The times. (Owosso, Mich.) 1882-1897, 1882-06-09

now, ana II iolkS oOn' I stop imposing
on me ! shall arrive at that state of
mind where / shall even begin to
doubt some of my own statements as
they appear in the account of my
travels. in the weekly paper. And
yet / do not mean to insinuate that
travellers are commonly guilty of will
full Misrepresentation. ! do not think
that they are. Only this, that travel
ers are human beings and as such they
are differently constituted. Some are
highly imaginative. They come to a
place like Nazareth with ideas ready
formed Of what they are going to see,
and if what they find there were as
widely different from what they &C.
1eesed to find as the north pole is
from the equator, it wouldn't make
the slightest difference, they would
see only what they come to see, and
nothing else. If they had imagined
beforehand that Nazareth must be
beautiful village, because it was once
the home of Christ, and therefore
show could it be otherwise!" that
there is even now a lingering glory
about it like the afterglow upon the
tops of the snow mountains, when
the sun has gone out of the heavens,
then that glory they are determined
to find and no matter how despicably
miserable, how heaped with filth and
swarming with vermin, how utterly
shorn of all pretensions to beauty, if
they eOer had any, they won't see it,
nor know anything about it. They sit
down in the midst of the odors shak-
ing with the damp chills, and take
their pen in one had while they hold
their noses with the other, and write
oh! how beautiful this isl How de-
lightful !. How like Heavenl If they
have pictured in their fancy the
women of Nazareth as semi-angelic
beings of Madonna-like grace and
loveliness, because it was the home of
Mary, the Lords mother, then the
homeliest, raggedest, most unwashed
damsel with bare feet and tattooed
face as void ofrall thoughtful express
sion as wild animal, who brings her
Watering to the public well on her
head, and stands and. chaffs her COM
rades in shrill unwomanly voice:
they say of her, oh! how heavenly,
what grace of forml what beauty of
feature! See with what divine move
ment she .stoops down and picks up
the rag cushion, fallen from her head
upon which she rests her water-jar.
How inmitably she claps it back on
to her bare head again and squeezes
it down mud and all. They gaze at
her until they see wings start from her
ragged shoulders, and halo gather
about her snarled head--and then
they write home that now they can
always imagine how the Virgin Mary
looked, and how singular it is that
even to this day the women of Naear-
eth are the most lovely and beautiful
in the world. Now do not wish to
be, unjust to the village and people of
Nazareth nor to former travellers who
have described them. If anyone ever
visited that place with an eager de-
sire to find it just as beautiful as he
had ever read or imagined, and if not
to make the best of his disappoint-
ment did, and / think that very
few have ever waited at the well of
Nazareth longer and watched more
patiently for the appearance of that
Madonna-like being than did, think
ing now sit must be the next one,"
and when she had passed and twenty
others still waiting for the next and
looking intently and studiously at
them all to find if possible some faint
suggestion of loveliness out of which
I might construct my spiritual image
of the Virgin Mary until / was
ashamed to look any longer. But
the impression which l have brought
away with me from that home of
Christ, is not only that which the old
Jews expressed when they said, "can
any good thing come out of Nazareth.
But with immeasurably more of