 Remember a Hallmark card when you carry enough to send the very best. On the Hallmark Playhouse, it's known authors. They distinguish novelists. Mr. James... Good evening, ladies and gentlemen. This is James Hilton. Tonight on our Hallmark Playhouse, we tell you a story which is part of our history, Evangeline, which Longfellow wrote just over a hundred years ago. Many of us remember it from our early days, and there is indeed a springtime freshness in the lilt of its lines. But it's the story itself that has always been popular. The tale of Evangeline, which, with its simple pathos, stands as a tribute from one of our greatest poets to those early days when America was not yet a country, but was already the proving ground of heroes and heroines. Such a heroine was Evangeline. And to play her part, we have chosen one of Hollywood's loveliest and most distinguished actresses and her Academy Award winner, Joan Fontaine. And now here is Frank Goss from the Makers of Hallmark Cards. One of the particular joys of Christmas is sending and receiving Christmas cards. While the pleasure Christmas cards bring can ever be measured, isn't it good to know that Hallmark cards are priced the same this year as they were last year? And the year before? And the year before that? And that the quality of Hallmark cards has constantly improved throughout the years. Yes, today, just as for many Christmas seasons, that Hallmark on the back of your card is looked for and welcomed. It tells your friends you cared enough to send the very best. And now Hallmark Playhouse presenting Henry Wadsworth Longfellow's Evangeline, starring Joan Fontaine. Evangeline cannot contain the spirit and soul of Evangeline. Her travels are over now. The search is done. And she smiles faintly as she rests by the warmth of her heart in the friendly city of Quakers. Her eyelids close and her mind slips back along the years to times long past. And the troubled events of her childhood in the miracle of remembering take on the measure of poetry. The forest primeval, the memory of pines and the hemlocks, bearded with moss and in garments green, indistinct in the twilight, stand like droids of eld with voices sad and prophetic. In the Acadian land, on the shores of the basin of Mina, distant, secluded, still, our little village of Grand Prairie lay in the fruitful valley. Good evening, Father Felicia. Good evening to you, Mr. Belfontaine. I pray that all things go well on your farm. My harvest is good. My daughter is beautiful. And my prayers of thanksgiving rise to the heavens like the straight blue smoke from my chimney. That is the voice of my father, the wealthiest farmer of Grand Prairie. Neither locks had we to our doors nor bars to our windows. Our dwellings were open as day and the hearts of their owners. There the richest was poor and the poorest lived in abundance. Evangeline. Yes, Father. There's a young gentleman here to see you. Gabrielle. I believe that is the young fellow's name. Oh, Gabrielle. Hello, my love. Gabrielle, have you asked him? This lad brings me the most preposterous news. He says he's in love with you. And shall be, as long as I live. He has the odd notion you might have him for a husband. Is this true, Evangeline? If my father will give us his blessing. My blessing? How can I give you again what you have had all your lifetimes? Since you played together as children and the Lord smiled upon you both, my blessing has been with you. Your father, Gabrielle, is my oldest friend. And Evangeline is the image and the soul of her mother. What could please an old man more than to add his dowry and blessing to those the Lord has already blessed? Thank you, Father. Thank you, Monsieur Del Pontin. Who is there? Come in. The door is not locked. I wish to speak with a man called Del Pontin. I am Benedict Del Pontin. I am Captain Monison in the service of his Britannic Majesty. Oh, stranger indeed. But no less welcome. What is your message, Captain? I prefer to speak with you alone. As you wish. These children do not demand our company. Go, Gabrielle, give your bride a gift of moonlight. Come, Evangeline. Good evening to you, sir. Good night, my child. Do not light that man. His eyes are as cold as iron. You are trembling, my love. Why is he here? Why does a British captain want to speak with my father? Look. A dozen of them. They are warships. Gabrielle, the moonlight gleams on the canals. When did they come? It is evil, Gabrielle. I am afraid. It is now we have asked ourselves why do these strange vessels lie at anchor in our harbor? Today we shall know. Captain Monison has asked that the men of Grand Prix gather here in the village church that he may speak to us all. The men alone? Without our wives and families? That is the captain's request. Why are they here, Good Benedict? What do they wish from us? Listen, the troops are coming ashore. Soon we will know. And after the meeting, my friends, all of you, the entire village of Grand Prix, all are invited to a feast, celebrating the betrothal of Gabrielle, the blacksmith's son, to my daughter, Evangeline. Me? I am a gentleman. In France and England, all enemies of the British craft, things in your property, those as prisoners of war will be transported by the ships in your harbor to other lands. You will tear us from our homes? They honor you, our prisoners of the crown. Monson of arms, we tell. Until a more peaceable spirit descends upon you. What madness has seized you, my children? Cheese, my friends, hear the words of Father Felicia. Have you so soon forgotten all lessons of love and forgiveness? This is the house of the Prince of Peace. And would you profane it with violence and hatred? Let us repeat the prayer of the master. Oh, Father, in heaven, forgive them, for they know not what they want. Long in the house of my father, the cloth had been spread on the table. There stood the bread for the feast, and the honey fragrant with wildflowers. Over the darkening fields, I walked to the gloom of the churchyard. All was silent within, and in vain at the door and the windows I stood and I listened. No answer came from the graves of the dead, nor the gloomier grave of the living. Slowly at length I returned to the tenetless house of my father. Empty and drear was each room, and haunted with pantoms of terror. In the dead of the night I heard the disconsolate rain fall. Keenly the lightning flashed, and the voice of the echoing thunder told me that God was in heaven and governed the world He created. The sun had risen and set, and now, on the fifth day, we came, as the captain commanded, the Acadian women and children, driving in ponderous wagons our household goods to the seashore. Move along now. Get ready to board ship. Gabrielle! Gabrielle! Evangeline! Evangeline! Oh, my love. Oh, how weary you've looked up here. There alone has sustained us. O be of good cheer, my dear one, for if we love one another, nothing, nothing can harm us. You were there. Get into this boat. I'm coming with you, Gabrielle. No more room. Wait for the next boat. No! You two not separate us. We're engaged to be married. Prisoners of war will do as they are commanded. Evangeline, we'll find each other, Evangeline. Goodbye, my dearest one. Goodbye, my dearest one. Just good-bye. We'll turn to the second act of the dangelion, starring Joan Fontaine. How many of the friends on your Christmas card list have you seen in the past two months? The past year. Some perhaps you haven't seen in five years. And this once a year Christmas greeting is your only contact with them. Yet these seldom seen friends are often the dearest ones on our entire list and help make Christmas the wonderful season it is. Then doesn't it seem only the gracious thing to do to make sure that the Christmas card you send truly represents you, you at your best, expressing your Christmas wishes in a beautiful manner, reflecting your good taste in a way all can appreciate? That's what you can do if you make sure the card you select is a Hallmark card. Whether you choose from the Hallmark album and have your name imprinted, whether you select from the many Hallmark boxed collections, or whether you prefer individual cards from the Hallmark display counters, you can be sure your card will be received with the added pleasure reserved for things we value. Because like sterling on silver, that Hallmark on the back of a card is a sign of quality, telling your friends you cared enough to send the very best. Now back to James Hilton and the second act of a Vangeline, starring Joan Fontaine. The Acadian lovers were carried and on a falling tide, the freighted vessel set sail, with all its household goods into exile. Scattered on separate coasts, the Acadians landed, some to the shores of the north and some to the southern savannas, friendless, homeless, hopeless, they wandered from city to city. Among them was seen at last a maiden of reverent spirit, seeking the face that had smiled on her, searching the faces of strangers for the smile of the one who had loved her. Gabriel? Have you seen him? He was with Basil the blacksmith and both have gone to the prairies. But where? Where in the prairies? Ask to the west. Beg you to try to remember for the sake of old times in Acadia, when did you see him and where? A year ago it was, or more. He passed this way bound for the lowlands of Louisiana. What was his destination? Did he name a village a city? The only name that he uttered was the whispered name of Evangelion. Mother Felicia. Evangelion, my dear child. I look into your face, good father, and I seem to see the meadows of Grand Prey. Not as you saw them in summer, but touched with the autumn frost. Your father, good Benedict, is he well? Acadia was his heart. How long could he live with it taken from him? I'm sorry, my child. But, Gabriel, your husband, is that you? Oh, father, the marriage flowers have never been spoken. What? I have not seen my Gabriel since we were parted on the seashore. My love is wasted in air, having no soul it can cling to. Thought not of wasted affection? Affection never was wasted. My daughter, if it does not enrich the heart of another, its waters returning back to their springs like a rain of cold of refreshment at which the fountain sends forth returns again to the fountain. Father Felicia, will you help me find Gabriel? I cannot turn back from my labor of love where my heart is gone, where follows my hand and my footstep. I will go with you, my child. Together with heavenly guidance we will accomplish your work of affection. The recipe floated our cumbersome boat. Soon we were lost in a maze where the towering boughs of the Cyprus met in an arch overhead. My heart was sustained by a vision that beckoned beyond through the moonlight. Through these shadowy aisles had Gabriel wandered before me and every stroke of the hour now brought him nearer and nearer. I think says in my heart that Gabriel's soul is near me. A foolish dream. Trust to thy heart, my child. Gabriel truly is near you. Do you know, Father? Not far away to the south with other towns of Samoa and some Martins. There the long wandering bride shall be given at last to her bridegroom. Gabriel gone. Only today he departed. Your boats must have passed in the night on the river. Gabriel. A moody and restless longing for his promised bride that I sent him away. Where? Where did you send him? Up the Indian trails to the Ozarks. Hunting for furs and for beaver. Be a good cheer, Evangeline. We will follow the fugitive lover. Oh, Gabriel, my blight. Are you so near? And yet I cannot behold you. Are you so near? And yet your voice did not reach me. Patience, my child. Tomorrow. Tomorrow? Day after day with our Indian Guides we travel the forest, followed his flying steps and thought each day to ought take him. There. There is the smoke of his campfire clean in the morning air. But at nightfall when we reached the place we found only embers and ashes. You will never find him. Why do you say that? I know. I know. How do you know? What tribe are you? I am of the Shawnee people. And there is a legend among us of an Indian made in as foolish as you are. Foolish? Am I foolish? Foolish as the bride of Maui. What happened to her? She died in anguish. By starlight she pledged herself to Mois the bridegroom of snow. But in the hot sunrise her snowman vanished flowing slowly into the waters below the earth. How could she find him who was not? Am I pursuing a phantom like Mois the vanishing bridegroom? Is it endless the trail with no lover no love with the ending of the long sad years flowed on till at last I came to this delightful land which is washed by the Delaware waters guarding in silvan shades the name of Penn the apostle. Good evening to thee Sister Evangeline. I thank thee sir. God bless thee. Something at least the streets of this city something that speaks to my heart and leaves me no longer a stranger. My ear is pleased with the friendly thee and thou of the Quakers. For it recalls the past the old Acadian country where all men were equal and all were brothers and sisters. This is the year of the plague the year of the plague and the pestilence. Night after night I have worked in the house of the sisters of mercy voicing the feverish lip and cooling the brow of the stricken. Water I bring Patience, patience I bring you cool water. Here let me raise your head my friend and my beloved Evangeline Prime even and still the love that it sheltered sleeps in my heart deep in my heart is his image clothed in the beauty of love and youth as I long to behold him into my thoughts of Gabriel time enters not for it is not as from the mountains top the rainy mists of the morning roll away and afar we behold the landscape below us so fell the mists from my mind and I saw the world far below me dark no longer but all illumined with love and the pathway which I had climbed so far lying smooth and fair in the distance for thy merciful bounties and blessings Oh father in heaven I thank Thee and will return in a moment designed to express your Christmas wishes in a beautiful manner and yet priced to fit even the most limited budget that's how you'll describe the many different hallmark Christmas cards you can buy in convenient boxed collections many of these hallmark boxes are priced at only one dollar so you see it isn't necessary to buy expensive cards in order to be sure your cards have that hallmark on the back denoting quality in fact some boxes as low as one dollar have 22 and 25 hallmark Christmas cards in them then there are other boxed collections with designs by Norman Rockwell Winston Churchill, Grandma Moses Herb Olson and other outstanding hallmark gallery artists all are beautifully made in the hallmark tradition of craftsmen who for years have designed cards with but one thought in mind to give you a card you'll be proud to send and one that will be received with pleasure so remember look for hallmark on the cover of the box if you want your friends to see that hallmark on the back of the card you send the hallmark that tells them you cared enough to send the very best here again is James Hilton thank you for being with us tonight Joan you gave us a memorable and moving Evangeline I'm glad you liked it Mr. Hilton it's always been a favorite of mine in fact when I heard you were doing the story on hallmark play house tonight I cut short back to Hollywood well we're certainly glad you did Joan tell me did you have a nice trip in the east oh indeed I did and I saw something that reminded me of all of you what was that a sign in the greeting card department reminding everyone that to arrive overseas in time for Christmas cards should be mailed on November 15th and I said to myself I'm sure Frank Goss will be reminding our hallmark play house listeners of that tonight well as a matter of fact I was planning on doing everything myself Christmas cards and in fact all Christmas mail for service men and women should be sent by November 15th if sent regular mail and by December 1st if sent air mail and to our listeners while we hope your cards will have that hallmark on the back the important thing is that the men and women overseas received lots of Christmas mail from home you'll do your part won't you thank you Joan I'm sure our hallmark play house audience will and now I'd like to tell you about our story it's a famous book and we've chosen a rising and exciting star our story will be that wonderful adventure classic Jules Verne's 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea and to play the leading role Hollywood's young romantic star Louis Jourdan our hallmark play houses every Thursday our producer director is Bill Gay our music is composed and conducted by David Rose and our story tonight was dramatized by Lawrence and Lee until next Thursday then this is James Hilton saying good night to send the very best Joan Pontein can currently be seen in the Paramount picture darling how could