having house or home to shelter
thim!"

"Wisha, Mary, 't was a pity we worn't there that blessed night. Sure,
't is we'd give 'em the best we had in the world, an' our hearts'
blood."

I shared to the full this feeling about St. Joseph. And when, after
Father Letheby's Mass, I came down, and brought over my old arm-chair,
and placed it in front of the crib, and put down my snuff-box, and my
breviary, and my spectacles, and gave myself up to the contemplation of
that wonderful and pathetic drama, St. Joseph would insist on claiming
the largest share of my pity and sympathy. Somehow I felt that mother
and child understood each other perfectly,--that she saw everything
through the eyes of God, and that therefore there was not much room for
wonderment; but that to St. Joseph the whole thing was an unspeakable
mystery of humiliation and love, infinite abasement and infinite
dignity; and I thought I saw him looking from the child-face of his
spouse to the child-face of the Infant, and somehow asking himself,
"What is it all?" even though he explicitly understood the meaning and
magnitude of the mighty mystery.

Father Letheby has a new series of pictures of the Life of our Lord,
painted by a French artist, whose name I can never recall except when I
sneeze,--Tissot. I do not like them at all. They are too
realistic,--and, after all, the ideal is the real. I have a special,
undiluted dislike of one picture,--the _Magnificat_. I'd have torn it
up, and put the fragments in the fire, but that it was not mine. But how
in the world any Catholic could paint my beautiful child-prophetess of
Hebron as Tissot has done baffles comprehension. But he has one lovely
picture, "Because there was no Room." The narrow lane of the Jewish
city,--the steep stairs to the rooms,--the blank walls perforated by a
solitary, narrow window,--the rough stones, and the gentle animal that
bore Mary, treading carefully over them,--the Jewish women, regretfully
refusing admission,--the sweet, gentle face of the maiden mother,--and
the pathetic, anxious, despairing look on the features of St.
Joseph,--make this a touching and beautiful picture. Poor St. Joseph!
"Come, take the reins of the patient animal, and lead him and his sacred
burden out into the night! There is no room in the City of David for the
children of David. Out under the stars, shining brilliantly through the
frosty atmosphere, over the white, rugged road, into an unknown country,
and 'Wh