the sistrum with its metal rings, drumming and trumpeting, shouting and yelling, to scare off the evil one and drive him away.  It may be about four hundred years since that last took place, but to this day—­draw your kerchiefs more closely round your heads and come with me to the river—­to this day Christians degrade themselves by similar rites.  Wherever I have been in Christian lands, I have always witnessed the same scenes:  our holy faith has, to be sure, demolished the religions of the heathen; but their superstitions have survived, and have forced their way through rifts and chinks into our ceremonial.  They are marching round now, with the bishop at their head, and you can hear the loud wailing of the women, and the cries of the men, drowning the chant of the priests.  Only listen!  They are as passionate and agonized in their entreaty as though old Typhon were even now about to swallow the moon, and the greatest catastrophe was hanging over the world.  Aye, as surely as man is the standard of all things, those terrified beings are diseased in mind; and how are we to forgive those who dare to scare Christians; yes, Christian souls, with the traditions of heathen folly, and to blind their inward vision?”

     ETEXT editor’s bookmarks: 

     Gratitude is a tribute on which no wise man ever reckons
     Healthy soul is only to be found in a healthy body
     Man is the standard of all things
     Persians never prayed for any particular blessing
     The immortal gods have set sweat before virtue
     Things you mean are only what they seem to us
     Would want some one else to wear herself out for
     Any woman can forgive any man for his audacity in loving her

THE BRIDE OF THE NILE

By Georg Ebers

Volume 6.

CHAPTER XXII.

Up to within a few days Katharina had still been a dependent and docile child, who had made it a point of honor to obey instantly, not only her mother’s lightest word, but Dame Neforis, too; and, since her own Greek instructress had been dismissed, even the acid Eudoxia.  She had never concealed from her mother, or the worthy teacher whom she had truly loved, the smallest breach of rules, the least naughtiness or wilful act of which she had been guilty; nay, she had never been able to rest till she had poured out a confession, before evening prayer, of all that her little heart told her was not perfectly right, to some one whom she loved, and obtained full forgiveness.  Night after night the “Water-wagtail” had gone to sleep with a conscience as clear and as white as the breast of her whitest dove, and the worst sin she had ever committed during the day was some forbidden scramble, some dainty or, more frequently, some rude and angry word.