While Moses was living with Re’uël [_Jethro_], the Midianite, he noticed a staff in the garden, and he took it to be his walking-stick. This staff was Joseph’s, and Re’uel carried it away when he fled from Egypt. This same staff Adam carried with him out of Eden. Noah inherited it, and gave it to Shem. It passed into the hands of Abraham, and Abraham left it to Isaac; and when Jacob fled from his brother’s anger into Mesopotamia, he carried it in his hand, and gave it at death to his son Joseph.--_The Talmud_, vi. =Moses Slow of Speech.= The tradition is this: One day, Pharaoh was carrying Moses in his arms, when the child plucked the royal beard so roughly that the king, in a passion, ordered him to be put to death. Queen Asia said to her husband, the child was only a babe, and was so young he could not discern between a ruby and a live coal. Pharaoh put it to the test, and the child clapped into his mouth the burning coal, thinking it something good to eat. Pharaoh’s anger was appeased, but the child burnt its tongue so severely that ever after it was “slow of speech.”--Shalshel, _Hakkabala_, 11. _Moses Slow of Speech._ The account given in the _Talmud_ is somewhat different. It is therein stated that Pharaoh was sitting one day with Moses on his lap, when the child took the crown from the king’s head and placed it on his own. The “wise men” of Egypt persuaded Pharaoh that this act was treasonable, and that the child should be put to death. Jithro [_sic_] the priest of Midian, said it was the act of a child who knew no better. “Let two plates,” said he, “be set before the child, one containing gold and the other live coals, and you will presently see that he will choose the coals in preference to the gold.” The advice of Jithro being followed, the boy Moses snatched at the coals, and putting one of them into his mouth, burnt his tongue so severely that ever after he was “heavy of speech.”--_The Talmud_, vi. =Moses Pennell.= Waif rescued from a wrecked vessel, and adopted by old Captain Pennell and his wife. He is, in time, discovered to belong to a noble Cuban family.--Harriet Beecher Stowe, _The Pearl of Orr’s Island_. =Most Christian King= (_Le Roy Tres-Christien_). The king of France is so called by others, either with or without his proper name; but he never styles himself so in any letter, grant, or rescript. In St. Remigius or Remy’s Testament, King Clovis is called _Christianissimus Ludovicus_.--Flodoard, _Historia Remensis_, i. 18 (A.D. 940). =Motallab= (_Abd al_), one of the four husbands of Zesbet, the mother of Mahomet. He was not to know her as a wife till he had seen Mahomet in his pre-existing state. Mahomet appeared to him as an old man, and told him he had chosen Zesbet, for her virtue and beauty, to be his mother.--Comte de Caylus, _Oriental Tales_ (“History of Abd al Motallab,” 1743).