But the rain is coming down and we will hasten to the Meena to Uncle S.’s house, where we can rest after this wearisome and hasty journey from Safita.  For your sake I am glad that we took comfortable bedding and bedsteads with us.  It costs a few piastres more to hire a baggage animal, but it is cheaper in the end.  At one time I was going on a hard journey, and I thought I would be economical, so I took only my horse and a few articles in my khurj or saddle bags, with a little boy to show me the road and take care of my horse.  When I reached the village, I stopped at the house of a man said to be a Protestant.  He lived in the most abject style, and I soon found by his bad language towards his family and his neighbors that he needed all the preaching I could give him that evening.  There was only one room in the house, and that was small.  By nine o’clock the mother and the children had lain down on a mat to sleep, and the neighbors who came in were beginning to doze.  I was very weary with a long ride on a hot August day, and asked mine host where I should lie down to sleep.  He led me to a little elevated platform on the back side of the room, where a bed was spread for me.  The dim oil lamp showed me that the bed and covering were neither of them clean, but I was too weary to spend much time in examining them, and after spreading my linen handkerchief over the pillow, I tried to sleep.  But this could not be done.  Creeping things, great and small, were crawling over me from head to foot.  There was a hole in the wall near my head, and the bright moonlight showed what was going on.  Fleas, bugs, ants, (attracted by the bread in my khurj,) and more horrible still, swarms of lice covered the bed, and my clothing.  I could stand it no longer.  Gathering up my things, and walking carefully across the floor to keep from stepping on the sleeping family, I reached the door.  But it was fastened with an Arab lock and a huge wooden key, and could only be opened by a violent shaking and rattling.  This, with the creaking of the hinges, woke up my host, who sprung up to see what was the matter.  I told him I had decided to journey on by moonlight.  It was then one o’clock in the morning, and on I rode, so weary, that when I reached Jebaa at ten o’clock, I was obliged to go to bed.  I did not recover from the onset of the vermin for weeks.

I have known missionaries to travel without beds, tents or bedsteads, and to spend weary days and sleepless nights, so as to be quite unfitted for their great work of preaching to the people.  If you ever grow up to become a missionary, I hope you will live as simply as you can, but be careful of your health and try to live as long as you can, for the sake of the people you are working for, and the Lord who sends you forth.  It is not good economy for a missionary to become a martyr to studying Arabic, or to poor food, or to exhausting modes of travelling.  One can kill himself in a short time, if he wishes, on missionary ground, but he could have done that at home without the great expense of coming here to do it, and besides, that is not what a missionary goes out for.  He ought to live as long as he can.  He should have a dry house, in a healthy location, good food, and proper conveniences for safe travelling.