dare to
disregard the commands of royalty, spoke to the Hebrew midwives, and
in the easy, off-hand manner that kings had in those days, told them
to kill all the boy babies that came to the Jews, but to save the girl
babies alive.

And did they do it? Not at all! They simply looked at each other,
laughed at the king, and utterly ignored his commands, and then when
majesty in dread power called them to account, with a shrewdness
characteristic of the females of the Old Testament they invented a
plausible excuse, baffled the king, shielded the Jews and saved
themselves.

STORY OF SOME WOMEN AND A BABY.

STORY OF SOME WOMEN AND A BABY.

So the king was balked by the Hebrew midwives and the Jews continued
to "increase abundantly and multiplied, and waxed exceeding mighty;
and the land was filled with them."

And the king, fearing the multitude of the Jews, again pitted himself
against the fecundity and rebellion of the women, and issued the cruel
but famous command:

"And Pharaoh charged all the people, saying, Every son that is born ye
shall cast into the river, and every daughter ye shall save alive."

And shortly after that, one night when all the Egyptians slept, and
only the stars, the moon and the winds were awake, in the silence and
the silvery gloom, a baby boy came to a daughter of Levi, and "when
she saw him that he was a goodly child" she quietly determined that no
murderous hand should ever toss him in the rolling river, or check the
breath on his sweet lips; "and she hid him three months."

I don't know how she did it, but perhaps when he was crying with all a
baby's vigor for his supper the embryo diplomat in his heart shrewdly
caught the meaning in his mother's warning "hush, sh!" and, king and
tyrant tho' he was, he knew "that there was a greater than he," and
stilled his cries. Perhaps when the colic gripped his vitals he bore
the pain in unflinching silence, if he heard an Egyptian footstep near
the door. Perhaps he stopped his gooing and cooing in his hidden nest,
and held his very breath in fear, when he heard an Egyptian voice in
the house.

And all these three months he had been growing plump, and strong and
healthy, and I suppose he became a little reckless, or perchance he
began to think he knew more than his mother did about it, and wouldn't
keep still. Anyway, whatever was the matter I don't know, but there
came a day when "she could no longer hide him," and then she laid