My second eventful incident hinges upon a short severe illness that
prostrated me, the third day after we landed in Beirut from the steamer
we had taken at Port Saïd. I had already made acquaintance with
President Bliss and some of the professors in the American College,
crowning one of the heights of the beautiful town, and I sent at once
for Doctor Schauffler, whom I had known slightly in Springfield,
Massachusetts.
On the fourth day of my illness I asked him, plaintively:
“Do you know there is not a woman-servant in this hotel? The person who
‘does’ my room has a long white beard and wears a skull-cap. Bert calls
the photograph he has made of the nondescript: ‘_Le femme de chambre!_’
It is very funny—and rather dreadful!”
“The beloved physician” eyed me in thoughtful compassion.
“We are so used to that sort of thing here that we rarely think of it
as out of the way. No decent woman would take a position in a house
where she must work with men. She would lose caste and reputation,
forthwith. Hence, ‘_le femme de chambre_.’ I can see that it must be
intensely disagreeable to you.”
There the matter dropped. I was still in bed when, at four o’clock
that afternoon, he paid his second visit. He wasted no time in apology
or solicitation. His carriage was at the door, packed with cushions.
I must be taken out of bed, rolled up in rugs and shawls, carried
down-stairs by my son and my dragoman, deposited in the carriage and
driven up to his house.
“Where there are women-servants,” he added, laughingly, “and where a
cordial American welcome awaits you. Doctor and Mrs. Webster, of Haifa,
are visiting us, and you will be well looked after. And Mrs. Bliss is
coming over to drink afternoon tea with you. So, we have no time to
lose.”
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.