Now, my children, day comes to an end. You have worked hard and studied and toiled through the heat of the morning and battled all the afternoon away. I was waiting to sit with you in the shade, to refresh you with a verse or a tale. Ah, but there was more and more work to be done, more protests to be raised, newspapers, reports and quarterlies to be published, more money to be made. Now the hour is late and you have forgotten the sound of the sea and the trail of the waves. You have laid aside the love story and the corridors are parched with silence. The stars have faded from your memory as well as the names of angels. Are you ready, at last, for a parable and a poem to sustain you through the night, to point the way anew toward heaven? There is a time when only a story will end a war, or heal an old wound, or bring a deliverer. There is an hour when only a tale will cause the children"s tears to cease, or the wind to die down, or begin to stir, or bring rain, or put the stricken kingdom back in order again.