"And now, boys," she said as they were being tucked in, "your prayers." And of those who were awake each said his own: Willie his "Now I lay me," Mariano his "Ave," but little Bent from the Eastside tenement wailed that he didn't have any. Bent was a newcomer like Gimpy. "Then," said six-year-old Morris, resolutely,--he also was a Jew,--"I learn him mine vat my fader tol' me." And getting into Bent's crib, he crept under the blanket with his little comrade. Gimpy saw them reverently pull their worsted caps down over their heads, and presently their tiny voices whispered together, in the jargon of the East Side, their petition to the Father of all, who looked lovingly down through the storm upon his children of many folds. The last prayer was said, and all was still. Through the peaceful breathing of the boys all about him, Gimpy, alone wakeful, heard the deep bass of the troubled sea. The storm had blown over. Through the open windows shone the eternal stars, as on that night in the Judean hills when shepherds herded their flocks and "The angels of the Lord came down." He did not know. He was not thinking of angels; none had ever come to his slum. But a great peace came over him and filled his child-soul. It may be that the nurse saw it shining in his eyes and thought it fever. It may be that she, too, was thinking in that holy hour. She bent over him and laid a soothing hand upon his brow. "You must sleep now," she said. Something that was not of the tenement, something vital, with which his old life had no concern, welled up in Gimpy at the touch. He caught her hand and held it. "I will if you will sit here," he said. He could not help it. "Why, Jimmy?" She stroked back his shock of stubborn hair. Something glistened on her eyelashes as she looked at the forlorn little face on the pillow. How should Gimpy know that he was at that moment leading another struggling soul by the hand toward the light that never dies? "'Cause," he gulped hard, but finished manfully--"'cause I love you." Gimpy had learned the lesson of Christmas, "And glory shone around." AS TOLD BY THE RABBI Three stories have come to me out of the past for which I would make friends in the present. The first I have from a rabbi of our own day whom I met last winter in the far Southwest. The other two were drawn from the wisdom of the old rabbis that is as replete with human contradiction as the strange people of whose life it was, and is, a part. If they help us to understand how near we live to one another, after all, it is well. Without other comment, I shall leave each reader to make his own application of them. * * * * * This was the story my friend the Arkansas rabbi told. It is from the folk-lore of Russia: