Читать книгу The Library of Work and Play: Housekeeping - Elizabeth Hale Gilman - Страница 11

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Long, long ago, there was a famine in a little town called Sarepta. For months and months there had been no rain, and nothing could grow in the fields, and the streams dried up and the sheep died and many people died, too, because they had no food.

A widow lived in Sarepta, who had one boy, and she was poor. When the famine began she had just one barrel of meal and one cruse of oil, and because she knew she could get no more, she and her son ate as little as they could, but even so, in a few months the meal was far down in the bottom of the barrel, and the cruse of oil felt very light.

At last one morning, when the woman got up, she found there was only enough meal and oil to make one little cake. She looked at it a long time, thinking they must certainly starve to death when that was gone; then she went out to get some wood for the fire, for she said to herself, "I will bake this one cake and we will eat it, but after that we will have to die." I expect she looked white and sad as she went, for it hurts very much to be so hungry that you die of it.

She found a few sticks, and was picking them up, when a tall old man stopped beside her and leaned on his staff. His clothes were made of hairy skins, and he had a long gray beard, and his face and arms and legs were brown and rough as if he had lived out in the sun and the frost. He seemed to have been making a journey, and he asked for a drink of water. The widow was glad it was only water that he wanted, and was hurrying off to get it, when the old man called after her, and asked her to bring him a piece of bread.

She thought of the little bit of meal and oil, and of her hungry boy, and of how hungry she was herself—and now, here was this tired old man asking for food! It was really more than she could bear. She came back toward him and said, "As the Lord liveth, I have not a cake, but only a handful of meal in a barrel, and a little oil in a cruse; and behold I am gathering two sticks that I may go and dress it for me and my son, that we may eat it and die!"

The old man saw how hungry and desperate she looked; it may be that he knew beforehand that she was; nevertheless, he said: "Fear not; but go and do as thou hast said: but make me thereof a little cake first, and bring it unto me, and after that make for thee and thy son. For thus saith the Lord God of Israel, The barrel of meal shall not waste, neither shall the cruse of oil fail, until the day that the Lord sendeth rain upon the earth."

The widow did not altogether understand what he said, but somehow she felt stronger and more brave. She went home quickly and baked a little meal cake, and brought it to the old man, and asked him to come to her house and rest. He went back with her, and then she set about baking the rest of the meal and oil. She thought it would only make a very little cake, but the more meal she took out of the barrel, the more there was in it; and the more oil she poured from the cruse, the heavier it was to lift. She could hardly believe it, and yet she saw it was surely so. Then she went, crying with gladness and relief, and knelt beside the old man and thanked him, and begged him to stay with them as long as he could. And he did stay, a good many months, and all the time of the famine there was meal in the barrel and oil in the cruse.

By and by, the widow and her son learned that the old man's name was Elijah, and that he was a Prophet of the Lord God of Israel.