m said with her eye still on the bark that no
tree could live two centuries and still look so vigorous.

But I sez, "Mount Sinai looks pretty firm and stiddy, and the Red Sea
I spoze looks jest about as red and hearty as it did when the
Israelites crossed it."

She wuz examinin' the bark through her eye glasses, but she said
mountains and seas could stand more than a tree And I said I guessed
the hand that made a tree could keep it alive.

And I knew that it didn't make any difference anyway. This wuz the
road they come and they had to rest anyway, and it stood to reason
they would rest under a tree, and I felt that this wuz the tree,
though it might have been another one nigh by. And while Miss
Meechim's mind was all taken up lookin' at the bark of that tree, my
mind wuz full of this great fact and truth, that the Child wuz saved
from his enemies. And while the kingdom of the wicked king has been
covered and lost from sight under the sands of time for centuries, the
kingdom of the Holy Child stands firmer to-day than ever before, and
is broadening and widening all the time, teaching the true brotherhood
of man, and fatherhood of God. This is the great truth, all the
branching creeds and arguments and isms, they are only the bark.

Nigh by the tree stands a tall piller sixty-four feet high, covered
with strange writin'. As I looked at it I thought I would gin a dollar
bill to have read that writin', no knowin' what strange secrets of the
past would have been revealed to me. But I couldn't read it, it is
dretful writin'. Josiah sometimes makes fun of my handwritin' and
calls it ducks' tracks, but I thought that if he'd seen this he'd
thought that mine wuz like print compared to it. They say that this is
the oldest obelisk in Egypt, and that is sayin' a good deal, for Egypt
is full of former greatness old as the hills.

Here in the East civilization begun, and gradual, gradual it stalked
along towards the West, and is slowly, slowly marchin' on round the
world back to where it started from, and when the round world is
belted with knowledge and Christianity, then mebby will come the
thousand years of peace, the millennium the Scriptures have foretold,
when the lamb shall lay down with the lion and a young child shall
lead them. I spoze the young child means the baby Peace that shall
bime-by lead the nations along into the World Beautiful. And there
shall be no more war.

CHAPTER XXIII

Cairo is different f