This night the rain came down in buckets full, And Claude who brought the logs in showed his breath Between the opening of the outer door And the swift on-rush of the room's warm air. And my host who had hoed the whole day long, Hearty at eighty years, sat with his pipe Reading the organ of the Adventists, His wife beside him knitting. On the table Are several magazines with their monthly grist Of stories and of pictures. O such stories! Who writes these stories? How does it happen people Are born into the world to read these stories? But anyway the lamp is very bad, And every bone in me aches--and why always Must one be either reading, knitting, talking? Why not sit quietly and think? At last Between the clicking needles and the slap Of cards upon the table and the swish Of rain upon the window my host speaks: "It says here when the Germans are defeated, And that means when the Turks are beaten too, The Christian world will take back Palestine, And drive the Turks out. God be praised, I hope so." "Amen" breaks in the wife. "May we both live To see the day. Perhaps you'll get your trunk back From Jaffa if the Allies win." To me The wife turns and goes on, "He has a trunk, At least his trunk went on to Jaffa, and It never came back. The bishop's trunk came back, But his trunk never came." And then the husband: "What are you saying, mother, you go on As if our friend here knew the story too. And then you talk as if our hope of the war Was centered on recovering that trunk." "Oh, not at all But if the Allies win, and the trunk is there In Jaffa you might get it back. You know You'll never get it back while infidels Rule Palestine." The husband says to me: "It looks as if she thought that trunk of mine, Which went to Jaffa fifty years ago, Is in existence yet, when chances are They kept it for awhile, and sold it off, Or threw it away." "They never threw it away. Why I made him a dozen shirts or more, And knitted him a lot of lovely socks, And made him neck-ties, and that trunk contained Everything that a man might need in absence A year from home. And yet they threw it away!" "They might have done so." "But they never did, Perhaps they threw your cabinet tools away?" "They were too valuable." "Too valuable, Fine socks and shirts are worthless are they, yes."