Something from Mountains In The Midst by F W Boreham

 

Charles Dickens wrote the scene.

THE scene is laid in the villainous old prison at Marseilles. In one of its most loathsome and repulsive dungeons lay two men. For one of them, Monsieur Rigaud, a sumptuous meal had been provided.

The other, John Baptist Cavalletto, had a hard, black crust.  Rigaud soon dispatched his delicate viands,' Dickens tells us,  and proceeded to suck his fingers as clean as he could. Then he paused in his drink to contemplate his fellow prisoner.

'How do you find the bread? '

' A little dry, but I have my old sauce here,' returned John, holding up his knife.

'How sauce? '

'I can cut my bread so-like a melon. Or so-like an omelette. Or so-like a fried fish. Or so-like a Lyons sausage,' said John, demonstrating the various cuts on the bread he held, and soberly chewing what he had in his mouth. Now, I am not sure whether this should be called magic. It certainly is a kind of magic. The happy prisoner waves his hand over his crust and cries

'Presto!'; and straightway it is transformed into melon, omelette, fried fish, or sausage at his will.

The power by which poor Cavalletto turned a dry crust into appetizing dainties and the power by which a tiny world has been changed into a tremendous one. For Cavalletto, too, was an explorer in his way. He knew, not only how to find a fried fish in a dry crust, but how to find a broad continent in a narrow cell. Listen: ' What is the time? ' asked Monsieur Rigaud. 'The mid-day bells will ring in forty minutes.'

'Why, you are a clock; how is it that you always know? '

'Oh, I always know what the hour is and whereI am. I was brought in here at night, and out of a boat, but I know where I am. See here is Marseilles harbour'; on his knees on the pavement, mapping it all out with a swarthy forefinger, 'Toulon (where the galleys are), Spain over there, Algiers over there. Creeping away to the left here, Nice. Round by the cornice to Genoa, Genoa Mole and harbour. Quarantine Ground. City there; terrace gardens blushing with the belladonna. Here, Porto Fino. Stand out for Leghorn. Out again for Civita Vecchia. So away to-hey there's no room for Naples'; he had got to the wall by this time;  'but it's all one; it's in there I '

Cava1letto could cruise round Europe without opening his door or looking out of its windows.

 

In the days of the Maori War some hostile natives resolved to insult Bishop Selwyn, They arranged to offer him a pig-sty for his accommodation. The Bishop accepted; drove out the pigs; gathered some fern from the bush for his bed; and occupied his lowly residence with such charm and dignity that the Maories exclaimed: ' You cannot degrade that man I' Precisely I He politely declined to identify himself with his environment.

John Nelson one of Wesley's men wrote in his diary 'When I came into the dungeon, that stank worse than a hog-sty, by reason of the blood and filth that ran into it from the slaughter-house above, my soul was so filled with the love of God that it was a paradise to me I'

George Eliot said. 'Laugh, and it laughs back; frown, and your gloom is recast.' If I have a princely soul, every prison or pig-sty that I enter flashes by this wondrous magic into a palace. If I am a felon, I may live in a palace, but the palace will be as gloomy as a jail. That is a tremendous saying of Maeterlinck's:

'Nothing befalls us that is not of the nature of ourselves. Whether you climb up the mountain, or go down to the valley, none but yourself shall you meet on the highway of fate. If Judas go forth to-night, it is towards Judas that his steps will tend, nor will chance for betrayal be lacking; but let Socrates open his door, he shall find Socrates asleep on the threshold before him, and there will be occasion for wisdom.'

Wordsworth wrote of Dancing Daffodils. He reflected for a long time, that he could only suppose that, since the sight of the daffodils set his soul dancing with delight, he had unconsciously transferred the inward sensation  to the outward object. Of course

It's a gay old world when you're gay, And a glad world when you're glad;

But whether you play Or must toil all day, It's a sad old world when you're sad.

It's a grand old world if you're great, And a mean old world if you're small:

It's a world full of hate For the foolish who prate Of the uselessness of it all. It's a beautiful world to see, Or it's dismal in every zoue: The thing it must be In its gloom or its glee Depends on yourself alone.

 

What is the use of putting John Bunyan into Bedford Jail if he is going to fill his cell with the Sisters from the Palace Beautiful, the Shepherds from the Delectable Mountains, and even the Palace and the Mountains themselves?

 

Pliny wrote of his confusion over the Christians he was asked to kill to Trajan the Emperor concerning the Christians. The poor proconsul is at his wits' ends. He has found a class of criminals for whom his most horrible punishments and his most loathsome prisons have no terror. Indeed, they seem to like these things; for the more he persecutes, the more  the contagion of the superstition spreads! The imprisoned Christians sing in their cells, and the dying martyrs greet the unseen with a cheer.

Prisons become palaces to them, and their hardest crusts are transformed into angels' food. Pliny confesses to his imperial master that he is perfectly bewildered. Again, when one of the early confessors appeared before the Roman Emperor, charged with being a Christian, the Emperor threatened him with banishment unless he renounced Christ. The Christian replied, "Thou canst not, for the world is my Father's house."

"But I will slay thee," said the Emperor.   "Nay, but thou canst not, for my life is hid with Christ in God."  "I will take away thy treasures."  "Nay, but thou canst not," was the reply,  "for my treasure is in heaven, and my heart is there."  "But I will drive thee away from man, and thou shalt have no friend left."  "Nay, but thou canst not,"  once more said the confessor,   "for I have a Friend in heaven, from whom thou canst not separate me. I defy thee; there is nothing thou canst do to hurt me." What is the use of imprisoning men of this temper? They escape, not from the prison, but in the prison.

 

There is a magic that turns prisons into palaces and crusts into dainties. There is a wonder that wraps a man about, and thenceforth no humiliation can degrade him, no banishment can exile him, no poverty can make him poor, and no death can destroy him.