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what came of it. Here was a consummate movement of Augustus, who would
fain have the statistics of his empire. Such excellent things are
statistics! "You can prove anything by statistics," says Mr. Canning,
"except--the truth." So Augustus orders his census, and his census is
taken. This Quirinus, or Quirinius, pro-consul of Syria, was the first
man who took it there, says the Bible. Much appointing of marshals and
deputy-marshals,--men good at counting, and good at writing, and good at
collecting fees! Doubtless it was a great staff achievement of Quirinus,
and made much talk in its time. And it is so well condensed at last and
put into tables with indexes and averages as to be very creditable, I
will not doubt, to the census bureau. But alas! as time rolls on, things
change, so that this very Quirinus, who with all a pro-consul's power
took such pains to record for us the number of people there were in
Bethlehem and in Judah, would have been clean forgotten himself, and his
census too, but that things turned bottom upward. The meanest child born
in Bethlehem when this census business was going on happened to prove to
be King of the World. It happened that he overthrew the dynasty of Caesar
Augustus, and his temples, and his empire. It happened that everything
which was then established tottered and fell, as the star of this child
arose. And the child's star did rise. And now this Publius Sulpicius
Quirinus or Quirinius,--a great man in his day, for whom Augustus asked
for a triumph,--is rescued from complete forgetfulness because that baby
happened to be born in Syria when his census was going on!

I always liked to think that some day when Augustus Caesar was on a state
visit to the Temple of Fortune some attentive clerk handed him down the
roll which had just come in and said, "From Syria, your Highness!" that
he might have a chance to say something to the Emperor; that the Emperor
thanked him, and, in his courtly way, opened the roll so as to seem
interested; that his eye caught the words "Bethlehem--village near
Jerusalem," and the figures which showed the number of the people and of
the children and of all the infants there. Perhaps. No matter if not.
Sixty years after, Augustus' successor, Nero, set fire to Rome in a
drunken fit. The Temple of Fortune caught the flames, and our roll, with
Bethlehem and the count of Joseph's possessions twisted and crackled
like any common rag, turned to smoke and ashes, and wa