We went to see Miss Montgomerie the other day.  She is an American missionary, who has lived at Hamadan for thirty-three years.  She has schools, etc., and she lives in the Armenian quarter, and devotes her life to her neighbours.  Her language is entirely Biblical, and it sounds almost racy as she says it.

There is nothing to record.  Yesterday I cleaned out my room for something to do, and in the evening a smoky lamp laid it an inch thick in blacks.  The pass here is quite blocked, and no one can come or go.  The snow falls steadily in fine small flakes.  My car has disappeared, with the chauffeur, at Kasvin.  I hear of it being sent to Enzeli; but the whole thing is a mystery, and is making me very anxious.  There are no answers to any of my telegrams, and I am completely in the dark.

3 March.—­I think that to be on a frozen hill-top, with fever, some boils, three dogs, and a blizzard, is about as near wearing down one’s spirits as anything I know.

5 March, Sunday.—­In bed all day, with the ancient Persian in attendance.

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[Page Heading:  THE RETURN OF THE PILGRIM]

The Return of the Pilgrim.

This is not a story for Sunday afternoon.  It is true for one thing, and Sunday afternoon stories are not, as a rule, true.  They nearly all tell of the return of the Prodigals, but they leave out the return of the Pilgrims, and that is why this parable is not for Sunday afternoon.  I write it because I never knew a true thing yet that was not of use to someone.

Most of us leave home when we are grown up.  The people who never grow up stop at home.  The journey and the outward-bound vision are the signs of an active mind stirring wholesomely or unwholesomely as the case may be.  The Prodigal is generally accounted one of those whose sane mind demands an outlet; but he lands in trouble, and gets hungry, and comes back penitent, as we have heard a thousand million times.  The Far Country is always barren, the husks of swine are the only food to be had, and bankruptcy is inevitable.

The story has been accepted by many generations of men as a picture of the world, with its temptations, its sins, its moral bankruptcy, and its illusionary and unsatisfying pleasures.  Preachers have always been fond of allusions to the husks and swine, and the desperate hunger which there is nothing to satisfy in the Far Country.  The story is true, God wot; it gives many a man a wholesome fright, and keeps him at home, and its note of forgiveness for a wasted life has proved the salvation of many Prodigals.