And Arvilly sez, “What is cuttin’ off the heads of twenty or thirty babies compared to the thousands and thousands of murders that this licensed evil causes every year?”
Tommy’s pretty face looked sad and he sez: “Why do good folks let it go on?”
And Arvilly sez, “Heaven knows––I don’t. But I’ve cleared my skirts in the matter. There won’t be any innocent blood on my skirts at the last day.”
And Tommy bent his head and looked intently at the bottom of her dress; and I see my pardner furtively glance at the bottom of his own pantaloons; he acted guilty.
It is about two milds and a quarter round the city; the walls are thirty or forty feet high; there are thirty-four towers on the walls, and the city has eight gates. It has a population of one hundred thousand, more Jews than any other race; for according to the Scripture, jest as the Jews wuz scattered to the four winds of heaven, they have of late been flocking home to Jerusalem jest as the old prophets predicted exactly.
During their hours of prayer, many Jews wear phylactrys bound to their forwards and arms, and Robert Strong said he saw one nailed to a doorpost.
It is a long, narrer case, shaped some like a thermometer, with a round hole towards the top of it covered with a lid which they can lift up and see a few words of the ancient parchment inside, some as the little boy had his prayer printed on the head-board, and on cold nights would pint to it, sayin’, “O Lord, them’s my sentiments.”
But these Jews did it to carry out Moses’ command to bind the words of the law for a sign on their arms, their heads and their doorposts.
The writing on these phylactrys is so perfect that you 286 can hardly believe that it is done with a pen. The Jews are extremely careful in copying the oracles of God. They still write copies of their Old Testament Scriptures, and every page must have jest so many lines, and jest the same number of words and letters.
Robert Strong said that this was a great proof of the truth of the Scriptures. Sez he: “Our Saviour said that one jot or tittle of the law shall not fail.”