LITMIR.BIZ

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us until daylight to reach the crater-brink of this majestic mountain of fire.

      White flashes of light, leapt from Bromo at frequent intervals all night long as we traveled on ponies through the tropical jungle trail, upward, and onward to the brink of that pit of hell.

      White flashes of light leapt from Bromo at the narrow rail. They called them "Night-Blooming Lilies," and sure enough they blanketed the rugged pathway that night like so many tiny white Fairies. Indeed there was something beautifully weird in their white wonder against the night. They looked like frail, earth-angels playing in the star-light, sending out a sweet odor which mingled strangely with the odor of sulphur from the volcano.

      And back of all this was the background of that awful, thundering, rumbling and grumbling volcano as somber as suicide. Strangely weird flashes lighted the mountains for miles around.

      "It looks like heat lightning back at home," said an American.

      "Only the flashes are more vivid!" said another member of the party.

      Those flashes of light from the inner fires of the earth, bursting from the fissures of restless volcano Bromo shall ever remain, like some strange glimpse of a new Inferno.

      Volcanic Merapi, another belching furnace of Java, gave me a picture of a flash-light of flame.

      The night that we stayed up on the old temple of Boroboedoer, Merapi was unusually active; and now and then its flashes of flame lighted up the whole beautiful valley between the temple and the mountain.

      At each flash of fire, the tall Bamboo and Cocoanut trees loomed like graceful Javanese women in the midst of far-reaching, green, rice paddies; while two rivers that met below us, wound under that light like two silver threads in the night.

      Once, when an unusually heavy flash came from Merapi, we saw below us a beautiful Javanese girl clasped in the arms of her brown lover. Each seemed to be stark naked as they stood under a Cocoanut tree like Rodin bronzes.

      It was this beautiful girl's voice that we later heard singing to her lover a Javanese love song in the tropical night.

      This, I take it, was the Flame of Love; a flame which lights up the world forever; everywhere her devotees, clothed or naked, are the same; forever and a day; be it on the streets of Broadway; along the lanes of the Berkshire Hills of New England; up the rugged trails of the Sierras; or along the quiet, tree-lined streets of an American village. It is a flame; this business of love; a flame which, flashing by day and night, lights the world to a new glory.

      * * * * * *

      One night the missionaries in Korea saw flames bursting out against the hills.

      "What is it?" they cried, filled with fear.

      "The Japanese are burning the Korean villages!" said one who knew.

      All night long the villages burned and all night long the people were murdered. Runners brought news to the hillsides of Seoul where anxious, broken-hearted American missionaries waited.

      "One, two, three, four, five; ten, fifteen, twenty; thirty, forty, fifty; a hundred, two hundred, three hundred; villages are burning," so came the messages.

      The entire peninsula was lighted as with a great holocaust.

      It is said that the light could be seen from Fusan itself, a hundred miles away.

      "From our village it looked like a light over a great American steel-mill city," said a missionary to me.

      And when the morning came, the flames were still leaping high against the crimson sky of dawn.

      For days this burning of villages continued. Belgium never saw more ruthless flame and fire; set by sterner souls; or harder hearts!

      That was two years ago.

      The villages are charred ruins now. Some of them have never been rebuilt. The murdered people of these villages have gone back to dust.

      The Japanese think that the fires are out. They thought, when the flames of those burning villages ceased leaping into the skies; and at last were but smouldering embers; that the flames had died. But the Japanese were wrong, for on that very day, the Flames of Freedom began to burn in Korean hearts and souls! And from that day to this; those flames have been rising higher and higher. These are Flash-Lights of Flame that, as the years go by; mount, like beacon lights of hope on Korean hills, to light the marching dawn of Korean Independence.

      * * * * * *

      A beautiful Korean custom that used to be; flashes a flame of fire across the screen of history.

      In the old days the Korean Emperor used to have signals of fire flashed from hill to hill running clear from the Chinese border to Seoul, the Korean capital. This signal indicated that all was well along the borders and that there was no danger of a Chinese invasion from the north.

      Korea has always been a bone of contention between China, Russia and Japan. Consequently this little peninsula has always walked on uneasy paths, which is ever the fate of a buffer state.

      Never did a Korean Emperor go to sleep in peace until he looked out and saw that the signal fires burned on the beautiful mountain peaks surrounding the city of Seoul; fires indicating that the borders were safe that night and that inmates of the palace might rest in peace and security.

      "It must have been a beautiful sight to have seen the light flashing on the mountain peak there to the north," I said to an eighty-year old Korean patriarch.

      "It meant peace for the night," he answered. "It was beautiful. I often long to see those fires of old burning again on yonder mountain."

      He said this with a dramatic wave of his stately white robed arm.

      "The sunsets still flame from that western mountain peak, overlooking your city beautiful!" I said with a smile.

      "Yes, the sunsets still flame behind that peak," he responded with a far-away look in his aged eyes.

      "Perhaps the good Christian God is lighting the fires for you?" I suggested.

      "Yes, He, the good Christian God; is still lighting the fires for us; but they are fires of freedom, fires of hope, and fires of Democracy!" the old man said with a new light in his own flashing eyes.

      "And fires of peace," I added.

      "Yes, fires of Peace when freedom comes!" he responded.

      But whatever the political implications are; it is historically true that this old custom had existed for years until the Japanese took possession of Korea and stopped this beautiful tradition.

      But behind that same mountain from which the bonfires used to flash in the olden days; indicating that the frontiers were safe for the night; that no enemy hosts were invading the peninsula; behind that mountain the fires of sunset still flame, flash, flare, and die away in the somber purple shadows of night.

      * * * * * *

      Nor shall one forget an evening at Wanju; a hundred miles from Seoul; sitting in the Mission House looking down into that village of a hundred thousand souls; watching the fires of evening lighted; watching a blanket of gray-blue smoke slowly lift over that little village; watching the great round moon slowly rise above a jutting peak beyond the village to smile down on that quiet, peaceful scene in mid-December.

      Koreans never light their fires until evening comes and then they light a fire at one end of the house, under the floor and the smoke and heat travel the entire length of the house warming the rooms. It is a poor heat maker but it is a picturesque custom.

      Thousands of flames lighted up the sky that night. The little thatch houses, and the children in their quaint garbs moving against the flames composed a strange Oriental Rembrandt picture.

      * * * * * *

      Streets! Streets! Streets!

      Lights! Lights! Lights!

      Somehow streets and lights

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