Properties
- end_line
- 157
- extracted_at
- 2026-01-26T19:08:58.226Z
- extracted_by
- structure-extraction-lambda
- start_line
- 121
- text
- 88 # THE SACRIFICE OF NOAH
89
90 
91
92 FTER weeks spent on board ship, how delightful to step on land! To feel solid earth beneath your feet is a joy in itself.
93
94 How different, too, are the smells. How pleasantly new are the sights. On every side, brain and nerves are alive to fresh sensations.
95
96 I remember how happy I felt after being twenty-nine days on the Pacific Ocean. The land I stepped upon was full of mountains. How grand, solid-looking, *fast*, they were. Nothing was rocking, swimming, tossing, or seesawing. Even at night I could undress and go to bed without holding on by one hand to the door-knob or clothes-hook. I suppose Americans call their ship bedchamber a “state-room” because they are in so uncertain a state while in them.
<!-- [Page 18](arke:01KFXV097E4HXWGK13VWYR7AS6) -->
97 4
98
99 Not so very different was the ark from an Atlantic steamer, for both floated on the same unstable element. Noah looked as long and as eagerly for land as a sail- or in the tops. When the pilot-raven was sent out and came not back, Noah took it as a good sign. Land was near, yet not near enough for the pink toes of a dainty dove. After the messenger dove’s second flight, a letter came from God addressed to Noah. It was not written with pen, nor with ink on paper. It was an olive leaf, glossy green on one side, silvery gray on the other. Noah examined it as eagerly as we look for our friend’s handwriting. Yes, it was a live leaf, not a dead one of last year be- fore the flood. Fresh as a postage-stamp cancelled yesterday, it told the story of time. It was “pluckt off,” the message read, in God’s own words:
100
101 “Go forth out of the ark, thou, and thy wife, and thy sons, and thy sons’ wives with thee.”
102
103 How glad Father Noah and all the
<!-- [Page 19](arke:01KFXV089SCB6M82N9Y9X3YCW1) -->
104 
105 THE SACRIFICE OF NOAH
<!-- [Page 20](arke:01KFXV09RRYZZPVTK8MY964EBZ) -->
106 .
<!-- [Page 21](arke:01KFXV097GDE3SVEHW132W903F) -->
107 7
108
109 young folks were to breathe God's air, which is usually so much purer than house or ship air. The great floating chest was like a cattle-ship, for it was full of livestock. After many months of wet and “nasty” weather—as sailors say—their cramped limbs enjoyed the climb up the hill-side. How sure and solid the ground felt to them. No wonder the Psalms are full of gratitude because God “setteth fast” the mountains.
110
111 First, they let free the beasts, birds, and creeping things out of their pens and stalls in the ark. What a scene of frisking, gambolling, and tail-whisking there must have been, as the animals regained their freedom, and scattered over the earth!
112
113 Fathers, mothers, and children, led by Noah, hastened at once to thank God. The way to do this in early ages was to build an altar of stones, and with fire and clean animals laid on it to send up a costly smoke to heaven. So worshipped all the ancient nations when the world was young.
114
115 High up on the mountain’s crest,
- title
- Chunk 1