274 BOYS OF THE BIBLE.

the arts of Satan, and the wicked work of plotting enchanters.
The lips that should have been merry with songs and
delights, without a moment's warning were struck with an
awful silence. She could not speak of her love! She could
not even tell her sorrow! The little town that had been all
astir with gladness in the morning, was full of gloom before
the noontide blazed upon its hills; for all through the East,
in these far-away times, the joys and the sorrows of these
small communities were common. All the town went forth
with songs and dancing at the sound of marriage bells, just
as the whole town went forth with sorrow when the dirge
of the mourners was heard. And so it came to pass, as the
legend goes, that when the Lady Mary entered the little
town conveying her son, the Lord Christ, the dumb bride
saw him, and stretched forth her hands toward the infant
Saviour, and drew him to her, and took him in her arms,
and embraced him closely and kissed him, and bending,
over him she rocked him to and fro, and forthwith the
bond of her tongue was loosed, and her ears were opened
—tor she had been deaf as well as dumb—and she gave
praise and thanks to God for that he had restored her to
health.

These and many other legends only serve to show how in
earlier years there was a great tendency to surround the history
of Jesus with the most wonderful stories. Nothing, indeed, can
be more wonderful than the narrative, as given in the sacred
text, of the Holy Child in his twelfth year disputing with the
Doctors of the Sanhedrim in the Temple.

Let us now journey on to Nazareth, where Jesus spent
his holy, happy youth.

That large-hearted, gentle poet of the Sierras—so gentle
and yet so strong—our own Joaquin Miller, spent a great deal