It must have been the name that made me take that little house on the
hilltop. It was mostly view, but the title--supplemented by the very low
rent--suggested the first line of a beautiful poem.

Nobody knows who began the custom or when, but for unknown years a
night-light had been kept burning in a battered old bronze lantern swung
just over my front door. Through the early morning mists the low white
building itself seemed made of dreams; but the tiny flame, slipping
beyond the low curving eaves, shone far at sea and by its light the
Japanese sailors, coming around the rocky Tongue of Dragons point in
their old junks, steered for home and rest. To them it was a welcome
beacon. They called the place "The House of the Misty Star."

In it for thirty years I have toiled and taught and dreamed. From it I
have watched the ships of mighty nations pass--some on errands of peace;
some to change the map of the world. Through its casements I have seen
God's glory in the sunsets and the tenderness of His love in the dawns.
The pink hills of the spring and the crimson of the autumn have come and
gone, and through the carved portals that mark the entrance to my home
have drifted the flotsam and jetsam of the world. They have come for
shelter, for food, for curiosity and sometimes because they must, till I
have earned my title clear as step-mother-in-law to half the waifs and
strays of the Orient.

Once it was a Chinese general, seeking safety from a mob. Then it was a
fierce-looking Russian suspected as a spy and, when searched, found to
be a frightened girl, seeking her sweetheart among the prisoners of war.
The high, the low, the meek, and the impertinent, lost babies, begging
pilgrims and tailless cats--all sooner or later have found their way
through my gates and out again, barely touching the outer edges of my