St Lily was the wife of a poor man, who tried to support his family—and the children were many—by writing books. But in those days it was not as easy for a man to find a publisher as to say his paternoster. Many were the books that were written by the husband of St Lily; but to every book St Lily gave at least two babes. However, blithe as the cricket was the spirit that ruled about the hearth of St Lily. And how she helped her helpmate! She smiled sunbeams into his ink bottle, and turned his goose pen to the quill of a dove! She made the paper he wrote on as white as her name, and as fragrant as her soul. And when folks wondered how St Lily managed so lightly with fortune’s troubles, she always answered, that she never heeded them, for troubles were like babies, and only grew the bigger by nursing.
ST FANNY
St Fanny was a notable housewife. Her house was a temple of neatness. Kings might have dined upon her staircase! Now her great delight was to provide all things comfortable for her husband, a hard-working merchant, much abroad, but loving his home. Now one night he returned tired and hungry, and, by some mischance, there was nothing for supper. Shops were shut; and great was the grief of St Fanny. Taking off a bracelet of seed pearl she said, “I’d give this ten times over for a supper for my husband.” And every pearl straightway became an oyster, and St Fanny opened—the husband ate—and lo! in every oyster was a pearl as big as a hazel nut; and so was St Fanny made rich for life.
ST FLORENCE OR ST NIGHTINGALE
St Florence, by her works, had her lips blessed with comforting, and her hands touched with healing; and she crossed the sea, and built hospitals, and solaced, and restored. And so long as English mistletoe gathers beneath it truthful hearts, and English holly brightens happy eyes, so long will Englishmen, at home or abroad, on land or on the wave—so long, in memory of that Eastern Christmas, will they cry—God bless St Florence! Bless St Nightingale!
ST JENNY
St Jenny was wedded to a very poor man; they had scarcely bread to keep them; but Jenny was of so sweet a temper that even want bore a bright face, and Jenny always smiled. In the worst seasons Jenny would spare crumbs for the birds, and sugar for the bees. Now it so happened that one autumn a storm rent their cot in twenty places apart; when, behold, between the joists, from the basement to the roof, there was nothing but honeycomb and honey—a little fortune for St Jenny and her husband, in honey. Now some said it was the bees, but more declared it was the sweet temper of St Jenny that had filled the poor man’s house with honey.
Saint Jenny