s, and whenever it was
possible he would squeeze one into a corner of his pictures. He was
sixty years old when he designed this wonderful tower and cut some of
the marble pictures with his own hand, but you can see that the memory
of those old days when he ran barefoot about the hills and tended his
sheep was with him still. Just such another little puppy must have
often played with him in those long-ago days before he became a great
painter and was still only a merry, brown-faced boy, making pictures
with a sharp stone upon the smooth rocks.

Up and down the narrow streets of Florence now, the great painter would
walk and watch the faces of the people as they passed. And his eyes
would still make pictures of them and their busy life, just as they
used to do with the olive-trees, the sheep, and the clouds.

In those days nobody cared to have pictures in their houses, and only
the walls of the churches were painted. So the pictures, or frescoes,
as they were called, were of course all about sacred subjects, either
stories out of the Bible or of the lives of the saints. And as there
were few books, and the poor people did not know how to read, these
frescoed walls were the only story-books they had.

What a joy those pictures of Giotto's must have been, then, to those
poor folk! They looked at the little Baby Jesus sitting on His mother's
knee, wrapped in swaddling bands, just like one of their own little
ones, and it made Him seem a very real baby. The wise men who talked
together and pointed to the shining star overhead looked just like any
of the great nobles of Florence. And there at the back were the two
horses looking on with wise interested eyes, just as any of their own
horses might have done.

It seemed to make the story of Christmas a thing which had really
happened, instead of a far-away tale which had little meaning for them.
Heaven and the Madonna were not so far off after all. And it comforted
them to think that the Madonna had been a real woman like themselves,
and that the Jesu Bambino would stoop to bless them still, just as He
leaned forward to bless the wise men in the picture.

How real too would seem the old story of the meeting of Anna and
Joachim at the Golden Gate, when they could gaze upon the two homely
figures under the narrow gateway. No visionary saints these, but just a
simple husband and wife, meeting each other with joy after a sad
separation, and yet with the touch of heavenly meanin