bread.
Because, He hears the feeblest wail of want, though it comes not from a
dove or even from a harmless sparrow, but a young raven. And He does not
heed the sweetest anthem of the fullest choir, if it is a mere pomp of
sound. Because, while the best love of His meanest creatures is precious
to Him, the second-best of His loftiest creatures is intolerable to Him.
He heeds the shining of the drops of dew and the rustling of the blades
of grass. But from creatures who can love he cannot accept the mere
outside offering of creatures which can only make a pleasant sound.

All this, or such as this, the young mother Magdalis taught her babes as
they could bear it.

For they needed such lessons.

The troubles of the world pressed on them very early, in the shape
little children can understand--little hands and feet nipped with frost,
hunger and darkness and cold.

Not that the citizens of that city were hypocrites, singing the praises
of God, whilst they let His dear Lazaruses vainly crave at His gates for
their crumbs.

But Magdalis was very tender and timid, and a little proud; proud not
for herself, but for her husband and his babes. And she was also feeble
in health. She was an orphan herself, and she had married, against the
will of her kindred in a far-off city, the young stone-carver, whose
genius they did not appreciate, whose labor and skill had made life so
rich and bright to them while he lived, and whose early death had left
them all so desolate.

For his dear sake, she would not complain. For herself it had been
easier to die, and for his babes she would not bring the shame of
beggary on them. Better for them to enter into this life maimed of
strength, she thought, by meager food, than tainted with the taint of
beggary.

Rather, she thought, would their father himself have seen them go hungry
to bed than deserve that the fingers of other children should be pointed
scornfully at them as "the little beggars by the church door," the door
of the church in which she gloried to think there were stones of his
carving.

So she toiled on, carving for sale little devotional symbols--crosses,
and reliquaries, and lilies and lambs--with the skill she had learnt
from him, and teaching the little ones, as best she could, to love and
work and suffer. Teaching them only, perhaps, not quite enough to hope.
For the lamp of hope burnt low in her own heart, and therefore her
patience, not being enough the patience of h