A Drama on the Seashore
DEDICATION To Madame la Princesse Caroline Galitzin de Genthod, nee Comtesse Walewska. Homage and remembrances of The Author. A DRAMA ON THE SEASHORE Nearly all young men have a compass with which they delight in measuring the future. When their will is equal to the breadth of the angle at which they open it the world is theirs. But this phenomenon of the inner life takes place only at a certain age. That age, which for all men lies between twenty-two and twenty-eight, is the period of great thoughts, of fresh conceptions, because it is the age of immense desires. After that age, short as the seed-time, comes that of execution. There are, as it were, two youths,--the youth of belief, the youth of action; these are often commingled in men whom Nature has
PREFACE.
Missions to the Oriental Churches occupy a large space in the
forty-nine volumes of the Missionary Herald, and in as many Annual
Reports of the Board; and in view of the multitude of facts, from
which selections must be made to do justice to the several missions,
it will readily be seen, that their history cannot be compressed
into a single volume. The Missions may be regarded as seven or eight
in number; considering the Palestine and Syria missions as really
but one, and the several Armenian missions as also one. The history
of the Syria mission, in its connection with the American Board,
covers a period of fifty-one years; that of the Nestorian,
thirty-seven; that of the Greek mission, forty-three; of the
Assyrian (as a separate mission), ten; of the Armenian mission, to
the present time, forty; and of the Bulgarian, twelve. The mission
to the Jews, extending through thirty years, was so intimately
connected with these, as to demand a place in the series; and the
facts scattered through half a century, illustrating the influence
exerted on the Mohammedans, are such as to require a separate
embodiment.
DEDICATION To Madame la Princesse Caroline Galitzin de Genthod, nee Comtesse Walewska. Homage and remembrances of The Author. A DRAMA ON THE SEASHORE Nearly all young men have a compass with which they delight in measuring the future. When their will is equal to the breadth of the angle at which they open it the world is theirs. But this phenomenon of the inner life takes place only at a certain age. That age, which for all men lies between twenty-two and twenty-eight, is the period of great thoughts, of fresh conceptions, because it is the age of immense desires. After that age, short as the seed-time, comes that of execution. There are, as it were, two youths,--the youth of belief, the youth of action; these are often commingled in men whom Nature has