preceding passage; and if the person, whose turn it was, hesitated, any one else who first thought of a suitable sentence should recite it. But it ought to be something which made good sense, when disconnected from the adjoining verses: and it was a rule of the game, that if any one present did not understand the meaning of a quotation, they should talk it over until they got some light upon the subject. Amy began: "'Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth.'" "Stop!" cried Lewis. "For if that means that gentle, patient, forgiving people, shall become rich and great, I don't understand it at all." "Certainly it cannot mean that," replied his sister Ellen. "I have heard it explained in this way:--they shall possess the best blessings of earth, by living in love and peace, and having easy consciences." "That makes a very good sense, I think," said Tom; "but I have heard another explanation given, which I like better. The earth, in that place and in many others, can be translated _land_, with equal propriety; and as the land of Canaan was promised to the Jews as a reward, the heavenly Canaan is held out as a recompense to Christians." "I'm satisfied," said Lewis. "Let me see--h--'Hear, O heavens, and give ear, O earth, for the Lord hath spoken.'" "'Never man spake like this man,'" added George. "I think there are some words in the verse before that N," said Gertrude. "But that is of no consequence," replied Amy. "When a clause makes a complete sense in itself, that answers, even if it is not at the beginning of a verse. You know that the division of the Bible into chapters and verses is quite a modern thing." "Indeed, I did not know it," said Gertrude. "Are you quite sure?" "Oh, yes, certain. I don't know when, or by whom it was divided into chapters--but my Sunday-school teacher has told me that the books of the Old Testament were not parcelled out in that way among the Jews. They had other, and longer divisions, one of which was read every Sabbath day in the synagogues, so that the whole was heard by the people, in the course of the year. She told me that the New Testament was first distributed into chapters--it was not originally written so--and then the Old; and that in some places it would make better sense if the end of one chapter was joined to the beginning of the next." "And how is it about the verses, Amy?" "It was first separated into verses by Robert Stephens, a publisher, when riding on horseback between Paris and Lyons: he marked it thus as he rode along. He was about to publish an edition of the Bible, and a concordance, and divided it for facility of reference. This was in the middle of the sixteenth century." "There is one thing I've always wanted to know," said John. "Along the margin, among the references, every now and then there are a few words--generally, _or_ so and so. What is the meaning of that?"