in the life of my people, the same now as in the days of old, have
been woven into the words of the Bible and into the conceptions of
religious ideas as expressed there; you of the Western world, not
knowing these things as they are, often misunderstand what is
written, or at least fail to get a correct impression from it."

"Tell us about some of these," I ventured, with a parental glance
at two listening little faces.

After mentioning several instances, he went on: "And there is the
shepherd psalm: I find that it is taken among you as having two
parts, the first under the figure of shepherd life, the second
turning to the figure of a banquet with the host and the guest."

"Oh, we have talked about that," said my lady of the teacups as she
dangled the tea-ball with a connoisseur's fondness, "and we have
even said that we wished the wonderful little psalm could have been
finished in the one figure of shepherd life."

"It seems to us," I added, wishing to give suitable support to my
lady's rather brave declaration of our sense of a literary flaw in
the matchless psalm, "it seems to us to lose the sweet, simple
melody and to close with strange, heavy chords when it changes to a
scene of banquet hospitality. Do you mean that it actually keeps
the shepherd figure to the end?"

"Certainly, good friends."

With keen personal interest I asked him to tell us how we might see
it as a shepherd psalm throughout. So we listened and he talked,