to come to conclusions that seem strange, and yet never to have deviated from the line of prudence. They have at every moment a perfect awareness of what they are doing. They test everything as they go along. They have the caution which belongs to the man who knows how to experiment. Such minds go far, but as they go they make a safe and broad highway along which the rest of us may travel.

THE END OF THE DELUGE

FIVE years have passed since the end of the World War. Already that war is beginning to take its place as a terrible episode in the history of humanity. What future generations will not realize is the feeling of those who lived through it. Long as the war was, people were unprepared for the end. It caught them unprepared. There was a strange incredulity in the public mind. Peace was like Utopia. Hard-headed people found it difficult to believe that it had actually come. Here in America all our thoughts were on the vast preparations for the coming year. Was it possible that they were no longer needed?

I venture to include in this volume a "parable for the time" written about a fortnight before the Armistice and published in the "Christian Register" November 17, 1918.

SCENE The Ark. Noah looking out of the window. SHEM, HAM, and JAPHET seated with their backs to the window.

NOAH - I can't see the dove anywhere. SHEM (peevishly) — - I said you'd never see that

dove again. And we've lost a perfectly good raven. It's foolish to leave the window open in a time like this.

NOAH - Rejoice, my son, that the dove does not return. It is a sign that the waters of the flood are abating.

SHEM-Last week when the dove came back you said that was a good sign.

NOAH (gently) - But, my son, you But, my son, you remember it brought us an olive leaf.

SHEM It was water-soaked.

-

olive leaf in a great flood like this?

What's an

NOAH - Cheer up, my son. For forty days. and forty nights the windows of heaven were opened, but after that when I looked out I saw signs that made me sure that the waters were abating. Let us accept the good omens. Soon we shall go out again into the pleasant fields.

HAM That's the trouble with you, father. You are always seeing things. I remember hearing people call you visionary. I didn't know what they meant then, but I know now. You see things before they happen.

NOAH - That's a good way to see them, my son. It gives one time to prepare for them. When I saw that there was going to be a flood I

got ready for it. And now that the flood is coming to an end I'm getting ready for that. Come to the window and I'll show you something that will gladden your eyes.

JAPHET -I suppose, father, you expect us to see dry land.

NOAH - I think it is time for you to look for it.

JAPHET But it would interfere with our work of carrying on the Ark. After we've built an ark like this and filled it with animals you don't think that we're going to give it up just because it has stopped raining. We're going to see this thing through.

HAM - Yes, and we have just been talking of having our children taught so that they can build a bigger and better ark. And if they are to build a bigger ark they must have faith to believe that there will be a bigger flood to float it. You can't neglect the spiritual.

NOAH - But, my son, you must not think that floods go on forever. I lived six hundred years before anything like this happened.

JAPHET- How monotonous the old times were! But let's not talk about the past or the future, but about the present. We are not ante

diluvians or post-diluvians but diluvians. It's a waste of time to talk about anything but the flood. Let us treat it as something permanent.

SHEM-Yes, we must be practical and not delude ourselves with doves and ravens and olive leaves and rainbows. We have been shut up in this ark a long time, and it will be a longer time before we are out of it. We must prepare our minds for that.

The Ark gives a sudden lurch, there is a grinding sound, and then all is quiet.

SHEM, HAM, and JAPHET are rolled about and then recover themselves.

SHEM That was the biggest wave yet! I believe the flood is just beginning. This seems to me like the real thing. As I was saying, father, we must not let hopefulness deceive us. We must all of us face the hard facts.

NOAH (looking out of the window) — That's what I am doing. The hard fact is Mount Ararat — and we're on it.

THE END