Sez Josiah, “We’ll walk out, Tommy, and see how it looks on the outside.”
But Arvilly kept mutterin’ and kinder scoldin’ about it long after they had departed. “Why didn’t Adam take the apple away from her and throw it away? He hankered after it jest as much as she did, that’s why. Cowardly piece of bizness, layin’ it all to her.”
And she sniffed and stepped round sort o’ nervous like, but sweet Dorothy drawed her attention off onto sunthin’ else.
On the pleasant hills about the village shepards could be seen tendin’ their flocks as they did on the night when the angels and the multitude of the heavenly hosts appeared to them bearing tidings of great joy that that night a Saviour wuz born.
“Glory to God in the highest and on earth peace, goodwill to men.”
We felt that we must see Nazareth, where our Lord’s early years wuz spent, and we set off on a pleasant day; we approached it from the north by way of Cana. The road wuz hard and rocky, but on turning a corner we see the little town like a city set on a hill, only this wuz on the side of the hill with hills above it and below it. Nazareth has only a few hundred houses, but they are white and clean looking, mostly square and flat roofed. As we drew nigh we see the tall minaret of a mosque, the great convent buildings and the neat houses of the village looking out of gardens of figs 292 and olives with white doves playing about the roofs; there wuz great hedges of prickly pears and white orange blossoms and scarlet pomgranites to make it pleasant.
On the road we wuz travelin’ the child Jesus no doubt often passed in play with other children or at work. I wonder how he felt as he stood amongst his playmates and if a shadow of what wuz to come rested on his young heart? I spoze so, for he wuz only twelve when he reasoned with the wise doctors.
There is one fountain that supplies the town and always has, and we see stately dark-eyed wimmen carryin’ tall jars of water on their heads (how under the sun they ever do it is a mystery to me; I should spill every drop), but they seem to carry ’em easy enough. Children often ran along at their sides. And I knew that in this place the young child Jesus must often have come with his mother after water.
Stood right here where we stood! what emotions I had as I thought on’t. Dorothy and Robert looked reverently about them and dipped their hands in the clear water just as Joseph and Mary might when they wuz young and couldn’t look into the futer.
Miss Meechim said she had a tract to home that dealt on this spot and wished she had brought it, she would have liked to read it here on the spot.