity, and an old man may continue to look
old much longer than a middle-aged man can continue to appear middle-aged.

"It was a great advantage to me to find myself admitted to a certain
intimacy with both the king and his visitor the queen. As I was a subject
of neither of them, they seemed to think this circumstance allowed a
little more familiarity than otherwise they would have shown. Besides, my
age had a great deal to do with the freedom with which they spoke to me.
Each of them seemed anxious to know everything I could tell about the
other, and I would sometimes be subjected to embarrassing questions.

"There is a great deal of extravagance and perversion in the historical
and traditional accounts of the tricks which these two royal personages
played upon each other. Most of these old stories are too silly to repeat,
but some of them had foundation in fact. They tell a tale of how the queen
set five hundred boys and five hundred girls before the king, all the
girls dressed as boys and all the boys dressed as girls, and then she
asked him, as he was such a wise man, immediately to distinguish those of
one sex from those of the other. Solomon did not hesitate a moment, but
ordering basins of water to be brought, he commanded the young people to
wash their hands. Thereupon he watched them closely, and as the boys
washed only their hands, while the girls rolled up their sleeves and
washed their arms as well as their hands, Solomon was able, without any
trouble, to pick out the one from the other. Now, something of this kind
really happened, but there were only ten boys and ten girls. But in the
course of ages the story grew, and the whole thing was made absurd; for
there never was a king in the world, nor would there be likely to be one,
who could have a thousand basins ready immediately to put before a company
who wished to wash their hands. But the result of this scheme convinced
the queen that Solomon was a man of the deepest insight into the manners
and customs of human beings, as well as those of animals, birds, and
fishes.

"But there is an incident with which I was personally connected which was
known at the time to very few people, and was never publicly related. The
beautiful queen desired, above all other things, to know whether Solomon
held her in such high esteem because she was a mighty queen, or on
account of her personal attractions; and in order to discover the truth
in regard to this question, she devised a little scheme to which she made
me a party. There was a young woman in her train, of surpassing beauty,
whose name was Liridi, and the queen was sure that Solomon had never seen
her, for it was her custom to keep her most beautiful attendants in the
background. This maiden the queen caused to be dressed in the richest and
most becoming robes, and adorned her, besides, with jewels and golden
ornaments, which set off her beauty in an amazing manner. Then, having
made many inquiries of me in regard to the habits of Solomon, she ordered
Liridi to walk alone in one of the broad paths of the royal gardens at the
time when the king was wont to stroll there by himself. The queen wished
to find out whether this charming apparition would cause the king to
forget her for a time, and she ordered me to be in the garden, and so
arrange my rambles that I could, without being observed, notice what
happened when the king should meet Liridi. I was on hand before the
appointed time, and when I saw the girl walking slowly up the shaded
avenue, I felt obliged to go to her and tell her that she was too soon,
and that she must not meet Solomon near the palace. As I spoke to her
I was amazed at her wonderful beauty, and I did not believe it possible
that the king could gaze upon her without such emotion as would make him
forget for the moment every other woman in the world.

"The queen had purposely made an appointment with him for the same hour,
so that if he did not come she would know what was detaining him. At
length Solomon appeared at the far end of the avenue, and Liridi began
again her pensive stroll. When the king reached her, she retired to one
side, her head bowed, as if she had not expected to meet royalty in this
secluded spot. King Solomon was deep in thought as he walked, but when
he came near the maiden, he raised his eyes and suddenly stopped. I was
near by, behind some shrubbery, and it was plain enough to me that he was
dazzled by this lovely apparition. He asked her who she was, and when
she had told him he gazed at her with still greater attention. Then
suddenly he laughed aloud. 'Go tell the queen,' said he, 'that she hath
missed her mark. The arrow which is adorned with golden trappings and
precious stones cannot fly aright.' Then he went on, still laughing to
himself. In the evening he told me about this incident, and said that if
the maiden had been arrayed in the simple robes which became her station
he would have suspected nothing, and would probably have stopped to
converse with her so long that he would have failed to keep his
appointment with his royal guest.

[Illustration: "'GO TELL THE QUEEN'"]

"The queen was very much annoyed at the ill success of her little
artifice, but it was not long after this that she and the king discovered
their true feeling for each other, and they were soon married. The
wedding was a grand one--grander than tradition relates, grander than the
modern mind can easily comprehend. When they went to the palace to sit
for the first time in state before the vast assembly of dignitaries and
courtiers, the queen found, beside the throne of Solomon, her own throne,
which he had caused to be brought from Sheba in time for this occasion.
This incident, I think, affected her more agreeably than anything else
that happened. Great were the festivities. Honors and dignities were
bestowed on every hand, and I might have come in for some substantial
benefit had it not been that I committed a great blunder. I had fallen
in love with the beautiful Liridi, and as the queen seemed so gracious
and kind to everybody, I made bold to go to her and ask that she would
allow me to marry her charming handmaiden. But, to my surprise, this
request angered the queen. She told me that such an old man as myself
ought to be ashamed to take a young girl to wife; that she was opposed
to such marriages; and that, in fact, I ought to be punished for even
mentioning the subject.

"I retired in disgrace, and very soon afterward I left Jerusalem, for
I have found, by varied experiences, that the displeasure of rulers is
an unhealthful atmosphere in which to live. However, the Queen of Sheba
did not get altogether the better of me. As you know, King Solomon and
his royal wife did not reign together very long. They ruled over two
great kingdoms, each of which required the presence of its sovereign;
so Queen Balkis soon went back to Sheba with more wealth, more soldiers,
more camels, horses, and grand surroundings of every kind, than she had
brought with her. She carried in her baggage-train her royal throne,
but she did not take with her the beautiful Liridi. That lady had been
given in marriage to an officer in Solomon's army, and thirty years
afterward, in the land of Asshur, where her father was stationed,
I married the youngest daughter of Liridi. The latter was then dead, but
my wife, with whom I lived happily for many years in Phoenicia, was quite
as beautiful. I was greatly inclined, at the time, to send a courier with
a letter to the Queen of Sheba, informing her of what had happened; but
I was afraid. She was then an elderly woman, and I was informed that age
had actually sharpened her wits, so that if I had incensed her and given
her reason to suspect the truth about my unnatural age, I believe there
was no known country in which I could have concealed myself from her
emissaries.

"There are many, many incidents which crowd upon my memory," continued my
host, "but--" and as he spoke he pulled out his watch. "My conscience!"
he exclaimed, "it is twenty minutes past three! I should be ashamed of
myself, Mr. Randolph, for having kept you up so long."

We both rose to our feet, and I was about to say something polite, suited
to the occasion, but he gave me no chance.

"I felt I must talk to you," he said, speaking very rapidly. "I have
discovered you to be a man of appreciation--a man who should hear my
story. I have felt for some years that it would soon become impossible for
me to conceal my experiences from my fellow-men. I believe mankind has now
reached a stage of enlightenment--at least, in this country--when the
person who makes strange discoveries which cannot be explained, and the
person who announces facts which cannot be comprehended by the human mind,
need not fear to be punished as a sorcerer, or thrust into a cell as a
lunatic. I may be mistaken in regard to this latter point, but I think
I am right. In any case, I do not wish to live much longer as I have been
living. As I must live on, with generation after generation rising up
about me, I want those generations to know before they depart from this
earth that I am a person who does not die. I am tired of deceptions; I am
tired of leaving the places where I have lived long and am known, and
arriving in other places where I am a stranger, and where I must begin
my life again.

"I do not wish to be in a hurry to make my revelations to the world at
large. I do not wish to startle people without being able to show them
proof of what I say. I wish to speak only to persons who are worthy to
hear my story, and I have begun with you. I do not want you to believe
me until you are quite ready to do so. Think over what I have said,
consider it carefully, and make up your mind slowly.

"You are a young man in good health, and you will, in all probability,
live long enough to assure yourself of the truth or falsity of what
I have told you about my indefinite longevity. I should be glad to relate
my story to scientific men, to physicians, to students; but, as I have
said, we shall wait for that. In the meantime, you may, if you choose,
write down what I have told you, or as much of it as you remember. I have
no written records of my past life. Long, long ago I made such, but
I destroyed them, for I knew not what evil they might bring upon me were
they discovered. But you may write the little I have told you, and when
you feel that the time has come, you may give it to the world. And now
we must retire. It is wicked to keep you out of your bed any longer."

"One word," said I. "Do you intend now to tell your wife?"

"Yes," he answered, "I shall tell her tomorrow. Having reposed confidence
in you, it would be treating her shamefully if I should withhold that
confidence from her. She has often said to me that I do not look a day
older than when I married her. I want her now to know that I need never
look a day older; I shall counterfeit old age no more."

I did not sleep well during what was left of the night, for my mind went
traveling backward and forward through the ages. The next morning, at
breakfast, Mr. Crowder appeared in his ordinary good spirits, but his
wife was very quiet. She was pale, and occasionally I thought I saw signs
of trouble on her usually placid brow. I felt sure that he had told her
his story. As I looked at her, I could not prevent myself from seriously
wondering that a man who had seen Abraham and Sarah, and had been
personally acquainted with the Queen of Sheba, should now be married to a
Quaker lady from North Sixteenth street, Philadelphia. After breakfast
she found an opportunity of speaking to me privately.

"Do you believe," she asked very hurriedly, "what my husband told you last
night--the story of his earthly immortality?"

"I really do not know," I answered, "whether I believe it or not. My
reason assures me that it is impossible; and yet there is in Mr. Crowder's
manner so much sincerity, so much--"

Contrary to her usual habits, I am sure, she interrupted me.

"Excuse me," she said, "but I must speak while I have the chance. You
must believe what my husband has said to you. He has told me everything,
and I know that it is impossible for him to tell a lie. I have not yet
arranged my ideas in regard to this wonderful revelation, but I believe.
If the time should ever come when I shall know I should not believe, that
will be another matter. But he is my husband. I know him, I trust him.
Will you not do the same?"

"I will do it," I exclaimed, "until the time comes when I shall know that
I cannot possibly do so."

She gave me her hand, and I shook it heartily.

[Illustration: "SHE GAVE ME HER HAND, AND I SHOOK IT HEARTILY."]




III


About four months after my first acquaintance with Mr. and Mrs. Crowder,
I found myself again in New York; and when I called at the house of my
friends, I received from them a most earnest invitation to take up my
abode with them during my stay in the city.

Of course this invitation was eagerly accepted; for not only was the
Crowder house a home of the most charming hospitality, but my interest in
the extraordinary man who was evidently so glad to be my host was such
that not one day had passed since I last saw him in which I did not think
of him, and consider his marvelous statements from every point of view
which my judgment was capable of commanding. I found Mr. Crowder
unchanged in appearance and manner, and his wife was the same charming
young woman I had known. But there was nothing surprising in this.
People generally do not change very much in four months; and yet, in
talking to Mr. Crowder, I could not prevent myself from earnestly
scanning his features to see if he had grown any older.

He noticed this, and laughed heartily. "It is natural enough," he said,
"that you should wish to assure yourself that there is a good foundation
to your belief in what I have told you; but you are in too great a hurry:
you must wait some years for that sort of proof, one way or the other.
But I believe that you do believe in me, and I am not in the least
disturbed by the way you look at me."

After dinner, on the first day of my visit, when we were smoking
together, I asked Mr. Crowder if he would not continue the recital of his
experiences, which were of such absorbing interest to me that sometimes I
found them occupying my mind to an extent which excluded the consideration
of everything relating to myself and the present time.

"From one point of view," he said, "that would be a bad thing for you:
but I don't look at it in that way; in fact, I hope you may become my
biographer. I will furnish you with material enough, and you can arrange
it and put it in shape; that is, if, in the course of a few years, you
consider that, in doing what I ask of you, you will be writing the true
life of a man, and not a collection of fanciful stories. So I hope you
may find that you have not lost your time when thinking so much of a man
of the past."

Now, there is no doubt that I did most thoroughly believe in Crowder. I
had argued with myself against this belief to the utmost extent of my
ability, and I had now given up the effort. If I should disbelieve him
I would deprive myself of one of the most precious privileges of my
existence, and I did not intend to do so until I found myself absolutely
forced to admit that I was mistaken. Time would settle all this, and all
that I had to do now was to listen, enjoy, and be thankful for the
opportunity.

"I am not going to tell any stories now," he said, "for my wife has not
overcome her dislike to tobacco smoke, and she has insisted that she
shall be one of my hearers when I tell stories of my past life to you;
but I can tell you this, my friend: she will believe every word I say;
there can be no possible doubt of that. I have told her a good many things
since I saw you last, and her faith in me is a joy unspeakable."

Of course I was delighted to hear that this charming lady was to be my
fellow-auditor, and said so.

"I often think of you two," said Mr. Crowder, contemplatively leaning
back in his arm-chair. "I think of you together, but I am bound to say
that the thought is not altogether pleasant." I showed my amazement at
this remark. "It can't be helped," he said; "it can't be helped. It's
one of the things I have to suffer. I have suffered it over and over
again thousands of times, but I never get used to it. Here you are, two
young people, young enough to be my children: one is my wife; the other,
I am proud to say, my best friend. You are the only persons in the world
who know my story. You have faith in me, and the thought of that faith is
the greatest pleasure of my life. Year by year you two will grow older;
year by year you will more nearly approach my own age, and become,
according to the ordinary opinion of the world, more suitable companions
for me. Then you will reach my age. We shall be three gray-haired friends.
Then will come the saddening time, the mournful days. You two will grow
older and older, and I shall remain where I am--always fifty-three. Then
you will grow to be elderly--elderly people; at last, aged people. If you
live long enough I shall look up to you as I would to my parents."

This was a state of things I had never contemplated. I could scarcely
appreciate it.

"Of course," he continued, "I wish you both to live long; but don't you
see how it affects me? But enough of that. Here comes Mrs. Crowder, and
with her all subjects must be pleasant ones."

"I think thee must buy some short cigars," she said, just putting her
head inside the door, "to smoke after dinner. If large ones are necessary,
they can be smoked after I go to bed. I am getting very impatient; for now
that Mr. Randolph is here, I believe that thee is going to be unusually
interesting."

We arose immediately, and joined Mrs. Crowder in the library.

This lady's use of the plain speech customary with Quakers was very
pleasant to me. I had had but little acquaintance with it, and at first its
independence of grammatical rules struck upon me unpleasantly; but I soon
began to enjoy Mrs. Crowder's speech, when she was addressing her husband,
much more than I did the remarks she made to me, the latter being always
couched in the most correct English. There was a sweetness about her
"thee" which had the quality of gentle music; and when she used the word
"thy" it was pronounced so much like "thee" that I could scarcely perceive
the difference. To her husband and child she always used the Quaker speech
of the present day; and as I did not like being set aside in this way, I
said to her that I hoped there was no rule of the Society of Friends which
would compel her to make a change in her form of speech when she addressed
me. "If thee likes," she said, with a smile, "thee is welcome to all the
plain speech thee wants." And after that, when she spoke to me, she did
not turn me out among the world's people.

"Now, you know," said Mr. Crowder, "that I'm not going to play the part
of an historian. That sort of discourse would bore me, and it would bore
you. If there is any kind of thing that you would like to hear about,
all you have to do is to ask me; and if you don't care to do this, I will
tell you whatever comes up in my memory, without any regard to chronology
or geography, just as I talked to you before. If I were to begin at the
beginning and go straight along, even if I skipped ever so much, the
story would--it would be a great deal too long."

I am sure that Mrs. Crowder and I both felt what he did not wish to
say--that we were not likely to live to hear it all.

"There are a great many things I should like to ask thee," said Mrs.
Crowder, speaking quickly, as if to change the subject of her thoughts;
"but I believe I have forgotten most of them. But here is something I
should like to know--that is," she said, turning to me, "if thee hasn't
anything in thy mind which thee wishes to ask about?"

I noticed that she pronounced "thy" very distinctly, a little bit of
grammatical conscience probably obtruding itself. Of course, I had
nothing to ask, and she put her question: "What _did_ thee do in
the dark ages?"

Crowder laughed. "That is a big question," said he, "and the only answer
I can give you in a general way is that there were so many things that
I was not able to do, or did not dare to do, that I look upon those
centuries as the most disagreeable part of my whole life. But you must
not suppose that everybody felt as I did. A great many of the people by
whom I was surrounded at that doleful period appeared to be happier and
better satisfied with their circumstances than any I have known before
or after. There was little ambition, less responsibility; and if the poor
and weak suffered from the rapacity and violence of the rich and strong,
they accepted their misfortunes as if they were something they were bound
to expect, such as bad weather. I am not going to talk history, and there
is one thing that your question reminds me of. During that portion of the
middle ages which is designated as dark, I employed myself in a great many
different ways: I was laborer, sailor, teacher, and I cannot tell you what
besides; but more frequently than anything else I was a teacher."

"Thee must have been an angel of light," Mrs. Crowder remarked.

"No," said he; "an angel of light would have been very conspicuous in
those days. I didn't pose for such a part. In fact, if I had not
succeeded in appearing like a partial ignoramus I should have been
obliged to go into a monastery, for in those days the monks were the only
people who knew anything. They expected to do all the teaching that was
done; but, for all that, a few scholars cropped up now and then, and here
and there, who did not care to have monks for masters; and by instructing
these in a very modest, quiet way I frequently managed to make a living."

"I should think," I said, "that at any time and in any period you would
have been a person of importance, with your experience and knowledge of
men."

Mr. Crowder shook his head. "No," said he; "not so. To make myself of
importance in that time I must have been a soldier, and the profession of
arms, you know, is one I have always avoided. A man who cannot be killed
should take care that he be not wounded."

"I am so glad that thee did take care," ejaculated Mrs. Crowder; "but
even I cannot see how thee kept out of fighting in those disorderly
times."

"I did not keep out of it altogether, but in every possible way I tried
to do so, and for the most part succeeded. Whenever I was likely to be
involved in military operations, I let my hair and beard grow, and the
white-haired old man was usually exempted. I have had far more experience
in keeping out of battles than any other human being has had in the art
of winning them. But what you two want is a story, and I will give you
one.

"During some of the earlier years of the seventh century, I was living
in Ravenna, and there I had three or four scholars whom I taught
occasionally. I did not dare to keep a regular school, with fixed hours
and all that; but while I was not working at my trade, which was then
that of a mason, I gave lessons to some young people in the neighborhood.
Sometimes I taught in the evening, sometimes in bad weather when we did
not work out of doors. No one of my scholars showed any intelligence,
except a girl about eighteen years old. Her father, I think, was a
professional robber, for his family lived very well, and he was generally
absent from home at the head of a little band of desperate fellows, of
whom there were a great many in that region.

"This girl, whose name was Rina, had an earnest desire for knowledge, and
showed a great capacity for imbibing it and retaining it. In fact, I
believe she was the most intelligent person in that region."

"Was she pretty?" asked Mrs. Crowder.

"Yes," replied her husband; "she was very good-looking. I was so
interested in her desire for knowledge that I taught her a great deal
more than I would have dared to teach anybody else; and the more I taught,
the more she wanted to learn.

"I soon became very much concerned about Rina. Some man of the
neighborhood, old or young, would be sure to marry her before very long,
and then there would be an end of the development of what I considered
the brightest intellect of the day."

"So to keep that from happening to her, thee married her thyself?" asked
Mrs. Crowder.

Her husband smiled. "Yes; that is what I did. You know," he said,
addressing me, "that I believe that Mrs. Crowder takes more interest in
my marriages than in anything else I have done in the course of my
career."

"Certainly I do," she said, with a little flush. "Of course thee had to be
married, and it is natural enough that I should want to know whom thee
married, and all about it."

"Well," said Mr. Crowder, "we must get on with this. A priest with whom
I was acquainted married us, and we immediately fled from Ravenna. After a
year or two of wandering through benighted countries where even kings
and rulers could not write their names, and where reading seemed to be a
lost art, except in the monasteries, we made up our minds, if possible,
we would go from darkness into light, and so we set out on a journey to
China."

At this statement Mrs. Crowder and I looked surprised.

"I don't wonder you open your eyes," said he. "It must seem odd to you,
unless you are very familiar with the history of the period, that we
should go from Europe to China in search of enlightenment and
civilization; but that is what we did, and we found what we looked for.
As the Pope had sent an envoy to China, and as some Nestorian
missionaries had gone there, I believed that we could go.

"This journey to the Chinese province of Nan-hae occupied the greater
part of five years; but to me personally that was of no account, for I
had time enough. Although we passed through all sorts of hardships and
dangers, my wife was greatly interested in the strange things and people
she met. Sometimes we traveled by water, sometimes on horses and asses,
and very often we walked. During the last part of the journey we joined
a caravan which went through central Asia.

"At that time China was ruled by a woman, the Empress Woo. For a long
time back there had been a period of great intellectual activity in China.
Literature and the arts flourished, and while the great personages of
Europe did not know how to write, these people were printing from wooden
blocks.

"The empress was a remarkable woman. She had been one of the widows of a
monarch, and when his son succeeded to the throne she married him. She had
great ambition and great ability. She put down her enemies, and she put
herself forward. She took her husband's place in all the imperial
consultations and decisions, and very soon set him aside, and for forty
years was actual ruler of the empire.

"She was a great woman, this Empress Woo. Very little happened in her
dominions that she did not know, and when two wanderers arrived from the
far and unknown West, she sent for me and my wife to appear before her at
the palace. We were received with much favor, for we could do her no
possible harm, and she was very eager for knowledge. My wife was an object
of great curiosity to her, as she was so different from the Chinese women.
But as poor Rina could never acquire a word of the language of the country,
the empress soon ceased to take interest in her. As I was always very good
at picking up languages, she had me at the palace a great deal, asking all
sorts of questions about the Western countries and people. I was also able
to tell her much about bygone ages, which information she thought,
of course, I had acquired by reading.

[Illustration: "'ASKING ALL SORTS OF QUESTIONS.'"]

"One day the empress asked me about the marriage customs in the West,
and wanted to know how many wives a man could have in our country. She
seemed to be so much in earnest, as she spoke, that I was frightened.
I did not know what to answer. But fortunately one of her generals was
announced, and she did not press the question. As I was leaving the
palace, one of the officers of the court took me aside, and told me that
the empress was thinking of marrying me, and that I had better put on some
fine clothes when I came again. This was terrible news, but I was bound to
tell my wife, and we sat up all night talking about it. To escape from
that region would have been impossible. We were obliged to stay and face
the inevitable, whatever it might be.

"The question which Rina and I had to decide was a very simple one, but
terribly difficult for all that. If I should tell the empress that men
of my country believed that it was right to have but one wife, Rina would
quickly be disposed of; so she had to decide whether she would prefer to
die so that I might marry the empress, or to preserve her life and lose
her undivided possession of a husband."

"I know what I would have done," said Mrs. Crowder, her eyes very bright;
"I would have let her kill me. I would never have consented for thee to
marry the wretch."

"That would have pleased her," said Mr. Crowder; "for she would have had
me all the same, and you would have been out of the way."

"Then I would not have died," said the little Quakeress, almost fiercely;
"I would not have done anything to please her. But I don't know. What did
thee and thy wife do?"

"We talked and talked and talked," said Mr. Crowder, "and at last I
persuaded her to live; that is to say, not to make herself an obstacle
to the wishes of the empress. It was a terrible trial, but she consented.
The more insignificant she became, I told her, the greater her chances
of safety.

"The next day the empress sent for me, as I was sure she would do.

"'You did not tell me,' she said, 'how many wives your men have.' 'That
all depends upon the will of our sovereign,' I replied; 'in matrimonial
affairs we do as we are commanded. When we have no commands from the
throne, our circumstances regulate the matter.'"

"Thee did tell a dreadful lie while thee was about it," said Mrs. Crowder,
"but I suppose thee had to."

"You are right there," said her husband; "and my answer pleased the
empress. 'That is what I like,' she said. 'The monarch should settle all
these matters. I hope some day to settle them in this country.' Then,
without any hesitation or preface, she announced her intention of marrying
me. 'I greatly need,' she said, 'a learned man for an imperial consort.
My present husband knows nothing. I never trust him with any affairs of
state. But I have never asked you anything to which you did not give me
a satisfactory answer.' Now, my dear," said Mr. Crowder, "you see the
reward of vanity. If I had pretended to be a fool instead of aspiring to
be a philosopher and an historian, I should never have attracted the
interest of the queen."

"And did thee marry her?" asked his wife. "I do so pity poor Rina!"

"I'll tell you how it turned out," he continued. "After pressing me a
good deal, the empress said: 'I had intended to marry you in a few days,
or as soon as the preparations could be made; but I have now postponed
that ceremony. I find that military affairs must occupy me for some time,
and it would be better for me at present to marry one of my generals. A
military man is what the country needs. But I shall want a counselor of
your sort very soon, so you must hold yourself ready to marry me whenever
I shall notify you.'

"My instincts prompted me to ask her what the imperial general might be
apt to think about the increase in her matrimonial forces, but I was wise
enough to hold my tongue. When the general should cease to be of use to
her, I knew very well that he would not be likely to offer opposition to
anything on earth."

"How glad I am," ejaculated Mrs. Crowder, "that thee didn't ask any
questions, and that thee consented to everything the wicked creature
said!"

"So am I," he replied; "and I was glad to get out of that palace, which I
never entered again. From that day I began to grow old as fast as I
could. My hair and beard became very long; I ate but little; I stooped
more and more each day, and walked with a staff. I began to be very
forgetful when people asked me questions. About a year afterward the
queen saw me. I was in the crowd near the palace, where I had purposely
gone that I might be seen. She looked at me, but gave no sign that she
recognized me. The next day an officer came to me, and roughly told me
that the empress had no use for dotards in her dominions, and that the
sooner I went away the better for me. I afterward heard that the execution
of two strangers had been ordered, but that a certain superstition in the
mind of the empress had prevented this. She had heard, through persons
who had met the Nestorians, that people of our country were protected in
some strange manner which she did not understand.

[Illustration: "'AND ROUGHLY TOLD ME.'"]

"Rina and I could not leave China, for I had now no money; but we went
to a distant province, where I lived for more than ten years, passing as
a Chinaman."

"And Rina--poor Rina?" asked Mrs. Crowder.

"She soon died," said her husband. "She was in a state of fear nearly all
the time. She could not speak the language, and it may be said that she
gave up her life in her pursuit of knowledge. In this respect she was as
wonderful a woman as was the Empress Woo."

"And a thousand times better," said Mrs. Crowder, earnestly. "And then?"

"Then," said her husband, "I married a Chinese woman."

"What!" exclaimed Mrs. Crowder, her eyes almost round.

"Yes, my dear; it was a great deal safer for me to be married, and to
become as nearly as possible like the people by whom I was surrounded."

"But thee didn't have several wives, did thee?" asked Mrs. Crowder.

"Oh, no," he answered; "I was too poor for anything of that kind to be
expected of me. When an opportunity came to join a caravan and get away,
I took my Chinese wife with me, and eventually reached Arabia. There we
stayed for a long time, for I found it impossible to prosecute my
journeying. Eventually, however, we reached the island of Malta, where
my wife lived to be over seventy. Travel, hardships, and danger seemed
to agree with her. She never spoke any language but her own, and as she
was of a quiet disposition, and took no interest in the things she saw,
she generally passed as an imbecile. But she was the first Chinese woman
who ever visited Europe."

"I guess thee was very sorry thee brought her before thee got through
with her. I don't approve of that matrimonial alliance at all," said
Mrs. Crowder.

During this and succeeding evenings of narration, it must not be supposed
I sat silent, making no remarks upon what I heard; but, in fact, what I
said was of hardly any importance, and certainly not worth introducing
into this account of Mr. Crowder's experiences. But the effect of his
words upon Mrs. Crowder, as shown both by the play of her features and her
frequent questions and exclamations, interested me almost as much as the
statements of my host. I had previously known her as the gentlest, the
sweetest, and the most attractive of my female acquaintances; but now I
found her to be a woman of keen intellect and quick appreciation. Her
remarks, which were very frequent, and which I shall not always record,
were like seasoning and spice to the narrative of Mr. Crowder. Never
before had a wife heard such stories from a husband, and there never could
have been a woman who would have heard them with such religious faith.
Naturally, she showed me a most friendly confidence. The fact that we were
both the loyal disciples of one master was a bond between us. He was so
much older than either of us, and he regarded us sometimes with what
looked so much like parental affection, that it would not have been
surprising if persons, not believers as we were, should have entertained
the idea that, in course of time, he would pass away, and that we two
should be left to comfort each other as well as we might. But I, who had
heard my friend speak of the coming years, could not forget the picture he
had drawn of two aged and feeble people, looked up to in love and
veneration by a fresh and hearty man of fifty-three.

"Thee never seemed to have any trouble in getting married," said Mrs.
Crowder. "Did thee ever stay an old bachelor any length of time?"

Crowder laughed. Such questions from his wife amused him very much.

"I was thinking of changing the subject," said he, "and was about to tell
you something which had not anything to do with wives and marriages.
I thought you might be tired of that sort of thing."

"Not at all," said she, quickly; "that's just what I want to hear."

"Very well," answered he; "I will give you a little instance of one of
my failures in love-making.

"It was long before my visit to Empress Woo; in fact, it was about eleven
hundred years before Christ, and I was living in Syria, where I was
teaching school in the little town of Timnath. I became very much
interested in one of the girls of my class. She was a good deal older
than any of the others; in fact, she was a young woman. She had a bright
mind, and was eager to learn, and I naturally became interested in her;
and in the course of time she pleased me so much that I determined to
marry her."

"It seems thee was in the habit of marrying thy scholars," said Mrs.
Crowder.

"There is nothing very strange in that," he replied; "a schoolmaster
usually becomes very well acquainted with some of his scholars, and if a
girl pleases him very much it is not surprising that he should prefer to
marry her, or, at least, to try to, than to go out among comparative
strangers to look for a wife."

"If I had been in thy place," said Mrs. Crowder, reflectively, "sometimes
I would have enjoyed a long rest of bachelordom; it would have been a
variety."

"Oh, I have had variety of that kind," said he. "For many succeeding
decades I have been widower, or bachelor, whichever you choose to call
it.

"As I was saying, this girl pleased me very much. She was good-looking,
bright, and witty, and her dark, flashing eyes won her a great deal of
attention from the young men of the place; but she would not have
anything to do with them. They could not boast much in regard to
intelligence or education, nor were any of them in very good
circumstances; and so, in spite of my years, she seemed to take very
kindly to me, and I made up my mind I would marry her the approaching
autumn. I had some money, and there was a house with a piece of land
for sale near the town. This I planned to buy, and to settle down as
an agriculturist. I was tired of school-teaching."

"No wonder," said Mrs. Crowder, "as thee intended to take out of it
its principal attraction."

"We were walking, one evening, over the fields, talking of astronomy,
in which she took a great interest, when we saw a man approaching who was
evidently a stranger. He was a fellow of medium height, but he gave the
impression of great size and vigor. As he came nearer, striding over the
rough places, and paying no attention to paths, I saw that he was very
broad-shouldered, with a heavy body and thick neck. His legs were probably
of average size, but they looked somewhat small in comparison with his
body and his long arms, which swung by his sides as he walked. He was a
young man, bushy-bearded, with bright and observant eyes. As he passed us,
he looked very hard at my companion, and, I am sorry to say, she turned
her head and gazed steadfastly at him.

[Illustration: "'SHE TURNED HER HEAD.'"]

"'That's a fine figure of a man,' she said. 'He looks strong enough for
anything.'

"I didn't encourage her admiration. 'He might be made useful on a farm,'
I said; 'if his legs were as big as the rest of him, he could draw a plow
as well as an ox.'

"She made no answer to this; but her interest in astronomy seemed to
decrease, and she soon proposed that we should turn back to the town. On
the way we met the stranger again, and this time he stopped and asked us
some questions about the country and the neighborhood. All the time we
were talking he and my scholar were looking at each other, and each of
them seemed entirely satisfied with the survey. The next day the girl was
very inattentive at school, and in the afternoon, when I hoped to take
a walk with her, I could not find her, and went out by myself. Before
long I saw her sitting under a tree, talking to the stranger of
yesterday."

"She was a regular flirt," said Mrs. Crowder.

"Apparently she was," replied her husband; "but although I might have
excused her, considering how much better suited this stranger was to her,
in point of years at least, I was not willing to withdraw and leave her
to another, especially as he might be a person entirely unworthy of her.

"I did not disturb them, but I went back to the town and made some
inquiries about the stranger. I found that he was a Danite, and lived
with his parents in Zorah, and that his name was Samson. I also learned
that his family was possessed of considerable means.

"It soon became plain that it would not be easy for me to carry out my
marriage plans and settle down among my vines and fig-trees. Samson went
home, told his parents of his desire to marry this girl, and in the
course of time they all came down to Timnath and made regular matrimonial
propositions to her parents."

"Was this the great Samson who tore lions apart and threw down temples?"
asked Mrs. Crowder, in amazement.

"The very man," was the reply; "and he was the most formidable rival I
ever had in that sort of affair. The proper thing for me to do, according
to the custom of the times, would have been to take him aside, as soon
as I found that he was paying attentions to my sweetheart, and fight him;
but the more I looked at him and his peculiar proportions, the more I was
convinced that he was not a man with whom I wanted to fight."

"I should think not," said Mrs. Crowder. "How glad I am thee never
touched him!"

"The result might not have been disastrous to me," he said; "for although
I have always avoided military matters as much as possible, I was probably
better versed in the use of a sword than he was. But I did not care to
kill him, and from what I heard of him afterward, I am sure that if he had
ever got those long arms around me I should have been a mass of broken
bones.

"So, taking everything into consideration, I gave up my plan to marry
this girl of Timnath; and I was afterward very glad I did so, for she
proved a tricky creature, and entered into a conspiracy to deceive her
husband, actually weeping before him seven days in order to worm out of
him the secret of his strength."

"I suppose thee never met Delilah?" asked Mrs. Crowder.

"Oh, no," he answered; "before Samson was married I left that part of the
world, and I did not make the acquaintance of the attractive young person
who was so successful in the grand competition of discovering the source
of Samson's strength. In fact, it was nearly a hundred years after that
before I heard of those great exploits of Samson which have given him
such widespread fame."

"I am glad thee never met Delilah," said Mrs. Crowder, reflectively;
"for thee, too, was possessed of a great secret, and she might have gained
it from thee."




IV


"I think thee was in great danger," continued Mrs. Crowder, "in that
Samson business. It makes me shudder to think, even now, of what might
have happened to thee."

"There was not much danger," said he; "for all I had to do was to
withdraw, and there was an end to the matter. I have often and often been
in greater danger than that. For instance, I was in the army of Xerxes,
compelled to enter it simply because I happened to be in Persia.
My sympathies were entirely with the Greeks. My age did not protect me at
all. Everybody who in any way could be made useful was dragged into that
army. It was known that I had a knowledge of engineering and surveying,
and I was taken into the army to help build bridges and lay out camps.

"Here it was that I saw the curious method of counting the soldiers which
was adopted by the officers of Xerxes's army. As you may have read, ten
thousand men were collected on a plain and made to stand close together
in a mass nearly circular in shape. Then a strong fence, with a wide gate
to the west and another to the east, was built around them, and I was
engaged in the constructing and strengthening of this fence. When the
fence was finished, the men were ordered to march out of the inclosure,
and other soldiers marched in until it was again entirely filled. This
process was repeated until the whole army had been in the inclosure. Thus
they got rid of the labor of counting--measuring the army instead of
enumerating it. But the results were not accurate. I was greatly
interested in the matter, and on three occasions I stood at the exit gate
as the soldiers were coming out, and counted them, and the number never
amounted to ten thousand. One counting showed less than seven thousand,
--the men did not pack themselves together as closely as they were packed
the first time,--so I am confident that Xerxes's army was not so large as
it was reported to be.

"I became so much interested in the operations and constitution of this
great horde of soldiers, attendants, animals, vehicles, and ships, that
I went about looking at everything and getting all the information
possible. In these days I would have been a war correspondent, and I did
act somewhat in that capacity; for I told Herodotus a great many of the
facts which he put into his history of this great campaign."

"Thee knew Herodotus?" his wife asked.

"Oh, yes; I worked with him a long time, and gave him information which
helped him very much in writing his histories; but it would have been of
greater advantage to the world if he had adhered more closely to my
statements. I told him what I discovered in regard to the enumeration of
the army of Xerxes, but he wanted to make that army as big as he could,
and he paid little attention to my remonstrances.

"Herodotus was only four years old when Xerxes invaded Greece, and of
course all his knowledge concerning that expedition was second-hand, and
by the time he began to write his history of the campaign there were very
few people living who knew anything personally about it. If he had not
been a man so entirely wrapped up in his own work he would have wondered
how any one of my apparent age could give him so much in the way of
personal experience; but he seemed to have no suspicions, and, at any
rate, asked no questions, and as I had a great desire that this remarkable
historical event should be fully recorded, I helped him as much as
I could.

"I had been assisting in the construction of the canal behind Mount Athos,
which Xerxes made in order to afford a short cut for his vessels, and as
I had frequently climbed into the various portions of the mountain in
order to make surveys of the country below, I had obtained a pretty good
knowledge of the neighborhood; and when disaster after disaster began to
hurl themselves upon this unfortunate multitude of invaders, I took
measures for my safety. I did not want to go back to Persia, even if
I could go there, which looked very doubtful after the battle of Salamis,
and as I had come into the country with the Persians, it might have been
unsafe to show myself with the Greeks; so, remembering what I had seen of
the wild regions of Mount Athos, I made my way there, with the intention
of dwelling in its rocky fastnesses until the country should become safe
for the ordinary wayfarer. As there was no opportunity of teaching school
on that desolate mountain--"

"And marrying one of thy scholars," interpolated Mrs. Crowder.

"--I became a sort of hermit," he continued; "but I did not spend my time
after the usual fashion of the conventional hermit, who lives on
water-cresses and reads great books with a skull to keep the pages open.
I built myself a rude cabin under a great rock, and lived somewhat after
the fashion of the other inhabitants of that wild region, mostly robbers
and outlaws. As I had nothing which any one would want to steal, I was
not afraid of them, and I could occasionally be of a little service to
them, especially in the way of rude medical attendance, for which they
were willing to pay me by giving me now and then some food.

"I had laid in a stock of writing-materials before I went up on the
mountain, and I now went to work with great enthusiasm to set down what
I knew of the expedition of Xerxes, and here it was that I made the notes
which were afterward so useful to Herodotus.