The Project Gutenberg EBook of St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls,
Vol. 5, January 1878, No. 3, by Various

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Title: St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. 5, January 1878, No. 3

Author: Various

Editor: Mary Mapes Dodge

Release Date: September 28, 2006 [EBook #19399]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

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[Illustration: TWO WAYS OF CARRYING THE MAIL. [See Letter-Box.]]

ST. NICHOLAS.

VOL. V.
JANUARY, 1878.
No. 3.

[Copyright, 1877, by Scribner & Co.]

THE RAVENS AND THE ANGELS.

(_A Story of the Middle Ages._)

BY THE AUTHOR OF "CHRONICLES OF THE SCHOeNBERG-COTTA FAMILY."

I.

In those old days, in that old city, they called the cathedral--and they
thought it--the house of God. The cathedral was the Father's house for
all, and therefore it was loved and honored, and enriched with lavish
treasures of wealth and work, beyond any other father's house.

The cathedral was the Father's house, and, therefore, close to its gates
might nestle the poor dwellings of the poor,--too poor to find a shelter
anywhere besides; because the central life and joy of the house of God
was the suffering, self-sacrificing Son of Man; and dearer to Him, now
and forever, as when He was on earth, was the feeblest and most fallen
human creature He had redeemed than the most glorious heavenly
constellation of the universe He had made.

And so it happened that when Berthold, the stone-carver, died, Magdalis,
his young wife, and her two children, then scarcely more than babes,
Gottlieb and little Lenichen, were suffered to make their home in the
little wooden shed which had once sheltered a hermit, and which nestled
into the recess close to the great western gate of the minster.

Thus, while inside from the lofty aisles pealed forth, night and day,
the anthems of the choir, close outside, night and day, rose also, even
more surely to God, the sighs of a sorrowful woman and the cries of
little children whom all her toil could hardly supply with