“Now raise thy view, Unto the vision most resembling Christ’s.”
—Dante.
“Fear not, Mary, for thou hast found favor with God.”
—Gabriel.
 
Miriamne, all aglow with pleasurable excitement and filled with a curiosity which at times rose to very serious questioning as to her own faith, anxiously sought to compass an early meeting with the “Old Clock Man.” She could not content herself to wait a chance opportunity, and so, remembering that it was his custom at evening time to visit, alone, for meditation various old ruins like those of the Reservoir, she determined to seek him there; it being not very far from her home. With beating heart she repaired thither at sunset, the day after the Mameluke attack. Having traversed the Reservoir’s side some two or three hundred feet, she was on the point of returning, for the place was very lonely, when a voice startled her.
 
“Oh, Father Adolphus, how you frighten me! I’m so glad you came!”
 
“Looking for me, yet frightened at finding me. Glad I came, though I scared you?”
 
“Well, men and women when frightened are glad of the fellowship of any thing seemingly strong. It’s easy for the terrified to believe or trust.”
 
By Carl Muller.
 
THE EDUCATION OF MARY.
 
[283]
 
“There’s rare philosophy in thy head, little woman.”
 
“So? What were you saying when I startled so?”
 
“That the silvering of the moon brought out thy person beautifully. So she that sits above the moon, a queen in heaven, would beautify thy soul if thou shouldst elect to put on the character she ever wore.”
 
“I can’t do that, knowing so little of her.”
 
“A woman’s way of saying, tell me more.”
 
“You would not torment your Mary with such repartee.”
 
“Woman again. Art thou jealous already?”
 
“Fie.”
 
“Say that again! Once the foil of one of thy sex is penetrated, not having arguments, she can at least say ‘fie’! Well, even ducklings hiss when helplessly entangled.”
 
“Adolphus Von Gombard, I’ll not call you ‘father’ again, if you approach me any more in this courtier fashion.”
 
“Again, I say, an old head; but I’d plead privilege.”
 
“At least old enough to discern the sacred line that bounds all proper commerce between the sexes. You plead privilege; I grant you the noblest any woman can give, the privilege of guiding my immortal soul; but I remember to have heard that he who would shepherd such as I, must be to her as a woman. The relationship between us must be as that between the angels of heaven who neither marry nor are given in marriage.”
 
“Some young women receive teachings most willingly from fine-favored and patronizing instructors.”
 
“I know it; but let none patronize me so. I’ve begun to adore the Sacrist of Bozrah, but if a breath or[284] word passes that makes me think of him chiefly as being a man, then I shall sit in his presence in fright, or flee as I would were I to find the place changed into a lonely night-draped waddy, my only company an image of some leering, giant Bacchus. But this unequal defence is painful.”
 
“Then desist and tell me what I’m to do.”
 
“You have been my ideal man, for heaven’s sake rob me not by changing!”
 
“Right nobly spoken, daughter. Now pardon me, for I was putting thee to a test.”
 
“A test?”
 
“Yes. It’s forbidden, by customs hereabout, for man and woman, as we, alone to converse face to face; perhaps wisely, if one be bad and the other weak. Yet the custom is heathenish—low moral tone engendering mighty suspicions!”
 
“Did my priest think me a heathen?”
 
“No, not that; but they say the moon makes lovers and others mad. I was wondering whether I was dealing with a bundle of romancings or an earnest girl?”
 
Delicately the maiden avoided the query with another:
 
“You loved Mary: why did you not wed her?”
 
“Woman again; doomed to make all vistas end in wedlock. With your sex love, beginning to give, gives all readily, and seems to find no rest until there’s conjugal union.”
 
“I have not desired to give all that way to those I’ve loved!”
 
“It is all or nothing. Ye women love only relatives, and never cease to desire to make all relatives whom ye want to love. Why, girl, my Mary is a saint; she[285] died ages ago, after the flesh; but as a model for all womankind lives forever,”
 
“How was she your Mary, then?”
 
“She belongs to every noble minded man as his inspirer.”
 
“Mary—you call her Mary. I thought all the holy and the great had uncommon names?”
 
“In fiction they do; in reality the name is nothing.”
 
“Was she wise and beautiful?”
 
“One of our most holy teachers, Epiphanius, who lived less than four hundred years after Mary, spent many years at Bethlehem and gathered facts that caused him thus to write. ‘She was of middle stature, her face oval, her eyes brilliant and of an olive tint; her eyebrows arched and black, her hair a pale brown, her complexion fair as wheat. She spoke little, but she spoke freely and affably. She was grave, courteous, tranquil. In her deportment was nothing lax or feeble.’ Saint Denis, the Areopagite, who is said to have seen this queen of David’s house in her lifetime, declared that she was ‘a dazzling beauty,’ that he ‘would have adored her as a goddess had he not known that there was but one God!’ Of this much I’m certain, my Bozrah Miriamne, one so serene of character, and so pure, must have reflected her inner, imperishable beauties in her features.”
 
“Father Adolphus, you mention strange names. There are none that sound like those revered by my people. Do you ever hate my race? If you do you must not teach me any doctrine.”
 
“Hate? Why, I love all peoples, and by faith I am made a child of Abraham.”
 
“Then you are a proselyte?”
 
[286]
 
“Not by any forms. I believe in the God of Abraham and His Messiah. That makes me a perfect Jew.”
 
“This is strange. My mother never unfolded it to me.”
 
“Ah, she has not yet looked into these royal mysteries?”
 
“But, good father, is your name among our chronologies?”
 
“Thanks to the God of the Patriarchs, yes; it is with that of Moses, David, Elijah, and all the rest, in the Lamb’s Book of Life.”
 
“Where?”
 
“In Heaven.”
 
“How wonderful; yet I’m afraid to hear more.”
 
“Shall I take thee home?”
 
“No; tell me more of Mary. You say she made you lonely and a father?”
 
“I must then begin her history, and show thee how and why she lived?”
 
“Do you think it will tire me?”
 
“Fear not! Her story is a poem, a picture, a tragedy; it’s one long delight.”
 
“Then tell it to me, I pray you.”
 
So the priest proceeded:
 
“When the world was very wicked, and therefore very sad, God in His goodness was drawn to send from heaven a light-bearer—some one to tell man his duty and able to win back to the Great Father mankind’s straying affections. Thou dost know this much, and hast read in thy sacred Scriptures how God called to the universe, all chaotic and dark, to come forth into beautiful form; how he said to the darkness, ‘Let there be light.’ That history bears within it a fine sermon.[287] It’s a picture of God’s. Out of sin, darkness, confusion, there emerged a perfect man in a Paradisiacal home, with a perfect, beautiful woman as a help-mate by his side. That was God’s ideal of perfection and happiness. It delighted the Father of Joys to make it. This is ever true; behind all clouds in God’s Providence is sunshine, and beyond all disorders somewhere at last will walk forth unalloyed pleasure, a Sabbath-like rest, and fullness of harmony.”
 
“Oh, can you make me believe and feel this?”
 
“Wait patiently.”
 
“I try to do so; but I’m discouraged by the present miseries in my family and in all our nation.”
 
“God mourns over all our sorrows before they or we are born, but His wisdom and power of cure are faultless. Wait. Times are mending, and the moral sphere is dipping into the rim of light’s oceans. I think the angels perceive the world now, as thou perceivest the............