"His friends went home; and his face grew still As he watched for the shadow across the sill; He lived all the moments o'er and o'er, When the Lord should enter the lowly door-- The knock, the call, the latch pulled up, The lighted face, the offered cup. He would wash the feet where the spikes had been; He would kiss the hands where the nails went in; And then at last he would sit with him And break the bread as the day grew dim." The Shoes of Happiness. But the Master did not come. Instead came a beggar and the cobbler gave him shoes; instead came an old crone with a heavy load of faggots. He gave her a lift with her load and some of the food that he had prepared for the Christ when he should come. Finally a little child came, crying along the streets, lost. He pitied the child and left his shop to take it to its mother; such was his great heart of love. He hurried back that he might not miss the Great Guest when he came. But the Great Guest did not come. As the evening came and the shadows were falling through the window of his shop, more and more the truth, with all its weight of sadness, bore in upon him, that the dream was not to come true; that he had made a mistake; that Christ was not to come to his humble shop. His heart was broken and he cried out in his disappointment: "Why is it, Lord, that your feet delay? Did you forget that this was the day?" The Shoes of Happiness. Then what sweeter scene in all the lines of the poetry of the world than this that follows? Where is Christ more wonderfully and simply summed up; his spirit of love, and care? "Then soft in the silence a voice he heard: 'Lift up your heart, for I kept my word. Three times I came to your friendly door; Three times my shadow was on your floor. I was the beggar with bruised feet; I was the woman you gave to eat; I was the child on the homeless street!'" The Shoes of Happiness. One is reminded here of Masefield's "The Everlasting Mercy," wherein he speaks as Markham speaks about the child: "And he who gives a child a treat Makes joy-bells ring in Heaven's street; And he who gives a child a home Builds palaces in Kingdom Come; And she who gives a baby birth Brings Saviour Christ again to earth." The Shoes of Happiness. "Inasmuch as ye have done it unto the least of one of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me," another great-hearted Poet once said; and these words Markham, in "How the Great Guest Came," has made real. "SCRIPT FOR THE JOURNEY"