, God's chosen one, we suppose she was the ringleader and
instigator, and Aaron was only the tool in this plot that budded but
never bloomed.

"And Aaron looked upon Miriam, and behold, she was leprous," and of
course she threw her arms around his neck and with streaming eyes
besought his aid, and Aaron turned the smoothly flowing river of his
eloquence into resistless words of appeal and said unto Moses, while
Miriam knelt at his feet: "Alas, my Lord, I beseech thee, lay not the
sin upon us," and "let her not be as one dead;" and Moses, moved, as
men have always been moved, by woman's tears, "cried unto the Lord,
saying, Heal her now, O, God I beseech thee," and after seven days the
curse was removed.

SOME MANAGING WOMEN.

SOME MANAGING WOMEN.

The women of the Old Testament always wanted something, and it is a
noticeable fact that they always asked for it--and got it too.

So the daughters of Zelophehad had a grievance, and they didn't go
among the neighbors bewailing their hard lot, they didn't sit and wish
from morning till night that something would turn up to help them, or
sigh their lives away in secret, but they put on their most radiant
attire and jauntiest veils and "stood before Moses, and before
Eleazar the priest, and before the princes and all the congregation,"
and demanded their father's possessions, and even argued the
question reasonably and logically. There was not any of the St.
Paul-women-should-not-speak-in-meeting doctrine about the Biblical
women of those elder days.

They didn't endeavor to persuade Moses' wife to influence her husband
to use his power in their behalf. They did not retain the services of
Aaron, the finest orator of the day, to plead their cause, but they
did their own talking, and they got what they asked for--their
father's possessions--and husbands thrown in without extra charge.
Being clever as well as ambitious women, they probably foresaw that
husbands would follow after the inheritance, and although they would
not ask for lords and masters of course, they had their eyes on them
just the same. As there were several of them, all unmarried, they were
no doubt _not_ "fair to look upon," so they laid a little plot to
secure husbands. And they succeeded and were happy, for marriage was
the aim and end of a woman's existence then, and there was a better
market and more of a demand for husbands than in these modern days.

We only catch a glimpse of one woma